Uchiha of Remnant

by Baconaddict

Sasuke was used to having obstacles in his path, but trying to find a way home after becoming stranded in the middle of another world was a bit much even by his standards. Similar to everything in his life, his situation is not as simple as it first appears.

14. Blood and Steel

AN: I was debating whether to wait one or two weeks before posting this, but I decided 'screw it, why not?'. So, here it is!

A couple side notes, there were a few people who asked why Sasuke did not use Genjutsu in the previous chapter, and seeing as it has been a while since the subject was brought up in the story I think I should take a moment to clarify. Genjutsu as Sasuke knows it does not work on anyone in Remnant in this story. The caster normally disrupts the flow of their opponent's chakra to the nervous system to create illusions, and no one in Remnant has chakra- they have Aura instead. Not the same thing, so 'normal' Genjutsu will not affect them. Sasuke tried to use it on Ruby in chapter 2 and all it did was give her a mild headache.

Some of you have also said that Sasuke should not be having this kind of trouble with Stonewall. To clarify, I did not create this guy to be weak. For reference, he can take on Zabuza Momochi one-on-one and have a favorable chance at beating him. Not a hundred percent chance, but still the slight favorite to win. And as the creator of this OC, that statement is not hyperbole or out of context- it is fact. He IS NOT a pushover. Unlike a certain Sienna Khan, I have no intention of hyping a character up just to kill them in all of two minutes after they are introduced.

Also, Sasuke is not going to be whipping out Chidori as his first or second resort in a fight. Imagine if you will, you wake up isekai'd into the Dark Ages with nothing but the clothes on your back and a gun with twenty bullets. Sounds like you'll be okay, right? Except because firearms aren't a thing in that time period there is nowhere to buy more bullets if you use them, and it takes you a week to make a new bullet yourself. Are you going to whip your gun out at the first hint of trouble and just fire off rounds and hope you don't run out? Or are you going to try and learn how to use a knife, a bow and arrow, or something else so you aren't forced to burn through all of your ammunition? And to really put yourselves in Sasuke's shoes in this scenario, you also know the only way you can make it home is by using up some unknown quantity of your bullets. Will you need one? Two? Fifteen? You don't know- which means you will exhaust every other option available before resorting to your gun. Sasuke is in the same situation. Just because he can Chidori his way out of a fight in two seconds doesn't mean it's his best option. And just because he's not one-shotting his enemies doesn't mean he can't be a badass.

For those of you who don't like the fact this fight is dragging- well, sorry to tell you but the fight doesn't end in this chapter.

NightmareKnight1- Damn, you hit the nail on the head!

Narutaard- Sasuke does still have the Curse Mark and has 'killed' Orochimaru (absorbed him), but he cannot use it in Remnant because there is not enough latent Nature Energy to activate it.

Fortitude501- Your damn right Salem won't like it! We all know she's throwing a tantrum like she did in volume 6 when she gets the news.

KnightOfZaku- You're right to worry about the aftermath- no way in hell Ozpin is going to keep a totally hands-off approach when he realizes what's happening.

God of Evil- Thanks for the thumbs up, man! I might slip in that scene you mentioned in a future chapter, too!

Iskandar Hero- I think I went over everything I wanted to in my PM to you, but thanks again for your honest opinions, the criticism and the praise alike.

Tobi14 and 808Joker808- I loved writing Roman in the last chapter. I know he comes off as a bit goofy in the show, but let us not forget he is a goddamn mob boss. This dude is ruthless, and has no problem beating people to death Al Capone style if they get in his way, and I wanted to write him like that.

Minato The Deathly Fool- You want to see Stonewall get beaten? Hoo boy, you're going to love what's coming!

Dreamborne- Don't you worry. Just because Sasuke is holding back doesn't mean he won't be kicking ass.

Tortillacrumbs- Yes, Stonewall is hitting harder than Naruto did at the Final Valley. Not five or ten times harder or something ridiculous, but he is packing more force. He is my OC, and that comparison is accurate. Also note that Sasuke can still reinforce his body with chakra to an extent without wasting any, so it's not like he's taking these attacks without any protection.

'thoughts'

Uchiha of Remnant

Chapter 14: Blood and Steel

With an effortless swing honed by natural talent and a healthy amount of practice, Ruby Rose swung her precious Crescent Rose in a graceful arc with far more force than her petite form would suggest possible, bisecting a Creeper that had been rushing toward her. Well, not toward her, exactly. She had been on the rooftops of Vale, firing at the retreating Roman Torchwick alongside an awesome professional huntress whom she learned was Glynda Goodwitch, the highest-ranking instructor at Beacon Academy aside from Professor Ozpin when the city's emergency alarms had blared to life. A Grimm attack was coming. A big one.

Ruby had practically jumped to attention. The thought of hundreds, thousands of evil Grimm charging into her home kingdom and killing the helpless people who stood in their path was a nightmare she could not bear to watch unfold without doing everything she could to defend them. Unfortunately, as the young woman was far too ought to experience, Glynda had simply looked at her unbridled courage and saw only an underage girl that had no business yet being on the frontlines of such a battle.

Ruby had heard it before, 'let the adults handle it', and she was sick of it. She had fought off a Grimm attack at Signal just the other week, and had chased off Roman Torchwick, an actual hardened criminal! She was more than good enough to help!

Fortunately Ozpin had chosen that moment to call his subordinate to properly coordinate Vale's defense, and had seen the silver-eyed girl behind her on his scroll. He paused a moment as he looked at her through the scroll, making the girl feel a little uncomfortable. He wasn't looking at her in the weird way that Yang had said if boys did to her she would break their legs in half. No, it was almost like he was looking through her. Whatever he had seen, it had been enough to order Goodwitch to have Ruby accompany her to the wave of Grimm that was advancing toward Vale the most rapidly.

Fear had gripped their hearts as they saw the true scale of the invasion from the airship. Thousands of Grimm, of all species and ages, were rushing toward Vale in a black flood that crushed and smothered everything in its path.

Despite her youth, Ruby had not shirked from her sworn duty as a Huntress. She had leapt from the airship without hesitation, landing at the edge of the wall of Grimm and putting her beautiful Crescent Rose to work.

It was after her second kill, a charging Ursai, that Ruby noticed something strange. None of the Grimm, not a one, was bothering to attack her. Sneaking a glance at the elder Huntress, she saw that Goodwitch too was being completely ignored by the charging creatures and was every bit as confused as Ruby was.

Cutting down a passing Beowolf, she saw a younger couple hidden behind a large boulder. The Grimm swept around the obstacle, but the two were still terrified beyond measure, clutching each other with trembling limbs. There was an airship only a few hundred yards away that was already beginning to pick up civilians to evacuate, but the couple would certainly not make the journey without being trampled to death.

Ruby didn't hesitate. Holstering her weapon on her back she flew forward with her Semblance, a flurry of rose petals streaking across the darkened land. She redrew Crescent Rose, shouting to make herself heard over the thundering stampede.

"You two run to the airship as fast as you can, I'll cover you!"

If either of them had any doubts about following a girl roughly half their age, they didn't show it. With courage born from fear and the timely arrival of someone simply willing to help, they sprinted for the edge of the flood of Grimm. Ruby stood out between them and the advancing Grimm, shredding any that got within reach with flawless skill.

The couple made it to safety, barely sparing a thank you to their young savior before they ran for the airship.

"Good work, Miss Rose."

The girl turned around suddenly, greeted by the reluctantly approving Goodwitch.

"Oh, y-you know," Ruby stuttered, her cheeks flushed with embarrassment, "I'm a Huntress-in-training! Saving people is what we do!"

Glynda couldn't help but inwardly smile to herself a bit as she lifted the boulder the couple had been hiding behind with her Semblance and crushing a passing Deathstalker. It was depressingly rare to find a Huntsman or Huntress who had been in the field for a few years to have such innocent optimism. You could only see so many corpses and abandoned villages before it took a toll on you.

"We're not done here yet," Glynda said, hardening herself for the coming battle as she grasped another Grimm with her telekinesis and skewered it on the spiky back of an Ursa Major.

"Hey, why aren't the Grimm attacking us?" the girl questioned, asking the very thing that was also on Glynda's mind. "There's no way they can't see us, so what are they doing?"

Ruby was asking all the right questions, for which Glynda had no answers. The reason for the change in location of the Patch Anomaly was still a mystery, and now for whatever reason the Grimm surrounding Vale had decided to throw their newfound hesitation to approach the kingdom out the window.

But why? Why now?

And as Ruby mentioned, they weren't attacking anyone. Even as Hunters like them stood in their path and cut the creatures to dust, none of them had so much as paused in their single-minded sprint to wherever they were going. Houses and buildings were trampled, some people barely escaping being crushed to death under the stampede, but not a single person had been attacked yet to her knowledge.

Huffing under her breath, the veteran Huntress whipped The Disciplinarian to her side, grasping the trunk of a dead tree before hurling it at the mass of Grimm before her.

"We'll worry about that later," she said, already looking for more objects available for her use. "For now, we have an invasion of Grimm advancing on Vale to deal with and people in their way we need to save."

With a graceful leap that seemingly contradicted the Huntress' seeming preference for non-physical combat, the Professor leapt directly into the center of the charging Grimm. Under normal circumstance she wouldn't have dared surround herself with the murderous creatures, but this was hardly normal. If the Grimm continued to ignore her efforts to destroy them then there was hardly reason to worry about her personal safety.

Shaking her head to focus, Ruby gripped Crescent Rose tightly in her hands.

'She's right! We have a job to do and people are counting on us! A true Huntress never forgets her duty to protect people who can't protect themselves!'

Ruby threw herself into the horde of Grimm with a fierce passion, slaughtering the Grimm by the dozens as she wove a lacerating web of the razor-sharp steel of her weapon. There was no hesitation or doubt in her mind- she knew what was needed of her.

---

With a burning pain in his abdomen Sasuke began to consider that maybe, just maybe, he had gotten a bit overconfident during his stay in Remnant. Or really just overconfident in general. He was used to being powerful, to outclassing most enemies who had the bravery or stupidity to pick a fight with him. In this new world it seemed that despite his initial concerns about more advanced technology and the defensive capabilities of aura, he was still one of, if not the strongest players around. Firearms had proven to be not much more than a nuisance, and of the two aura-capable people he had thus far fought, neither had been a challenge. Even with the significant handicap of no Jutsu or Sharingan, Sasuke was undefeated in Remnant.

