CHAPTER 33
Rai stood on the wall of groaning humanity. Her whitened eyes stared fixedly into the desert, chewing on a piece of gum and casually weaving a thread of lightning in her right hand.
The cryo-stasis dome was a stone's throw from her and the wall.
Her metal forearm and shin gauntlets were at the bottom of the human wall, discarded haphazardly for them to leave shallow craters in the earth.
She didn't have on her Akatsuki robe or shoes, instead, her entire torso was encased in tight bandages, from the tips of her fingers to her throat and down her trunk into her black combat pants. Her white dreadlocks were jaggedly cut low, barely brushing her shoulders with their ends crackling with live electricity.
Her right hand stilled from its mindless motions and the lightning bolt fizzled. Her eyes narrowed.
In the distance, dozens of yards away and approaching at a careful pace, was the blurry outline of a person, coming out from the heatwaves of the desert. The person gingerly scrambled up a dune, reaching the top and sending a short glance to the sky, at the scorching sun cooking the sands of Wind Country. Rai couldn't see the person's face, as it was covered by a sheet of paper with complex kanji scrawled on it, but she easily spotted the large head cleaver sheathed on his back.
The person—Zabuza, Rai acknowledged—faced her and visibly heaved in a large breath, exhaling so that the bottom corners of the paper on his face fluttered briefly to show his frown. He then turned to the right and flagged his right arm, pointing to his right and then jutting his thumb to his left.
Ever so carefully, more people came out from the sweltering desert as if they materialised from the heatwaves, marching at a slow pace and in a single file, lining up Zabuza's left and right sides; their faces were also covered by the strange piece of paper, but unlike Zabuza, they wore wide hats to shade them from the merciless sun, casting a shadow over their face and allowing Rai to get a somewhat better look at the kanji on the paper, even if the distance was still too far to read it.
The kanji was several kanji, and all were melded together in the shape of an eye at the centre of the paper. It was too far to get a good look, but the eye was unmistaken.
Rai observed the ninjas form a long perimeter along the length of the border, staying back roughly thirty yards away and inside the cryo-stasis bubble.
The ninjas began hunkering down, some coming together to form groups and sharing food rations among themselves, though a majority never took their eyes off Rai and the human wall she stood on.
The paper hiding their faces couldn't hide their revulsion, fidgeting in ways that indicated emotional restraint. Their murmuring conversations droned across the sands and swept into Mountain.
Meanwhile, Zabuza hadn't moved from the dune. He stood with his arms crossed and stared facelessly at Rai.
He didn't have anything to say to her and she didn't have anything to say to him.
Then a heavy whooshing noise rushed up from behind them and they stopped talking, looking to the sky as seven flying objects zoomed out of the horizon, parting and racing along Mountain's border high in the air. The formation of the flying objects scattered and they manoeuvred into Mountain in teams of two.
The camouflage jutsu being used on the flying objects shrouded whoever was riding in it behind an opaque sphere that attempted to mimic the vibrant and hot colours of the outside world; if the flying objects were higher in the sky, they would have been undetectable. Matter of fact, if not for the sound and pressure of the flying objects cutting through the atmosphere, leaving short trails of hot air and the heavy, droning noise, it would have been unnoticed.
Even at their low altitude, they could be heard but scarcely seen.
It was…astonishing.
Rai closed her mouth, realising that it had been hanging open in amazement, diverting her eyes to one of the opaque spheres mimicking the sky. It was hovering in the sky and a triangular-shaped section facing Rai started to glow with blue light, only for Rai to realise that the blue light was approaching her at light speed—
Rai stepped to her left and shaded her eyes with her hands as the laser beam cut past her with a heat that eclipsed the heat of the sun, barely missing her chest and instead piercing the ground at her back, melting the small section of rock into molten magma. The laser beam burned at a cellular level and was silent, aside from the noise of violently melting rock; Rai's lightning-fast reflexes had saved her from being carbonised.