It was due to his flawless win-loss ratio that Sasuke had disregarded Junior's warning about Stonewall- a decision he was now regretting.

Thud.

Thud.

THUD.

THUD.

Still stunned from the previous juggernaut of a hit, Sasuke managed to tear himself off the wall just as his senses recovered enough to hear Stonewall's heavy footfall thundering his way.

A large section of brick masonry he was facing turned into a cloud of flying dust and pebbles with an explosion of force. Peering into the billowing cloud, the Uchiha saw Stonewall come out of the cloud with his ever-present smirk, a series of holes in the brick structures behind him.

He had run through the walls.

"Wow, you survived that?" he exclaimed in surprise. "I'm impressed kid, even with Aura pretty much anyone I hit with that is either dead or vomiting blood. I don't know how you can tank that kind of hit when you don't have Aura, but you certainly deserve some praise for standing up after that."

Sasuke put his sword back in its scabbard- unless he was pushed far enough to coat it with Chidori the weapon would do him no good here, and he had a few tricks left to try before resorting to that.

"Maybe a punch I can get up from that easily isn't as powerful as you think."

The man's smile broadened- giving him the appearance of a sociopath who had been given a magnifying glass to set ants on fire with.

"Oh, this is wonderful! You still have some pep in you!"

Stonewall set one foot forward, ready to rush him again, almost trembling with excitement.

"That's right, fight back, boy! Fight back!" he shouted; his mad grin ever present. "Crushing insects in a single footstep get boring! Make sure you last longer than the losers I'm used to dealing with - I need to enjoy this before I finish this little game!"

Stonewall leapt forward, his skin turning to a pale grey a moment later, and this time the Uchiha was ready. He flexed his legs, jolting his body sideways as the man flew toward, and then past him. He had been caught off guard before, much to is shame, but this time Sasuke did what his clan did best.

Observe.

Watch.

Learn.

Like before, Stonewall's sudden burst of speed only started when the man's skin lost its dark hue. Density Shift's main ability was rather self-explanatory, but the change in skin tone seemed to be a side effect of using it. If Stonewall's normal tone meant he had his normal mass, then it followed logically that as his skin darkened his mass and density increased proportionally.

The instant Stonewall's skin lightened, and his mass was lowered, his velocity shot through the roof.

'He has to cut his mass before he can rush forward like that, he can't move quickly when he's that heavy. That means if I can land an attack on him while he's rushing me, his body's density won't be high enough to deflect my attacks like before.'

There was another curious observation the Uchiha made that he had missed before- Stonewall's feet. He had started running at him while his mass was high, his footsteps making the same motions as anyone's. But the moment he decreased his mass and blitzed forward, he stopped moving his feet. Completely. He kept them suspended in the air as he flew forward- the Uchiha could even see Stonewall actually pull his legs and feet up a fraction of an inch when he was midway through his charge to ensure they didn't contact the ground.

It was a strange way of moving now that he really saw it- the man wasn't so much running or dashing forward but jumping.

'And he only rushes me when both of his feet are in the air- every time he started charging me, he's made sure that he wasn't touching the ground'

It hit the Uchiha like an epiphany. He had thought it was unusual Stonewall could accelerate at the rate he did; his velocity simply skyrocketing with no effort from his legs at all. But it wasn't strange or unnatural now that he knew how it worked- it made perfect sense.

Sasuke turned his head abruptly to follow Stonewall as he flew by, missing him by inches. He kept his eyes locked on his target, expecting him to darken and come to a quick halt when the man realized he had missed his target.

Stonewall didn't disappoint- he had only traveled ten feet past the Uchiha when his skin turned dark grey again and his forward motion instantly stopped, his raised feet planted into the floor with a resounding thud.

"So that's how you move like that" Sasuke commented casually.

"What do you mean?" the man snorted; a tic of irritation added to his otherwise still eager mood that the Uchiha was back to acting like he was discussing the weather instead of fighting for his life.

"Your Semblance, Density Shift, is a rather misleading name. What you are really changing is your mass; the change in density is just a side-effect of that. But density isn't the only thing that tweaking your mass will affect, is it?"

Now Stonewall was looking at the Uchiha with slightly widened eyes, honestly surprised and impressed. The kid had only seen him use his Semblance to blitz him twice, and he had already figured it out?

"I know enough about physics to be familiar with the concept of the Conservation of Momentum. When an object with mass is in motion, it has momentum that is determined by its mass multiplied by its speed. Unless another force acts on the object, it's a physical law that the object's total momentum cannot change. That's how you're increasing your speed that much- you're not doing anything to move faster yourself. You just lower your weight when you want to move quickly, and that forces your speed to increase to compensate."

Sasuke had to hand it to him, it was an ingenious way of exploiting his Semblance. It allowed Stonewall to get around his normal lackluster speed and actually be fast enough to hit opponents that otherwise would just effortlessly dance around his attacks.

As clever and as useful as the trick was, it came with weaknesses the Uchiha was fully intending to exploit.

The man avoided contact with the ground when he rushed forward for good reason. With his mass and density at normal ranges, any contact with the ground at that speed would generate enough friction to tear his shoes apart and necessitate using his aura to blunt the damage that would make rope-burn look like a mosquito bite.

Not to mention if his feet tripped on the ground while he was moving at such speeds he would be performing an epic faceplant.

Stonewall was also limited to moving in a straight line when he dashed, having no way to turn or maneuver himself mid-flight. And without a Sharingan to aid him it was a safe bet that he experienced blurred Tunnel Vision when he moved that quicky, the portion of the brain that processed visual information would simply be overwhelmed.

"Hehe, you continue to impress me, Sasuke. Your skills are one thing, but you've got a damn good head on your shoulders too!"

"Should I be grateful of your praise, or just thankful you're not calling me 'kid' now?"

"You've put on more than enough of a show for me to give you the courtesy of remembering your name, Sasuke Uchiha."

"It's a real shame you don't want to stay on with me and Roman," the man said with an almost wistful tone. "Just remember when I'm ripping you in half that it didn't have to be this way."

With that his skin paled, and he charged again. Unlike before, however, the Uchiha knew exactly what to do. He did not sidestep the attack, he rushed out to meet it.

'Intercept him, before he reaches me, and his density will be normal'

Stonewall did not have the Sharingan, and therefore had no chance of reacting to the Uchiha's preemptive blow even if he were capable of seeing it coming. Sasuke dashed forward, meeting his adversary mid-way through his intended path.

He wasn't stupid enough to throw a straight punch at his target. Even with his normal density and mass Stonewall was moving so quickly that the Uchiha's arm would get dislocated at best and shattered at worst from meeting such a force head-on.

With flawless timing and coordination, Sasuke threw a perfectly placed right hook directly on Stonewall's jaw as he flew toward him.

The recoil was unlike anything Sasuke had ever felt. Unlike his attack on Gaara's hardened sand shield at the Chunin Exams, there was no pain. The shock of the blow was more than enough to instantly numb any sensation from his arm so severely that had he been blindfolded someone likely could have set his arm on fire and he would have been completely unaware of it until he had smelled the burning flesh.

He was nevertheless pleased with the results. His target was shot to the side, the force of the Uchiha's punch redirecting his erstwhile invulnerable enemy straight into an adjacent wall, scattering shattered masonry.

More importantly, for the first time in their fight, Stonewall did not withstand his attack with complete impunity. In the fraction of a second before he hit the edifice, the Uchiha could make out telltale black and grey sparks shimmering on the area of the man's cheek he had struck that could only be his Aura protecting him.

Sasuke noted that this was the first time during their battle that Stonewall had actually used his aura defensively at all. He had used it to activate his Semblance like any other Aura user, but unlike his contemporaries Stonewall had no need to maintain his Aura's passive defense so long as his body's mass and density were elevated. It made perfect sense- there was no need to waste his aura blunting and negating attacks that his hardened skin and body were more than capable of withstanding damage-free all by themselves.

Watching his adversary crash headfirst into large cinder blocks was certainly amusing considering the difficulty Stonewall was putting him through, but it was a far cry from the damage he needed to put him down for good.

'I need to push my attack now- this fight will drag on too long if I let him keep the initiative'

Grey dust still swirling in the air from the destroyed structure, the Uchiha shot forward to exploit his enemy's momentary weakness.

He was too late. Based on the man's previous words it sounded as though Stonewall had not been truly pushed in battle for quite some time, but the man's instincts were not dulled enough to lie helplessly stunned for the few moments Sasuke needed to close the distance and land a follow-up attack.

His clenched fist a mere foot away from the back of Stonewall's head, the Uchiha sensed the man's aura flex throughout his body. A fraction of a second later and his opponent's skin turned to grey, and his fist seared in pain as the bones of his hand were stressed almost to their breaking point as they made contact.

Pulling back his burning hand and leaping back, Sasuke grimaced as he watched his enemy get to his feet.

"Oh, you are good!"

Stonewall turned to him, a smile of excitement on his face as he rubbed his jaw where Sasuke had hit him.

"I don't know how the hell you timed that punch so well; most people can barely even see me when I move like that. Normally I would have called it a lucky shot, but something tells me that was all skill."

"It makes no difference to me what you believe," said Sasuke flatly, finally deeming fit to respond to Stonewall's banter. "The end result will be the same."

Stonewall's smile fell a little, accompanied by a flash of annoyance in his eyes. He took a leaden step forward, as if emphasizing the sheer weight of the odds facing his enemy.

"You know, I'm starting to take a bit of offense that you're still acting like you're not fighting for your life here," the man confessed. "That punch you landed on me was good, but you're going to have to repeat that a hundred times over before my Aura gets depleted. You'll die from just two or three hits from me."

The Uchiha couldn't argue with that. As long as he didn't use Chidori, he was at a distinct disadvantage.

Stonewall's incredible defense would make killing him tricky, but one thing Sasuke had learned during his two years with Orochimaru was that there was no shortage of methods to kill someone.

The darkened forest surrounding the factory was utterly perfect for camouflage, and for a Shinobi who had literally grown up in the Village Hidden in the Leaves, Stonewall had a snowball's chance in hell of even seeing him if he lured him out there.

But it was the beach that the Uchiha decided would be the best choice. The loose and shifting sands would be too weak to support Stonewall's increased weight; he would sink as if he were in a quicksand pit. And if the Uchiha could force him into the Ocean, where Stonewall sure as hell couldn't increase his mass without sinking to the bottom, drowning him would be a simple matter.

It took Sasuke all of three seconds to finish his entire train of thought, brought back to the situation at hand by Stonewall grasping the edge of a cinder block wall with his bare, darkened fist.

"And speaking of hits, kid," the man said, tearing away pieces of the masonry in his grip, "giving myself a speed boost isn't the only way I can tag you with my Semblance."

He lightly tossed the pebble-sized debris in his hand before cocking his arm back to throw it.

And then, halfway through his throw, the Uchiha's keen eyes could make out the rubble in his hand. The once light-grey shade of the stone now a very familiar hue of dark grey that could only mean one thing.

'Oh shit'

Muscles in his legs tensed with lightning speed, flinging him several feet to the side not a moment too soon.

Sasuke saw the pebbles leave the hand that pitched them, turning back to their normal shade of light grey, as well as their normal mass, the instant they lost physical contact with Stonewall.

And then, the Uchiha simply saw streaks of grey as the pellets of debris accelerated into a blur. The next instant, the sharp crack of struck and breaking masonry filled his ears as the shrapnel burrowed into and shattered the solid brick structure that stood behind him as though it were glass.

The Uchiha stood in undisguised shock. 'He can use his semblance on anything he touches, too!?'

He had seen plenty of gunfire during his stay on Remnant, but the attack he had just seen had shamed all of them. The pebbles he had thrown would have been a mere annoyance had they been wielded by anyone else, but in Stonewall's hands they transformed into what was essentially a shotgun blast that he could use as long as he had any kind of small objects or debris around to use as ammunition.

And it traveled at speeds at least twice that of a normal bullet.

Fast enough to make dodging multiple projectiles almost impossible- even for him.

His mind racing, the Uchiha realized his situation was quickly growing worse by the moment. With a ranged attack of that power and speed in his arsenal that had no ammunition limit, he could no longer safely assume he could dance around Stonewall and gradually wear him out.

"Nice dodge!" praised Stonewall, grabbing more rubble in his palms. "Let's see you do it again!"

The Uchiha knew what was coming, and decided to not wait for the inevitable. He jumped to the side again, a slightly further distance than last time to reduce the chances the fringes of the cloud of rubble would strike him.

It wasn't far enough- there were too many missiles in the air too closely packed together to avoid them all, and two pieces of the weaponized masonry struck him. The first grazed the edge of his shoulder, tearing off a shallow chunk of flesh. The second struck his leg, burrowing into his shin.

Sasuke could handle pain perfectly fine, but he felt genuine alarm when as opposed to the expected flashes of agony, he felt a strong tingling sensation from his struck leg instead.

It could only mean one thing- the hit had affected one of the nerves in the leg.

He still retained at least some feeling in the affected limb, so it thankfully had not been severed. It was probably more akin to the sensation of being struck in the funny bone; the nerve simply being struck or compressed as opposed to actual damage, and he would regain the use of his limb in a few seconds.

Not that it mattered. Sasuke's leg was unresponsive for only a moment- but that moment was enough for the limb to collapse under its owner's weight and forcing the Uchiha on his knee. Eyes widened in horror; he could now do nothing as Stonewall saw his prey flounder before he shot himself forward with the ferocity of a shark that had seen a plump seal become inexplicably paralyzed. The man halted his dash forward mere inches from him, a bloodthirsty grin as he cocked his blackened fist back before throwing it straight at his face.

There was no way to dodge the earth-shattering blow, and sure as hell no way to block it. Sasuke saturated his head and neck with as much chakra as he possibly could to attempt to withstand the colossal force that was about to try and turn his face into nothing but a bloody smear. Then, snapping his head to the side as fast as he could, the Uchiha literally rolled with Stonewall's punch, desperately hoping he could blunt the impact just enough.

The punch rang Sasuke's skull like a bell, turning his world into a nauseous blur as he felt his jaw crack at the point of impact. The muscles and tendons of his neck screamed in protest as they were stretched almost to their breaking point- the momentum of his head snapping from the hit alone a hairs-breath away from pulling his vertebrae apart as if it were nothing more than an overstretched rubber band.

The Uchiha struggled to orient himself- vaguely aware of the dull pain in his head as his vision continued to show him nothing but a blurred smear. Not that it was that surprising; he was fairly certain he had flown through several walls already.

It was only the gritty taste of rubble and dust on his tongue that Sasuke realized his journey as an impromptu human projectile had finally ended; face- down on the floor surrounded by newly formed rubble and the swirling grey clouds of masonry dust. The world still spinning and his ears ringing, the Uchiha clumsily brought his hand to his face where Stonewall had punched him.

He was relieved to feel the burning sting of pain- pain that meant he probably hadn't suffered any permanent injuries.

"-uke!"

Wait, was someone talking to him?

Fighting his disorientation, the Uchiha could vaguely feel several hands on his shoulders helping him flip onto his back. Even in his delirium he knew full well it couldn't be Stonewall, but he was still rather surprised to see several blurry faces above him, two of whom were framed by distinctive and familiar platinum blonde and purple hair.

'Have Shyla and Violet not fled yet? Perhaps Neo and the men outside are still fighting…'

The crowd kneeling and standing above the delirious Uchiha, Shyla and Violet in particular, all had rather differing opinions of Sasuke when they had first seen him walk through the factory doors and slaughter their captors. Many had a hard time getting past his jaw-droppingly handsome features and believed him to be a guardian angel in human form, smiting the wicked with his power. Others were more skeptical, having overheard that their savior was indeed in league with the notorious Roman Torchwick, not to mention being the perpetrator behind the recent Dust Shootout that had depleted Vale's law enforcement to the point where their kidnapping was even possible to begin with. A small number among them, like Violet, found themselves in a unique position of believing that one man, a teenager, would make such an incomprehensibly risky rescue and face a small army by himself without some kind of ulterior motive. Perhaps, just maybe, Sasuke was leading them to fate that would somehow be worse than the hell they were now attempting to flee.

Now everyone's opinion of the Uchiha was the same- he looked like shit.

He had flown into the room they were in straight through one of the walls, skidding to a rough stop on the rubble-strewn floor. The side of his jaw was swollen almost to the size of a golf ball and was a grotesquely dark shade of blue from bruising. All of his clothing was sporting rips and tears that failed to cover the multitude of small cuts that covered him seemingly from head to toe, and one of his cheeks was now an angry shade of red from a nasty scrape that had torn off the outer layer of skin. Most alarmingly were the streams of blood that trickled down the Uchiha's head from his crown, the drops collecting in small streams of red across his face.

"Holy shit, is he alright?!"

At this, Shyla whipped her head around at the random person who had uttered the question, scarcely believing the stupidity some people seemed to be cursed with.

"Look at him! How the fuck do you think he's doing!?" she exclaimed in incredulous rage.

Looking back at Sasuke, though, Shyla did consider that perhaps his condition was not quite as bad as it appeared. He was still a far cry from his usual unflappable self; but his head did not appear to be bleeding at a truly alarming rate, and from the positions of his limbs nothing appeared to be broken. Lifting his head up she could feel his pulse was still strong, his breathing steady, and he didn't appear to be any paler than usual.

Still, she was no doctor. They had to get him out of there.

"Well don't just stand there," she snapped at her fellow escapees, all of whom seemed to either be whispering amongst each other or frozen on the spot, "help me get him up!"

Her words galvanized several of her surrounding peers, a couple of them holstering the guns they had acquired from their deceased captors as they grabbed the Uchiha's limbs.

Before he could be lifted an inch, however, everyone present froze at the sound of a series of ever-louder thuds that shook the dust from the surrounding structures. Everyone in the room exchanged fearful glances with each other- knowing exactly who was coming.

Another portion of the surrounding wall exploded before their eyes, though unlike before the person who had created it was not flying through the air barely clinging to consciousness. Stonewall, as imposing as ever despite his otherwise diminutive height, calmly walked through the newly created 'door' as casually as if he were stepping outside to get his mail.

"Oh, just look at this convenience!" Stonewall exclaimed in a tone that could almost be called jubilant. "The man I need to kill and the merchandise I need to reclaim all in one spot!"

In the poor lighting of the room they were in, the man responsible for the kidnapping and suffering of those souls in the room looked like a monster- his dark grey skin blending in just enough with the background to disturb his silhouette and make his eyes look like empty pits. He smiled, but it went without saying that it was one of cruelty; one that hungered for suffering and control of others.

Shyla saw the man begin to shake, thinking he was struggling to hold in his laughter at the hopelessness of their situation. But as she saw his surroundings begin to quiver as well the blonde realized that it was neither Stonewall nor his surroundings that were trembling- it was her.

With a start she realized why: she was scared.

When she had first been kidnapped off the street, she had fought back. Unsuccessfully, sure, but she had made sure that several of her captors had gone home with several broken thumbs and split lips before she had been knocked out. When she had woken up, and her intended fate had become clear, she had resisted every step of the way. She had spat, cursed, refused to walk, everything in her power to defy her oppressors attempting to 'tame her' for her intended client. She had not been raped, her buyer having insisted she be pure for him when she arrived, but it felt like she had been subjected to every other form of torture that didn't yield scarring or permanent injury. Beatings, withheld meals, eventually her guards refused to hold her water for her to drink and simply poured it on the ground, forcing to suck her water straight from the grimy floor.

The blonde's determination did not waver during this ordeal, but as the days drew on she saw a disturbing phenomenon- her fellow prisoners surrendering to their captors. Many such as Violet had been terrified into submission from the start, but others, like Shyla, had decided to fight back, however meaningless it may have been. Eventually, however, the resistance began to subside. Hunger and thirst were powerful weapons, and one could only take so many beatings before they stopped trying to fight. Shyla had fought on, vowing that she would not follow their example. She had a little brother to take care of that still needed her, and she could not quit simply because it was easier to bend the knee.

During all of this, Shyla had not been truly scared. Whether it was a refusal to face her seemingly insurmountable odds or sheer blinding rage at the men profiting from her suffering, she had not truly felt fear.

Now, however, as she gripped a stolen gun and pointed it at a supremely unconcerned Stonewall, she felt it. They were still stuck out in the middle of who-knows where with no idea how to get back to Vale, gunshots from a firefight of some kind were still ringing outside that nobody wanted any part of, and the man responsible for putting all of them through this torment had just handily defeated the one person that was both willing and able to help them.

On either side of her she could see many of her fellow prisoners still holding their borrowed guns, but not a single one bothered to so much as lift it up. Some, like her, were trembling, while others began to sob and weep, staring at the approaching man with utter terror. Violet in particular was simply breaking down, hyperventilating and sobbing loudly.