The world slowed before her eyes but the intense speed of the beam of light never changed, even as the opaque sphere turned at an angle toward Rai.
Her eyes flicked up from the molten slag at her back and the slim beam of light piercing the ground, and her body turned, pushing against the restraints of time and gravity as lightning coursed through her muscles, and she ran along the wall of humanity.
An explosion of blood and guts burst at her feet with each blistering step she took, running at such a speed that anyone else touching her would be destroyed. Meanwhile, the laser beam chased her, nipping at her heels as she fled, slicing into the ground behind the wall like a hot knife through butter.
"Universal Pull."
The opaque sphere shooting the laser at Rai was dragged out of the sky in Hidden Mountain, causing the laser to cut erratically as it tumbled out of control, shutting off only when the laser sliced into the wall of humanity. A moment later, it finally collided into the hard ground.
Madara loomed over the crater the opaque sphere had formed from impact and held his right hand over it, his purple stare intensifying as he snarled, "Almighty pu—" he stopped before he could finish and whipped around, holding both hands out and forming a chakra shield as two separate lasers fired from two other opaque spheres. The Uchiha gnashed his teeth, flicking his eye down to the crater as the grounded opaque sphere shuddered, blowing wind beneath it as it wobbled out of the crater. He spared one hand from the onslaught of lasers and held the palm to the grounded sphere. "Sit."
Madara's palm split open to his shoulder and a missile screamed out of his hand.
The camouflage jutsu the sphere was encased in fell, revealing twelve people seated on wooden chairs inside the sphere; two were unconscious, three were blinking their eyes in a daze, and three had finished weaving their hands through a set of hand seals.
"Water Release: Water Encampment Wall!"
The three exhaled water from their mouths and their water wall was half-formed before the missile struck it.
The explosion that followed sent terrible shockwaves across all of Hidden Mountain, causing a landslide on the other side of the village and violently battering the sphere, who were tossed down from its low hovering altitude and collided with a section of the human wall. The people inside the sphere were only kept in their seats because of their seatbelts, but only one person was left responsive after the blast, sitting at the front and shakily swiping the air, while the others were slumped into their chairs.
Madara's irritated eyes levelled against the two opaque spheres and he spat out a tooth, holding the shield preventing the lasers from turning him to ash; the explosion was barely five feet from him, and he would be lying if he said that he didn't feel the blast.
He shook the last vestiges of a daze from his head and snapped. "Leave." He pushed his hands and a wall of gravity and chakra expanded from the chakra shield, tossing away the opaque spheres, though not as badly as the first sphere. "I want Daku."
The man breathed out as the two spheres he pushed away fought to regain control as they spiralled to the ground, catching themselves before impact and settling in a low hover over the desert.
Madara glanced at the downed sphere and his lips peeled back into a deranged grin.
The lone conscious pilot scrambled, poking and turning the air in front of him, and the platform he and his teammates were seated in sputtered, jumping briefly before jerking off the ground. The camouflage jutsu crept over the sphere of people, mimicking the gore and body parts they were covered in.
"No, no," Madara tutted, holding his left hand in the direction of the sphere. "You don't get to flee." Without uttering the rinnegan jutsu, Madara hissed. "Come. Here."
The sphere was halted in the air and then pulled toward the man.
Suddenly, Madara cancelled his jutsu and ducked, dodging a clothesline that could have decapitated him. His expectant rinnegan eyes looked up and his broad grin reflected off Daku's gnarly smile.
"Third time the charm," Daku said, referring to the two times he eliminated Madara. He backflipped twice and four lightning bolts missed him, striking the ground. His eyes trained on Rai as she came to a screeching halt, standing a fair distance from Madara.
Using all of her energy to escape the laser beam caused a change in her body.
Her skin, muscles, hair, and clothes were completely burned off.
Lightning coated her skeleton, giving her grisly body a human form, but her appearance was far from human. Daku could see her beating heart, the raspy movement of her lungs, and the crackling rage of her chakra network.