'I can't give up'

That was what Shyla told herself as she lifted her gun and took aim, but now even her resilience was starting to die. The gun felt heavy, weighted down not by mass but by her growing despair. What was the point of continuing to fight anyway? They had no weapons that could even harm the man in front of them, let alone take him down.

They could not retreat, could not hide, and could not fight.

There was nothing left to do.

And by the bemused look on Stonewall's face, he knew it too.

"Oh, isn't that just adorable?" he patronized, smirking at her feeble efforts. "The big, strong girl thinks she can do something to stop me?"

He paused, chuckling lightly to himself before facing her once again.

"I'm well aware you're the only one that's still bothering to resist," he said. "You might think of yourself as braver, or more determined than your friends who chose to just accept their fate, but you're wrong."

A few days ago Shyla would have felt utter disgust at the words Stonewall had just uttered. Treating herself and others like mere property, to be bought and sold at convenience, or discarded when they no longer fulfilled their purpose. It was a sickening sin, a fine example of humanity at its most vile.

"You are neither the bravest nor the strongest of our slaves, girl. You are the most dull-witted."

She felt disgust now, but it wasn't directed toward Stonewall. The nauseating revulsion she was feeling now was for herself. Because now, with no way out, she was hearing the same seductive whisper in her ear that her fellow sale items had.

Give up. Surrender, and accept your fate.

The temptation was real- it would be so easy. And even as she continued to hold her gun in trembling hands, Shyla was considering it.

"Everyone else was smart enough to see the writing on the wall days ago," Stonewall continued, shaking his head in what could be translated as pity. "You are the only one who is dumb enough to still think she has a chance in hell of getting home. Even now, girl, you are the only one retarded enough to point that gun at me when you know damn good and well it can't even scratch me."

He was right- she knew her gun wouldn't work on him. She had heard the guards talk about it on more than one occasion, about how it made him invulnerable; invincible they said.

What the hell was she supposed to do against that? If Sasuke couldn't beat him, what chance did she have?

"Here's what's going to happen you fucking whores," he spat, his eyes daring any of them to so much as move an inch, "I'm going to kill the mother-fucker who set all of you free. You all have a decision to make: you can try to fight me, try to run, or go back to your chains like good little bitches so I can make some fucking money."

"And what will you do to us if we don't want to go back?" Shyla heard herself ask. She wasn't even sure where her defiance was even coming from at this point, and from the astounded looks of her companions they weren't sure either.

The blonde had to hold in a shudder of fear when she saw Stonewall gave a wicked smile, his eyes practically gleaming in the shadow.

"A horse that breaks his leg and can no longer work gets a bullet in the head, girl. Don't think I won't do the same to all of you if keeping you alive is more trouble than you're worth."

Stonewall pulled a piece of masonry off the wall, crumbling it in his hands before taking a small piece of it and lightly tossing it off to the side.

Well, she thought he had lightly tossed it, but the explosion of said projectile both breaking the sound barrier and punching a fist-sized hole in the wall spoke otherwise. With horror, she realized he was cradling the remaining pieces in his hand, ready to launch them at anyone who dared try to run.

"And besides, you greatly underestimate how much your corpses are worth. I have a whole list of clients who would pay a hefty sum for a healthy organ of the right type" he cruelly taunted, feasting on the growing fear of his prisoners with sick pleasure. "And I know plenty of high-class types around who would be eager to pay to stick their dick into a hot young body. Alive or dead."

Shyla heard more than one of the women behind her barely hold back the urge to vomit, and she wasn't far behind them herself. She had known there were some truly cruel and sick people in the world, like any attractive young woman should, but to actually be thrown in her face like this was overwhelming.

Suddenly, the sensation of a sea-sized mass of ice-cold water squeezed every inch of her body and froze every muscle she had in place. The icy presence felt as though it was coming from all sides, squeezing her body and freezing the blood in her veins and the air in her lungs in an invisible grip with no obvious source.

No, no she knew where- who- this was coming from. Shyla had no idea how she knew, whether it was a subconscious realization or some other basic survival instinct her higher mind was incapable of understanding, but she knew for a fact that it was a physical impossibility for literally anyone else other than Sasuke Uchiha to create such a terrifying presence.

Still facing Stonewall, Shyla could see that the man was no longer sneering at her in contempt but staring directly behind Shyla with a look of slack-jawed shock. The seemingly invincible titan before her then took a small, almost inconspicuous step back, and she realized he also felt fear. She dared to turn around, trying to see what Sasuke was doing to frighten such a man. Shyla had barely managed to turn her head enough to see her fellow prisoners at her side before something flickered in front of her at mind-numbing speed.

"GAAAAAAHHHHHH!"

The next thing Shyla heard was an ear-splitting scream. Whipping her head back to the source of the agonizing cry, she saw Sasuke standing directly behind Stonewall, holding one of his arms in the crook of his elbow and the other hand directly in front of the older man's face holding an object of some kind that had a metallic glint.

A second later Sasuke leapt back, narrowly dodging a clumsy swing from his victim. Still screaming, Stonewall clutched his face with his other hand, the relative darkness of the room failing to cover the sight of streams of blood covering his fingers and running down his cheeks. She looked at Sasuke, and then realized why Stonewall had looked utterly terrified of him a moment before.

Red eyes gleamed in the darkness, glowing in the shadows a beautiful yet deadly hue that froze her on the spot. In that moment Shyla could have sworn she could literally feel the malice, the lust for death for the object of Sasuke's hatred, ooze out from those crimson orbs as they burned in the shadows. They were eerily similar to the blood-red gaze of the creatures of Grimm and their instinctive urge for death and destruction. But Shyla could instinctively tell that there was something different, something far deeper about the red orbs in front of her compared to anything else she knew, something she was incapable of comprehending.

Her heart still pounding in terror, she looked down at the Uchiha's hand and could see he was holding a strange knife of some sort that was dripping with Stonewall's blood.

Wait, blood? Didn't Stonewall's Semblance make him immune to physical damage?

With a look of stone-cold apathy the Uchiha tossed a small object from his hand at the still thrashing crime lord's feet, who was now coherent enough to look at his opponent with shock and terror that Shyla would never before would have thought he would have been capable of feeling. She thought Sasuke had tossed him the strange knife at first, but a moment later realized the blade was still in the Uchiha's hand, and had instead tossed another, slightly smaller object that she had missed earlier.

The object fell into a small patch of light, and Shyla saw it clearly. The dirt and grime clinging to the surface did not hide the pure white color underneath the almost perfect sphere, save for a ring of brown surrounding a jet-black pupil and a small mass of bloody tissue behind it.

He had dug out one of Stonewall's eyes.

The man stumbled and screamed in agony, his massive weight shaking the building's foundations as his clumsy steps made small craters in the ground. After a few moments his scream began to quiet and he regained his footing, pulling himself together enough to begin pushing the pain back. His cries silenced but still in a state of shock, Stonewall glanced at the now standing Uchiha with his remaining eye widened in flabbergasted disbelief, as though the crime lord could not process the thought that he had been mutilated.

The Uchiha stared back coldly, his red eyes glowing like a cat. Blood still adorned his face from his previous injury, though it appeared not to have slowed him down at all. Any delusionary state he had been in before was now gone, staring straight at his enemy with focused determination.

"If you want to sell organs, Stonewall," said the Uchiha, a quiet venom in his voice, "You're welcome to start with that one."

Stonewall stared at his eye on the ground in a stupor, still hyperventilating from the agony of having a piece of him literally torn off. He then stared back at the Uchiha, shock giving way to fiery rage as his hands began to shake from raw fury, almost shattering his teeth as he clenched them.

"You… YOU GODSDAMN MOTHERFUCKER!" he erupted, the sound of his fury thundering through the air like an unholy creature's death throes. "YOU TOOK MY FUCKING EYE!"

The Uchiha briefly considered simply not responding to his opponent's verbal tirade as he was accustomed. But the way that Stonewall had simply ignored him after he was on the ground and went straight to trying to intimidate the escaped prisoners, assuming the Uchiha was out of the fight and a non-threat, really rubbed him in all the wrong ways.

Whether he was holding back or not, Sasuke had not trained himself to the bone to be brushed off as a non-threat by anyone.

"I can't see through the tears in my eyes" he said simply.

Inwardly, the Uchiha was thanking his luck. The eyes were one of the most vulnerable and most fragile parts of the human body, but with his Semblance Sasuke had been certain that even the frail, jelly-filled spheres would be rendered too tough to stab or damage. Fortunately Stonewall's habit of turning off his passive Aura protection when his Semblance was active meant that prying the eye out with a kunai was on the table, as his Aura would no longer shield the small empty space between his eye and his socket from his prying blade.

Even with his skin darkened via his activated Semblance, with his Sharingan activated the Uchiha could easily make out the red tinge of fury on Stonewall's livid expression.

"I AM GOING TO PEEL THE SKIN OFF YOUR FACE, YOU LITTLE SHIT!"

"If you want revenge so bad," the Uchiha shot back, "then stop complaining and come take it."

The man crouched down to prepare for a sudden charge, intent on doing just that. The Uchiha could see, however, that stealing his eye had pushed Stonewall over a mental cliff.

The earlier confident, almost carefree man that had been so confident and had almost killed Sasuke just minutes earlier was nowhere to be seen. Now he was practically frothing at the mouth in rabid fury, so blinded by wrath it made him more akin to a rampaging bull than a sentient human.

'Exactly what I hoped for' the Uchiha thought to himself.

Sasuke had realized the moment he had recovered enough to think coherently that for an opponent like Stonewall, who was so used to being utterly invulnerable, causing him any kind of harm, let alone a major injury, would probably be enough to make him lose any rational thought or coherence and give him the edge he needed. He couldn't help but think back to when he had made the same mistake when he had rushed to fight Itachi when he had learned he was in Konoha looking for Naruto. He had jumped in headfirst into a fight he desperately wanted with no plan or real thinking involved, and had been soundly defeated for it.

He would make Stonewall fall into the same trap.

With his Sharingan blazing, Stonewall's movements as well as his Aura were as easy to read as his mood. Before the Uchiha could only vaguely sense his opponent's Aura subtly changing, barely able to discern Stonewall switching his Semblance on and off in the adrenaline of battle. Now, it was a different story. Sasuke could see everything down to the millisecond.

Stonewall's weight was still solidly placed on his back foot, but the sudden increase in tension in the man's pants fibers could only mean the contraction of the leg muscles beneath that would propel him forward. At the same time his Aura visibly flared in activity, bubbling to life a fraction of an inch above the man's grey skin. A fraction of a moment later the Aura flexed and hardened to its full defensive form, even as it briefly flashed a pewter hue as it began to deactivate the man's Semblance and return him to his normal mass.

The Uchiha could see the man beginning to accelerate, flying forward with his empty socket bare for the world to see with a reckless fury to perform a body-cavity crushing tackle at blinding speed.

Well, blinding speed for anyone but him.

As impressive as Stonewall's acceleration was, it still took a few moments for him to reach his maximum speed from a dead stop. More than enough time for Sasuke's Sharingan to perceive exactly where the man was going, what he was going to do, and to counter it.

In the blink of an eye, Sasuke sidestepped two feet to his side while simultaneously launching another kunai from his pouch. It was a tool that along with his ninja wire and shuriken, he had tried to avoid using thus far in Remnant for fear of being far too exotic to use without being traced back to him, especially with the lone kunai he had left with Ruby and Tai Yang still presumably in their possession. It was a risk to use it now, but with the clusterfuck this night was turning into it was time to follow the mantra, 'fix shit up now, clean it up later'.

With the blade following its intended trajectory with flawless precision the Uchiha landed from his short jump and quickly shot forward to follow up his kunai. Stonewall, having accelerated already to the point his human eye could not properly process the world rushing past him, was essentially blind until he slowed down.

Which was too bad for Stonewall, who had made the mistake of charging with his empty eye socket uncovered. He flew forward, the kunai flying directly to its intended target- the cavernous void of his socket. Stonewall's aura prevented the blade from penetrating into the brain for an instant kill, but the Uchiha's Sharingan noticed that the protective coating of life force covering the inner socket was barely half the strength of the field that surrounded the man's skin.

'Odd, I thought that with an inner surface exposed the Aura would automatically cover it with the same effectiveness as it would the skin. Perhaps there is some sort of limiting factor that makes Aura less effective at covering parts of the body it does not usually protect?'

In a fraction of a second the Uchiha filed away that curiosity. It might come on handy later, but for now he still had an attack to make.

Readjusting his mind to the present, Sasuke flew forward to follow up his kunai attack. He hadn't expected it to penetrate Stonewall's skin with or without his Semblance activated, but he didn't need it to.

Despite the blade not penetrating his flesh, Stonewall could still well sense the sudden pressure on his eye socket of something hitting him and forcing his aura to activate. Still in mid-acceleration, he kept his head enough to reactivated his Semblance, slowing down to try and see what had struck him and to bring his dense skin up to protect him.

The first thing Stonewall saw when his vision returned was Sasuke's leg a few feet from him, mid-way through a roundhouse kick. The blow landed true, the Uchiha slamming his foot straight into the still protruding kunai like a sledgehammer to a nail. Stonewall's density, as impressive a defense as it was, could not stop the blow completely. Screams of agony once again echoed through the night as the kunai's blade, though prevented again from burrowing deep enough into the flesh to kill, still cut into and scraped off small chunks of tissue.

The Uchiha flew off in a graceful backflip, ignoring the cries and screams of his enemy, who was now little more than a rabid animal desperately flailing around in agony and panic as the used kunai fell out of his socket.

Sasuke landed on his feet, touching the ground for but a moment before shooting forward again to press his attack, making sure to pick his kunai out of the air before it fell. Now that he had seen Stonewall's Semblance with his Sharingan, he could clearly see there was a small gap whenever he turned it on and off in which the density of his skin was low enough to not provide full protection and his Aura was not yet fully activated. It was a brief moment in which Stonewall was as vulnerable as a turtle without its shell. Said moment was so brief however, only a few milliseconds, that even with the Sharingan it was unlikely Sasuke would be able to land a hit in that fleeting window.

It was still an uphill battle for him, and he was more than likely going to have to whittle down Stonewall's Aura the old-fashioned way.

Sasuke drew back his fist, flooding his arm with chakra. Still mindful of the necessity of saving chakra that for some unexplained reason was regained at a snail's pace in Remnant, the Uchiha had thus far held back all of his physical attacks since his arrival. He had been meticulous, making sure he only reinforcing his blows to the point where he did not burn through his available reserves.

Now, however, the gloves were coming off. Sasuke simply could not afford to lose this fight or defeat someone as physically resilient as Stonewall with the level of power he had used thus far.

He was going to hit Stonewall as hard as he could from here out, chakra conservation be damned.

He punched Stonewall square on his nose with all of his might, ignoring the numbing pain from striking his dense body. He noted with immense satisfaction that unlike his previous hits, Stonewall actually felt this one. There was a thunderous blast of sound that shook the entire factory as Stonewall's nose shattered from the force of the blow, even the man's dense flesh now unable to shrug off the raw power of Sasuke's hit. The man staggered back, his feet still indenting the floor wherever he set foot from his weight.

He couldn't help but give a small grin- despite the ridiculous defense that Density Shift provided, it was not invulnerable to the Uchiha's most powerful physical blows. And with the intense physical training regiment he had started during his stay on Remnant, his Taijutsu was far more powerful than it was before he had gotten here.

Stonewall regained his footing, only to fall under a veritable hail of punches and kicks. All of which, like the blow that broke his nose, actually caused him pain. The man continued to falter in the face of this unprecedented onslaught, blood pouring from his nostrils and empty eye socket.

"RRAAHH!"

The man threw his arm out in a wild swipe in an almost blind attempt to land some kind of hit on his enemy, but to Sasuke it looked more like the temper tantrum of a small child and was every bit as clumsy and sluggish.

All it took was a casual step back to avoid the inept attack, then the Uchiha shot forward again. He stepped around the man's outstretched hand before grabbing onto his exposed ear, and with a twist tore it clean off.

Stonewall's screams rang through the factory and beyond as he again flailed in panic, flinging blood from the stub that had been his ear across the room. He raised his hand to the side of his head, soaking it in blood as he instinctively tried to protect the wound. It left him only guarding his face with a single arm, however, and gave Sasuke enough of an opening to smash his elbow straight into his windpipe.

"Glur-glucg-!" His throat was not crushed, his dense flesh was too tough for that, but his air passage was tightened to the point he flinched in terror and choked down gulps of air, aware of how close to death he had just been. That feeling of dread and fear turned from a torrent to a flood when he felt something else: the warm, gentle sensation of his Aura beginning to slow his bleeding and heal his wounds.

For most Huntsmen the soothing sensation of their Aura, whether it was protecting them from harm or healing their injuries, would be a welcome sensation. A sign they still had fight left in them and were not yet in danger of being dealt a mortal blow. For Stonewall on the other hand, it was very bad news.

The nature of his Semblance meant that he was one of the few people on Remnant that were all but immune to damage, the only real exception being the rare Hunter with a similarly powerful offensive Semblance or from extremely powerful Dust, particularly Lighting Dust attacks. He therefore had no need to keep his protective shield of Aura around his body when in his dense state, able to save his pool of life force and burn through his Aura at a far more conservative rate than any of his contemporaries.

It had been a tried-and-true strategy for him for years- block any attacks with his dense state, rush and destroy the rare threat with his rushing speed, and failing that play defense and prevent his opponent from retreating by dashing in front of any escape attempts, and eventually his enemy would run out of Aura and be a sitting duck. It was a perfect strategy for his unique Semblance, but playing the long game in this way only worked if he was either completely immune to any attack his adversary could dish out or was fast enough to counter his high-speed movements.

Sweat began to build on his brow as Stonewall began to comprehend just how serious a situation he was in. Regardless of whether his Semblance was activated or not, the Uchiha was capable of harming him and forcing his body to use up its Aura to heal the injuries. Most Hunters had trained their Aura to the point they could turn their passive healing ability on and off at will, but Stonewall's incredible natural defenses meant he had never needed to develop a skill that seemed worthless to him.

It was biting him in the ass tonight. Now he was stuck in a fight that he could not retreat from, against an enemy that would hold an ever-greater advantage over him the longer the battle lasted.

Still bleeding from his not-quite healed wounds, Stonewall gazed at his enemy, his jaw clenched in trepidation. Even in this situation, he couldn't help but ask the question that had been on his mind since he had met the young man in front of him, and had indeed been simmering in his head since Roman had requested his aid.

"What the hell did you do!?"

The Uchiha did not break his gaze of his enemy, simply continuing to stare as though he were observing a mildly interesting wild animal.

"Your attacks didn't do any damage to me earlier, so how the fuck are you powerful enough to hurt me now!?" he spat.

Stonewall felt nothing but shame and humiliation as he had to forcibly hold back his voice from cracking from the panic he was experiencing. It was pitiful, utterly unbefitting for a man of his status and reputation to even feel fear like he was now, much less be at its mercy.

Sasuke's next words, however, froze his breath.

"I stopped pretending to be at your level."

Stonewall's eyes shot open in undisguised shock. There was no trick, no Semblance at work? At all? With Roman, and now with him, he had been holding back the whole time!?

He suddenly realized that yes, yes he had. Torchwick had briefed him about Sasuke's other places of employment, including the rather well-known position he held as Slate's undefeated Champion in his fight ring. Using Aura was strictly forbidden in the Arena by anyone, and yet the Uchiha had kept his title without using a drop of it.

He held back during his fights at Slate's, he had chosen to spare the Police that had tried to ambush Roman's raid when he could have easily killed every last one of them, and he had still held back using his full strength against Stonewall until now.

And how had he turned off all of the lighting earlier? Every source he had heard from said that he had no Aura. And without Aura, developing a Semblance that by definition was based on a developed Aura was impossible. So how the hell had he done that? There was also the unanswered question of how his body was supposedly durable enough to tank multiple bullet wounds without Aura protecting it- something that should have been impossible. Just what the hell was going on? What was this kid?

'What if he's not using his full power now?'

Stonewall felt the blood freeze in his veins as the thought surfaced in his mind, his perplexed thoughts giving way to terror.

'What if he's still holding back?'

The hairs on his body raised as Stonewall's fight or flight response fully kicked in. If the Uchiha still had power to spare, he had no chance of surviving the night.

His remaining eye red with fear and rage, he threw himself forward in a desperate frenzy, his arms and hands extended like claws to tear his enemy to shreds. There was no technique, no pattern, and no patience to Stonewall's movements now. Sasuke had seen the same phenomenon many times- put a rational, civilized human's back to the wall, and in a matter of seconds they transformed into nothing more than a mindless wild animal that knew only the desperate instinct to try anything to survive.