Her human form was gone.
Rai's eyes were alight with electric anticipation and her position lowered into a sprinting stance. Her teeth chattered audibly. "About time you showed up." Dried blood sizzled against her bony chin. She sent a scathing look to Madara, and the Uchiha's brow was lowered at the change in her appearance. She clicked her tongue and her eyes moved back to Daku, whose smirk became jagged as he lowered his stance, placing his right hand on the ground and his left held out to his side.
"Is your pride worth losing your humanity?" Daku asked through grit teeth, exhaling smoke from his nose. Smoke oozed from his clothes and he gripped the ground, shattering rock.
Rai's jaw chattered, her voice bearing a slight sadness. "Pride is all I have left."
Her parents—the same that voluntarily handed her over to the Raikage for experimentation—had been executed on the same day as her escape from Kumo's facility. Her home in Kumo was gone. Her home in Ame was gone. Her Akatsuki comrades were either imprisoned in Wave or dead.
After the failed Wave invasion, the life she enjoyed since her escape from Kumo fell apart in a fiery blaze of glory, set on fire by Daku and his master.
All she had left was pride.
In that nanosecond, when the world took a collective inhale and the wind stilled at what was to come, her eyes briefly flitted over Daku's left shoulder and she spotted Kisame a short distance behind, pulling his sword off his back with astonishing speed.
Madara, Rai, and Kisame formed a triangle with Daku in the middle.
All they had left was pride.
The sun dimmed ever so slightly and the murmur of noise from the spectating Konoha ninjas gradually melded into the background, as did the opaque spheres jetting overhead and strategically firing blasts of lasers at the mountain range, particularly the mountain Orochimaru had chosen as his final stand.
Daku, with his turban on fire and his clothes billowing with smoke, jumped into the air as the tension snapped, dodging Kisame as he slammed an enlarged Samehada on Daku's previous position, reeling Samehada in and spinning on his heel, aiming for the airborne shadow, only for Madara to activate his Susanno and bring down his fist on Daku and Samehada.
For a moment, the earth stopped spinning, barely knocked off its orbit by the power of the blow.
Madara pulled his Susanno's arm out of the hole in the ground and deactivated his Susanno, wincing with bared teeth as Rai blazed into the pit Madara had formed with his punch, and the world was overcome by a blinding white light as a column of lightning that roared from the pit and punched through the ozone layer.
The opaque spheres scattered away from the pillar of lightning.
"Samehada!" Kisame shouted as he cringed away from the blinding light. He stubbornly held onto Samehada's handle, even as electricity travelled up the sword and coursed through Kisame's body, yanking at his sword handle and willing it to reel in, but the blade remained limp and unresponsive. Closing his eyes and turning his head away did little to protect his corneas from the radiant light, and a second later the agony of being electrocuted forced him to release hold of his sword, falling onto his back as his heart hammered deathly in his chest.
He clutched his chest as the world turned whiter, weeping dry tears for his sword and feeling his muscles become tighter.
The pillar of lightning lasted five seconds, but it felt like five days, flickering and sputtering off.
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
Daku wasn't "alive" in the typical sense, so there wasn't a surefire way to kill him.
He could be eliminated, though, but only in two ways.
First was by directly attacking his—and Naruto's—chakra, either through poisons or a genjutsu. However, this option was removed because, after escaping Madara's illusion, Naruto took extra care to never remain under another sharingan illusion for longer than half a minute.
The other way was to destroy the creation seal inside Daku's chest using brute force.
Likely Orochimaru knew of this seal because when Daku had first been incapacitated by Madara's illusion, Daku's body had unravelled to reveal the vulnerable seal.
However, this second option was nearly impossible for this version of Daku.
Anything less than the power of an exploding star wouldn't scratch this Daku.