'Exactly as planned' Sasuke thought to himself as he effortlessly ducked a clumsy swing. Had Stonewall still been in his right frame of mind, the Uchiha could still find himself facing a difficult battle even with his Sharingan. If his enemy had kept his cool and decided to try and scatter enough dust in the area to obscure his vision he would have been in real trouble.

But he was panicking instead, mindlessly smashing any free limb he had in Sasuke's general direction in the blind hope he would get lucky. The Uchiha counterattacked at every chance he could, lightning-fast strikes that even with Stonewall's mass still managed to force the goliath back. None did much damage alone, but they were still strong enough to cause mild to moderate bruising, and were painful enough to keep Stonewall too panicked to collect his cool. An elbow strike to the neck, a punch to the elbow, a kick to the side of the knee, again and again the Uchiha forced his attack.

His active Sharingan was beginning to see the fruits of his efforts- shimmering waves of grey-black Aura emerging on to the areas he had hit, consuming the protective life force to repair the mediocre damage.

Even with throwing physical attacks at full force, Sasuke could tell this would take him several minutes to cause enough damage before Stonewall's Aura was exhausted. It was irritatingly slow progress, especially considering the man was capable of killing him in a single hit if Sasuke made even one mistake. But once again the Uchiha resisted the temptation to simply Chidori his way out, with his Sharingan activated there was no way Stonewall would be able to surprise him again.

'I have the advantage now,' he reminded himself, dodging a cinder block thrown at supersonic speed aimed at his head, 'as long as he continues struggling like a barbarian there's no need for me to rush this'

For Sasuke this battle was now simply a waiting game, with time as his ally. For Stonewall, it was a struggle to survive. But for the prisoners watching the resumed battle, still shell-shocked at the events that had transpired in the past five minutes, they were frozen in place by both fear and utter awe.

All of them had seen news footage of Hunters in action before and knew full well they wielded strength and speed that well outclassed the average civilian. But seeing and experiencing were two very different things. They could follow Stonewall's movements well enough even in the dim lighting, but that was all they could keep up with. Sasuke was a mere blur, flashing around his enemy at speeds none of them could fathom, his crimson eyes creating streaks of red as they danced around their target. Shockwaves thundered around them from every blow, cascading in a symphony of destruction.

Still looking on in shock, Shyla was jolted into action as a large piece of rock flew past her face and smashed a hole in the wall behind her. She shook her head, dispelling the natural instinct to freeze in the face of danger that would only serve to get her killed here.

"What are you morons doing standing around?!" she yelled at her impromptu companions, re-holstering her gun and picking up another that someone had dropped in their earlier fear. "We still have to get out of here, let's move it!"

Barely managing to hear her over the clash taking place mere feet away, the mass of people began to hastily clamor to their feet as they realized the danger they were in staying put. All except one, as Shyla saw Violet trembling on her knees, her eyes locked on the battle in front of them as though she were a war veteran being forced to see his comrades blown to pieces.

"Violet, what the fuck?! Get up!"

The girl did not respond, merely looking on at the fight in undisguised terror. Those eyes; those demonic eyes… Even without her personal history with him egging on her fear, Violet knew damn well she would still probably die of fright if she saw those crimson orbs staring at her from a dark alley. And the sickening presence she had felt wash over her earlier; the malice, the hate, she remembered it all too well. All that time ago at her old job at the Red Mare when he had torn her mind apart with visions of her demise.

Violet was literally slapped back to reality as Shyla brought her hand across her face- hard. The spell she was under weakened, just enough for her to make out the blonde's words.

"Bitch, snap out of it!"

She looked at the blonde crouching above her, both ignoring the thunderous sounds of battle around them.

"I don't know what the fuck happened between you and Sasuke," she snapped, "I don't care if he's your ex, or if he tried to kill you. Whatever it was, it's behind you, and he's trying to kill the guy who was going to sell you to suck some asshole's dick. Sasuke is not the one you should be afraid of here!"

She wanted to tell her she was wrong, that Sasuke would know if she had done anything he didn't want and take her life with the smallest of effort. But no words came. The paradox of her experiences with the Uchiha held back her fearful rebuttal. He could have killed her several times already. He could have just taken Stonewall's offer. And yet he hadn't. Would he spare her if she dared to leave?

"Violet, look at me!" she shouted, grasping the girl's cheeks in her hands.

"I know you're scared," she said in a gentler tone, "I am too. I have no idea if we'll live through tonight, I have no idea if Stonewall or his men will recapture us, but I know for damn sure one of those fates will come true if we sit around and do nothing!"

Violet stared back at Shyla, tremors rocking her body that had nothing to do with the fight going on between the two men she feared most as she began to stammer back.

"I..I-" she paused, flinching at a sudden shockwave. "I… I… I don't know what to do!"

Violet's eyes began to tear, her thoughts manifesting as spoken words. Her utterly inconsolable fear since first meeting the Uchiha up until this very moment had been due to one thing: she was utterly powerless. Sasuke and Stonewall were both utter monsters for a regular person like her; a housecat fighting a bear would stand a better chance.

Violet shifted her gaze at the sensation of cool metal being placed in her hand. She flinched slightly when she realized Shyla had placed one of her guns in her palm, a sudden weight that seemed far greater than its size suggested.

"Just because you are scared," the blonde began, so much steel in her voice Violet for a moment thought she was standing in front of a Tank, "does not mean you can't fight back."

Her trembling did not stop, but the sheer determination and conviction Shyla exuded breathed a whisp of hope into the terrified girl. The chaotic roaring of destruction around them seemed to fade into silence as her fingers began to curl around the weapon in her hand.

"That's not going to do much good against that Stonewall asshole," Shyla spat, lifting Violet by her shoulder, "but I'll bet you they'll work just fine against his men outside."

A piece of brick from the superhuman fight suddenly smashed mere feet from their position, bringing the two out of their moment, the two girls racing through the door their fellow prisoners had escaped through only minutes ago.

They raced through the hall, Shyla giving Violet a very brief walk-through of how to use the slide on top of the pistol to check the firing chamber and how to turn the safety off. It was nowhere near enough of a lesson for the girl who had never so much as held a gun in her life, but it would have to do.

Dust and small bits of masonry crumbled from the structure around them in a snow of debris as the edifice continued to crumble around them as they rushed for the exit. Both of the women noticed with dread that the spider-cracks that adorned the walls and columns of the factory were growing by the moment.

They burst outside at a side-exit, seeing the star-lit sky that possessed more tranquility and beauty than it ever had when they had beheld it in the congested streets of Vale. It was a peaceful backdrop; almost mockingly so as cracks of gunshots echoed through the night that had thus far been nothing short of a bloody warzone.

Scarcely had they turned to the road in a desperate search to find some means of escape when they saw their fellow prisoners huddled behind several large cargo crates. Many of them, especially the younger ones, were weeping into their knees as they covered their ears with their hands to drown out the deafening blasts, as well as the shouts and screams that punctuated the air between the sharp reports. The prisoners who were armed had their guns held tightly, ready in an instant to use, but were concealing themselves behind the edges of the crates, occasionally peeking around the corners to look at whatever firefight had erupted.

"Hey," she began, grabbing the attention of an assault-rifle armed woman with a particularly frustrated look, "what's the holdup? Are there no cars we can take out of here?"

"There's two trucks that haven't been turned into Swiss cheese yet," the woman huffed, "I think they're still working, but there's a fucking open field we have to go through before we can get there! At least I don't think we've been spotted yet."

Poking her head around the crate, Shyla was greeted with a sight that she had only expected to ever see in a war documentary in the comfort of her home. She could hear the exploding bursts of gunfire assault her ears with renewed pain now that she had no building walls to somewhat muffle the sounds, and strewn across the ground in front of them were several dozen bodies. Some were missing limbs, while others seem to have simply exploded into a fleshy rain that scattered bone and bits of unidentifiable tissue.

These guys weren't messing around; only Dust ammunition could cause damage to the human body like that, and it wasn't exactly cheap. Stonewall's men had come prepared to put out as much destructive firepower as they possibly could- enough to tear through even the Aura defenses of a Hunter.

In the trees around the factory flashes of gunfire could be seen intermittently lighting up the surrounding forest, surrounding the factory in a rough semi-circle. It was difficult to see in the dim light, but the Moon gave just enough illumination for Shyla to make out several familiar faces of a couple of Stonewall's henchmen she had had the displeasure of meeting. They focused their fire on a small group of no more than six men, as well as one very short, oddly well-dressed woman with brown and pink hair of all things, whom were hiding behind more cargo containers that were positioned mere feet from the factory wall. The group shot back at the surrounding enemies sporadically, but it was clear from the desperate looks on their faces that they were not facing favorable odds at the moment.

Oddly, she noticed that both sides seemed to take a far longer time lining up their shots than she would have thought. Shyla had a gun in her home and occasionally went to the range with it, but she felt even she could take aim and fire off a shot at a quicker pace.

One of the containers was open, and Shyla saw it was stuffed to the brim with what appeared to be a mixture of Dust crystals.

Suddenly, she realized she was watching a gunfight that had turned into a pseudo-stalemate. Stonewall's men could have easily turned their guns to full automatic and shredded the cornered force, but such a move would have certainly detonated all of the Dust in the containers. The resulting explosion would probably be big enough to turn the factory into a crater and kill everyone in the vicinity. Honestly, it was insane that Stonewall's men were firing their weapons anywhere near what was essentially a huge bomb at all. But it explained why they were taking so much care to make sure their aim wasn't off.

The group Sasuke had brought with him had quickly realized that their foes would not shoot carelessly if they huddled around the Dust container closely enough, but they still had problems of their own. They certainly had a far smaller stock of ammunition, and unlike their enemies had a very poor view of their targets. Brilliant as the moon was, in the cover of the trees the men firing at them were little more than vague shadows at best. They were being forced to take rare pot-shots at the surrounding brush, the men only firing when they were absolutely sure a target was there.

The woman with them, a Huntress, or at the very least an Aura-capable fighter, seemed to be reluctantly playing defense and trying to provide cover for herself and as many of her allies as she could with her umbrella. It was obvious she was itching to break rank and make for the trees, using her size and no doubt impressive speed to cut the men in the woods to ribbons. Unfortunately, she needed to cross an open field of over a hundred yards to get to the tree line. Not too far, but with enemies ready to rain high-caliber Dust rounds on her from all sides if she attempted to rush out there was little question she would be cut to pieces before she got there.