Naruto's jaw tightened as he landed softly inside Hidden Mountain, walking with clipped steps to the pit and charging up a chakra beam in his right hand. The smoke billowing from the pit covered his entry, as well as the chakra suppressor shrinking his large reserves of chakra to the size of a pinprick.
He could sense Daku, but only barely.
Without looking, he fired the chakra beam down at Kisame, evaporating Kisame's head and shoulders in a burst of blistering chakra.
Another Akatsuki member had died a useless, pitiful death.
Naruto sneered and closed his hand as it smoked, opening it again and facing the other side of the pit, supporting his hand with his left hand on his right wrist and charging up another ferocious chakra beam. His goggles cut through the smoke and locked onto Madara.
He stopped some yards from the pit and settled into a ready stance, locking his left foot in place with a Tree Root seal and raising a protective shell of chakra around him.
The smoke started to become thinner as the power loading into his chakra beam seal increased, only for Naruto's scowl to lessen at a sharp spike of his chakra coming from inside the smoking pit.
He lowered his hand and closed his hand, deactivating the chakra beam seal but not releasing his left hand from his right wrist, just as a human skull was tossed out of the pit, landing at Naruto's feet.
Rai.
Or rather, what was left of her.
Naruto clicked his tongue and shook his head. "What a waste."
"I agree." Daku huffed, painstakingly climbing out of the pit, carrying on his back a charred black sack that vibrated weakly. Daku haphazardly dropped the sack and kicked it. Samehada rolled lifelessly from the pit, falling on Kisame's corpse and crushing it under its heavy weight.
Daku remained at the edge of the pit, his turban burning with red fire and chattering his sharp teeth.
"Almost blacked out after that last one," he tipped his head and said, as if as an afterthought, "master."
Naruto frowned.
Zabuza approached them at an easy pace, wordlessly taking a sealing scroll from his jounin vest and sealing into it Kisame and Samehada. Naruto sent him a look over his shoulder, his frosty blue eyes simmered with stifled anger.
"We're destroying them when this is over," Naruto said, and Zabuza pursed his lips disapprovingly but he didn't speak back to his superior, especially not when the Wave Leader was this heated. "The Hoshi clan's Pink star radiation can get the job done for Samehada."
"…Sure." Zabuza nodded.
Zabuza couldn't see Naruto with his eyes, and the seal covering his face only allowed him to see the Leader's vague outline, though a tiny storm of chakra roiled at the outline's navel.
Daku was another thing entirely; Zabuza didn't look directly at Daku, but he sensed a mountain of chakra nearby, hot enough to make him sweat.
"Nice of you let us regroup, Madara," Naruto shouted, rubbing his hands together and then cracking his knuckles. "Or is it that you're too scared to attack when me and Daku are together?" he walked away from Zabuza, and the older ninja retreated to the safety of the cryo-freeze dome. He joined Daku at the edge of the smoking pit, standing with his loyal shadow and staring at the other side of the pit. "Either way, I appreciate your patience."
His cold tone didn't reflect his appreciation.
"Now with those other two gone, our final encounter will be more glorious," Madara said from behind the smoke, his silhouette took a few steps closer and lingered on the edge of the pit. His deep voice spoke with certainty, "My fight is with Daku."
A mysterious wind blew from Madara's side, parting the smoke in two to allow both parties to see each other.
Naruto stood with his arms crossed and Daku, half a step back, leaned back lazily with his hands in his pockets. Madara tipped his chin up and tucked his hands behind his back, regarding Naruto with his rinnegan eyes and saying, "Your fight is with the snake."
Naruto raised an eyebrow. "You'll let me through?"
Maybe…me and Daku together are too much for Madara, Naruto thought as a slow, creeping smirk curled up his lips. Naruto shook his head with a scoff and turned to his left, walking towards the mountain. He said to Madara in a humorous tone, "I'll be right back."
The wind chakra beam seals under his shoes activated and he took off into the sky, leaving Madara and Daku to their fight.
Authors note
Two chapters (plus an epilogue) left… ;)
See you when I see you.
Foy.