Shyla and her group would no doubt meet the same fate if they were stupid enough to run across the field, which was incidentally the only way to get to their objective. The trucks the woman had mentioned were parked in front of the main entrance, beyond the crossfire of the two groups.

With a frustrated sigh, she realized that simply getting to the trucks was impossible without revealing themselves.

"Everyone who has a gun, turn the safety off and get ready to fire!" she ordered, flipping the switch on her own pistol.

Everyone swung their heads toward her, shock evident in their unanimous dropped jaws.

"What are you talking about?!" one of them objected, "We shouldn't be drawing attention to ourselves, we need to break for the trees and go around-"

"It's too far a distance for the whole group to make without being seen," Shyla snapped back, "we'll be killed before we get there. And even if we do make it to the trucks, how are we going to use them? I don't suppose one of you happens to have the keys?"

The group looked amongst each other, some appearing a bit ashamed that they hadn't thought of that.

"Get your guns ready and aim for the nearest asshole in the trees you can see," barked Shyla, holding back a sarcastic retort that the situation really did not call for. "Stick close to the containers, they won't shoot too close to it."

Everyone who was armed held their weapons ready, biting their lip or twitching their fingers in fearful anticipation.

"Everyone ready?" she asked.

Dozens of heads gave sharp nods in reply.

"Three, two, one… now!"

The two guards closest to them didn't stand a chance. Regardless of most of their number's utter lack of firearm experience or aim, there were so many shots fired that a number of them still managed to hit, dropping them almost instantly. The other guards snapped their heads toward them, alerted by the sound of gunshots from their flanks. All of them hastily moved behind any cover they had around, realizing they now had to worry about being caught in the crossfire from two sides.

There were more than a few screams as their former captors began firing back, though all of the shots thankfully passed by harmlessly. Their attackers instantly recognizing the danger of hitting the containers they were shielding themselves with and were unwilling to train their aim too close.

As Shyla took a moment to duck behind the cover of the container after a particularly close shot grazed her hair, she felt a swell of pride and hope as she saw her fellow comrades. Not ten minutes ago they were all broken victims, their situation so hopeless they had all but given up any resistance, and seemed ready to meekly accept their new fates as easily as lambs lined up in a slaughterhouse. That was all gone. There was still a chance they would be defeated and all of their resistance would be for naught, but their will to fight showed no signs of wavering. Even the previously terrified Violet was firing her weapon furiously, her eyes almost ablaze with newfound resolve.

The furious exchange of fire was abruptly interrupted by an explosion of masonry from the side of the factory, pieces of brick and stone flying through the air in all directions. All of the combatants briefly held their fire, trying to see through the dust. A resonating boom then echoed through the clearing along with a cry of pain. From the chaotic mass of debris Stonewall stumbled out, clutching his head and spitting out a wad of blood from his mouth. Not a moment later, Sasuke flew out of the dust in a flash, his fist smashing into the grey-skinned man's chin in a fierce uppercut that was strong enough to take the man off his feet.

There was no reprieve, and no time for Sasuke's adversary to gain his bearings or for any of the people witnessing the fight to make proper sense of what they were seeing before the Uchiha turned into an almost indiscernable blur around his hapless target. No one could really see his movements, but the cracks of punches and kicks that put all of their firearms to shame could not be mistaken for anything else.

Neo, along with the remainder of their men, could do nothing but hang their mouths open at the spectacle. They had initially begun loading the stolen Dust as per their agreement before a flurry of gunfire from the factory had confirmed Neo's fears that there was a far more sinister plot afoot than simply a business deal. She and her men had instantly realized the situation they were in and hastily began firing at their newfound enemies. It had become immediately apparent, however, that Stonewall had prepared for such a standoff. They were heavily outnumbered, and many of the henchmen they faced were armed with powerful Dust rounds that were designed to tear through light cover as well as Aura. Normally Neo would have gleefully accepted the challenge, and had actually defeated larger numbers of armed men before, but the situation here was different.

Her precious weapon, Hush, was more than capable of blocking most Dust ammunition. But due to Stonewall's men surrounding them from all sides in overwhelming numbers before the first shot was even fired, there was simply no way for her to block or dodge the hail of bullets even with her impressive speed and agility. Their entire group probably would have been annihilated right then had the rest of their men, driving to the factory along separate routes, not arrived in time to provide reinforcement. Most of their men were nevertheless cut down, the sheer firepower that faced them too much for even Neo to handle, and the group was forced to cluster around the Dust containers to force a mutually assured destruction should a round fired at them make contact. Neo had attempted to use her Semblance several times to escape unseen, but with as much gunfire in the air as there was her illusions were shattered as quickly as she could make them.

They had effectively been stuck, merely holding out from the onslaught and hoping that Sasuke had survived the ambush he had faced.

That fear now seemed unfounded. Stonewall was firmly on the defensive, curling his arms around his head in a position of almost fetal helplessness as he could do nothing but attempt to block the relentless rain of attacks that the Uchiha was subjecting him to. Neo watched in awe as her partner danced around his opponent at a breakneck pace, fluidly pivoting from foot to foot and switching directions on a dime, constantly flowing around his utterly outpaced opponent to launch blows at any and every opening he found.

She knew blades wouldn't break through his Semblance, but it was obvious the terrifyingly powerful physical blows were dampening his Aura. Sasuke was simply going to beat Stonewall to death.

Stonewall's men quickly came to the same conclusion, having never seen their leader so terrified and helpless as he was now. Knowing their rounds would have little effect on their leader, they trained their weapons on the blur assaulting him.

The Uchiha, however, had the Sharingan. Nothing in his sight escaped his notice. With a leap that Neo could only match in her dreams he jumped to the roof of the factory and found cover behind the parapet before any of them had even started adjusting their aim.

He took a moment to flex and clench his fingers, trying to get feeling back in them from the punches he had landed on Stonewall that had numbed his hands. He considered his next move; now that he had enemies with firearms to deal with he couldn't simply rush Stonewall and start beating him again.

Stonewall did not take as much time to come up with and relay a strategy to his men.

"KILL HIM! UP THERE! SHOOT HIM! SHOOT HIM NOW!"

Sasuke inwardly scoffed at the deranged rambling of his enemy. The desperation and terror in his voice could not be missed by even the most dimwitted moron among them, and would do no favors for the morale of his subordinates.

It did not stop them from hastily following his orders, peppering the roof around him with what he could tell was Fire Dust rounds. He was safe for the moment, but he had to figure out a safe way to counterattack.

Fortunately he already knew everything he needed about the current state of the battle. While he had been darting around Stonewall and slowly beating his Aura down, his Sharingan was blind to nothing in the background. Neo and the rest of his subordinates as well as the escaped prisoners were pinned down behind volatile Dust containers, and Stonewall's men were taking careful shots from the cover of the forest. They were heavily outnumbered, and were going to run out of ammunition long before their foes if the firefight dragged on for much longer.

The thought had occurred to him that he could make for the tree line. He was more than fast enough to cover the distance in the blink of an eye, and his Sharingan would give him more than enough warning to avoid any powerful Dust rounds fired his way. From there he would melt into the forest and pick off Stonewall's men at his leisure, and lure Stonewall himself to the shorefront to drown him.

He discarded the idea a moment later. Once he had killed most of the remaining men and the rest realized the writing on the wall, odds were one of them would simply shoot one of the Dust containers in the desperate hope they would be the only ones lucky enough to survive the explosion. That option was out- he had had enough of dealing with maniacs setting off explosions with Deidara.

Wait a minute- the Dust! If any of the containers had a large amount of Lightning Dust, he could end this entire battle in a second. He was more than skilled enough to aim hundreds of Chidori Senbon at a target's vital points simultaneously without effort, all he had to do here was use his Kirin lightning control to fire off lethal blasts of tamed lightning in the same manner at every enemy he saw and they would all be burning corpses before they hit the ground.

He extended his senses, intangibly probing for the sparks of dormant energy that would practically tremble with excitement when he caressed them with his power. He grimaced in frustration when unlike his forceful shutdown of the factory's lighting less than ten minutes ago, he could feel no corporeal electrical energy anywhere in the vicinity save for the relatively pitiful current of the factory's decrepit lighting system. He cursed his luck- he could vaguely sense the untapped energy of other varieties of Dust in the containers, the Fire crystals in particular standing out, but Lightning Dust was the only type he could freely control. Roman did not know that, but the fact he had forced the thief to pay him in Lightning Dust meant that Torchwick knew at the very least that it was valuable to Sasuke in some way. He had probably told Stonewall to not have any in his shipments to make sure the Uchiha had less leverage.

As a section of wall a few feet from him was blasted apart by a tree stump the size of a tire flying past at supersonic speeds, no doubt a projectile from Stonewall's clever use of his Semblance, Sasuke realized he had to make a move now. It had to kill most of the enemy in one go and demoralize the rest.

One option came to mind. It was a bit flashy, and would no doubt spark unwanted rumors and speculations from Neo and the other witnesses. But it would get the job done.

Stonewall and his men continued to pour fire at the roof, finally unconcerned about accidentally detonating a quantity of high explosive that would likely kill all of them. Stonewall himself was pitching anything within arm's reach at the building- branches, stones, even the soft earth was turned into rock shattering missiles. About half his men kept firing at the two groups huddled behind the Dust containers, ensuring they remained pinned down and didn't try to outflank them.

He continued to launch projectiles, his frustration and fear growing every time he failed to see a shower of blood and gore from a successful hit.

"DAMN IT!" he roared, throwing a branch the size of a man straight through the upper floor of the factory. The beating Sasuke had given him earlier had taken a significant toll on his Aura, more than a third of it used up from healing the countless contusions and bleeding.

He had to end this now, he couldn't allow Sasuke to set the pace of the battle again.

He just had to hit him once or twice and that freak of nature would be down and out.

"WHERE ARE YOU?!"

As if answering his query Sasuke broke from his cover, jumping high above the factory in a graceful arc. Stonewall cocked his arm back, increasing the mass of the cluster of stones he was holding to pulverize the Uchiha before he touched back down.

It was then that he noticed his foe doing something rather unusual. He at first thought Sasuke was doing a prayer of some sort, holding his hands together directly in front of him. But his hands were in a strange position for that, at least one pair of fingers being pointed straight up.

Sasuke didn't yell out or even say the name of the technique as he launched it, he wasn't some loudmouth fictional protagonist that was bound by some stupid unseen force to shout the name of an attack when it clearly wasn't necessary. The massive fireball that roared from his mouth, the almost perfect sphere that spoke to the Uchiha's superb chakra control and great experience with the attack, spoke for itself.

Almost everyone present had seen Fire Dust used in action, whether they had used it themselves or had seen others wield it in person or on a TV screen. Most Fire rounds, when they exploded, yielded only a small detonation. A bullet laced with the substance would create a short-lived burst of flame the size of a rabbit when it detonated at best, an artillery or cannon shell would produce a fiery blast the size of a truck, and the pure Dust wielded by experienced Hunters would form modest arcs and jets of flame.

Nothing could have prepared them for the blinding Armageddon that was fired straight at Stonewall, who hastily activated his Aura's passive protection to shield himself from the coming inferno.

It was the size of a house, a near perfect sphere of incandescent flame of such heat and power that even from over a hundred yards away Neo and Shyla's groups could feel their skin sting from the heat and so bright they were forced to squint their eyes. It shot down at fantastic speed, the men unlucky enough to be in its direct path that had neither Stonewall's Semblance nor Aura to protect them having only a split second to stare in shock and awe at their doom before it reached them. It hit the ground like a meteor, blasting out and melting a small crater in the soft earth as the fiery destruction swallowed the men unfortunate enough to be at ground zero. They were incinerated on the spot, their bodies blasted to pieces as the fiery mass immolated the remaining pieces of flesh into whisps of ashes before they even hit the ground. The fire's momentum carried it forward, the ball of flame turning into a raging wave of destruction that ripped through the foliage and leaf litter and burned any henchmen in its path to death almost instantly. The men further away weren't so lucky to have a quick death. Glowing shrapnel, burning bits of vegetation and flecks of molten earth thrown out from the crater burrowed into clothing and flesh with searing agony even as the radiant heat from the fireball singed their bodies and boiled the fluid in their eyes and skin.

They died screaming.

Sasuke wasn't done. Still at the apex of his leap, he turned his head to the side, aiming further streams of fire to the henchmen on the flank of the initial fireball that were far enough away to survive. It wasn't difficult. The men who hadn't been too close to the blast were alive, but the shockwave had thrown them off their feet and into the surrounding trees with enough force to stun or knock them out. They were in no condition to even see the incoming jet of fire, much less avoid it as they too were turned into charred corpses.

The few men remaining who had been far enough away from the attack fought through the shock with their adrenaline rush and opened their eyes to a transformed landscape. For over two hundred yards trees and vegetation that had formed a thick wall of green was simply gone, replaced by fiery embers that floated in the air and pieces of wood and other plant life that continued to burn alongside the corpses of their former colleagues. At its center was a truck-sized crater, a smoldering cauldron that contained a small pool of melted earth and soil.

They barely had time to process the ludicrously powerful attack they had just seen, so powerful many were wondering if it was more a harnessed natural disaster than an attack by a mortal being, before a single dark figure landed near the middle of the devastated zone. Illuminated by the dancing fires around him, they saw Sasuke Uchiha turn toward them, their hearts seized in fear as even with the wildfire surrounding him, his soul-piercing crimson eyes still beamed clear.

Before any of them could summon the courage to raise their weapon the Uchiha blurred into motion, crossing the distance in the blink of an eye before running his sword through the closest man to him. He then turned to the next one, crushing his throat with his hand before throwing his dying body behind him to the flames.

Some threw down their weapons and tried to flee, all ideas of forming a cohesive resistance crumbling as they thought only of survival. Their movement attracted the Uchiha's attention, and they all found a kunai lodged in their spinal cord at their neck before they collapsed to die. Others began raising their weapons in the desperate hope that maybe, by sheer luck, at least one of them would get a lucky shot. Before any weapons had been raised so much as an inch Sasuke had stolen an intact pistol from one of the corpses and put bullet holes between their eyes. Some managed to get a shot off before the Uchiha got to them, but the Sharingan made seeing the intended aim and the trajectory of every shot utter child's play. He smoothly twisted his body in an almost lazy fashion, dancing with effortless ease around the hail of fire.

Neo and Shyla and their respective groups could do nothing more than stand utterly shell-shocked at the spectacle before them. They all knew he was strong, had all seen or heard him fight. But he had always seemed contained, controlled before.

There was no restraint now. No mercy. He was a killing machine, slaughtering the lives of his enemies as easily as he would crush ants beneath his feet. All of Stonewall's men that had almost managed to kill the lot of them were it not for the containers of Dust, all were nothing before the Uchiha's might.

Neo in particular was experiencing an emotional paradox she had not thought possible. As much as she respected Sasuke's abilities and fighting prowess, she had always been a bit disappointed he never seemed willing to take that thrilling step of crushing the life out of a weaker enemy. In all of her time with the Uchiha, she had never seen him fight with intent to kill.

She had thought that if she witnesses him cross that line, it would be an awe-inspiring spectacle to behold. A bloody dance of death that the sadist in her would forever treasure having the privilege to witness.

She was wrong. There was no fluttering excitement, no ecstasy, no heat in her nethers. Her skin went cold and her stomach froze in a knot as she felt genuine fear bubble up in her chest.

The way he cut through his enemies so easily, the speed of his movements, the utter lack of desperation, hatred, fear, passion, excitement, or any other emotion that humans went through when they committed the sin of murder. It was all just… wrong. He moved too fast, killed too quickly, and slaughtered too easily.

For the first time, Neo saw the real gap between her and Sasuke Uchiha. Neo lived for the emotions of battle, to see the human elements of fear, desperation, hatred, cowardice, bravery, and everything in between woven into a blood-soaked orchestra of emotional passion as she saw the light leave her enemy's eyes. She enjoyed seeing her enemies die, to witness their last moments, to see whether they were looking forward to leaving the cruel world behind or if they were still clawing with futile effort at any false chance of survival.

Sasuke did not care for such things. Sasuke had no desire to kill. He had no passion for it- when he needed to take a life, he just did it. He never saw any of his kills hit the ground, never stopped to look as they gave pleading looks for mercy, he just moved on to the next one without a thought.

He was no longer human, but a machine. A machine made of flesh and bone whose sole function was to slaughter every enemy in his path as quickly as possible with neither pleasure nor remorse. He was neither murdering nor massacring his enemies- he was exterminating them.

It wasn't natural.

He wasn't natural.

And it scared her.

The Uchiha easily noted the various looks of horror on those witnessing the massacre he was committing with his Sharingan, but as far as he was concerned that wasn't his problem. One by one, as he had been trained to do almost since he could walk, he felled his enemies and created a trail of corpses in his wake. He only had ten more to go, literally only a few seconds' work. He leveled another stolen gun, intending to take out the men furthest away who had the best chance of escaping first, before he heard a thundering roar behind him that sounded as if it came from the maw of a rabid beast.

He spun around quickly to assess the threat, only to find himself mere inches away from Stonewall. Though he had survived the direct hit from his Fireball Jutsu the Uchiha could tell the man was now on his last legs. His Semblance had provided at least some protection from his attack- though it was barely enough. The man's hair was completely burned off along with all of his clothes, and even with his reactivated Semblance darkening his hue it was impossible to miss the cracked and burned skin that covered his body from head to toe. It was a testament to either Stonewall's will to survive or blind fury that he could move or even think with the mind-numbing pain of the third-degree burns coating his now naked body.

The man's Aura was a fraction of what it had been at the start of the fight; what little remained was being stretched to the limit both starting to heal the catastrophic damage to the man's skin and keeping his Semblance active.

It would only take a few more hits to break Stonewall's Aura completely even with Density Shift activated, a fact Stonewall was well aware of. The man had rushed at Sasuke, a last-ditch effort to close the distance between him and the Uchiha and catch him off guard. It was a gamble that Sasuke could tell was going to pay off. Stonewall had timed his jump flawlessly, landing mere inches behind the Uchiha with his hand already outstretched. Even with his Sharingan and absurd reaction speed, the man was simply too close to avoid.

In a rabid rage born from unimaginable pain and the primeval will to survive, Stonewall slammed the Uchiha into the ground with enough strength to make a small impact crater as he felt iron fingers wrap themselves around his throat. Sasuke reinforced his body with as much Chakra as he could, gripping the fingers trying to crush his throat with both hands and pulling with all his might to prevent his windpipe from being squeezed into paste.

"THIS HAS GONE ON LONG ENOUGH!" the man bellowed in rage, "I'M GONNA SMASH YOUR THROAT INTO JELLY AND TEAR YOUR CORPSE APART PIECE BY FUCKING PIECE!"

Despite his best efforts, the Uchiha could feel that his windpipe was completely blocked. It wasn't crushed, he was holding it back just enough to prevent that, but he would run out of air if he didn't do something. His first thought was taking out Stonewall's other eye, blinding him and shocking him enough to force him to let go, but looking up he saw the man was squeezing his remaining eye shut to prevent the Uchiha from doing exactly that.

Sasuke could hold his breath for several minutes yet, but his lungs were already beginning to object for lack of air. Gunshots rang out from several directions as Neo and Shyla's groups put aside their shock of witnessing a one-man massacre and began opening fire on their former captor. Neo gracefully leapt above him, thrusting her Umbrella and its blade into Stonewall's unguarded neck with all of her strength before following up with a multitude of kicks.

Stonewall ignored them all. Bullets harmlessly bounced and ricocheted off his dense body, as did Neo's hits. The Uchiha cursed his luck. Even with his cooked skin his Semblance was as potent a defense as ever, and with as much agony as he was in from the burns Stonewall probably couldn't even feel any pain even if they did damage him.

The Uchiha finally admitted he was out of options. Stonewall was too heavy for Sasuke to lift him off and was too strong to break his grip. By the time his allies got through his Semblance it would be too late.

He removed his left hand from Stonewall's grip, mentally focusing his Chakra to it and forcing the life essence to vibrate with energy. A fraction of a second later he was holding a glowing blue-white mass of energy in his hand that sang like a thousand birds.

Sasuke was ready to throw it forward, prepared to decapitate his stubborn adversary in one fell swoop when a massive black object of pure Chakra smashed into Stonewall from the sky at tremendous speed. Stonewall was thrown off, his grip on the Uchiha's throat broken in the confusion. Deactivating his Chidori and gasping for air, Sasuke got to his feet, his Sharingan zeroing in on the last thing he had expected to aid him in his battle: a Giant Nevermore.

---

AN: Enter the Grimm! You all have a pretty good idea of what's coming next…

Definitely expecting a few reviewers who want this arc over and done, but I think its fairly obvious the climax of the battle is just around the corner.

With that, I think I'll drop the next chapter in one week. Please review!