Warning: This chapter heavily contains child endangerment and deaths, mutilation, and other dark and depressive themes. If the above makes you uncomfortable, I truly recommend you skip this chapter. I wish I was exaggerating, but I'm not.
If you're still here, and you're curious, then proceed at your own risk…
CHAPTER 10.5
The stench of hysteria was pungent.
The lights, repeatedly blinking on and off, did not help matters. As did the infrequent blare of deafening sirens, punctuating the anguished screams and breaking of bones.
All hell broke loose.
Danzo stood in the safety of the indoor balcony, looking down at the arena with eyes that simmered with interest.
He looked like death, and in many ways, he was.
An analogue counter hung on the other side of the area, counting down from five hundred with each confirmed death.
Below, the murderous depravity of Danzo's making reigned.
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
Nine-Nine counted in his head all of the siblings he killed so far.
Seventy-four.
The blood drenched his face and shirt, caking under his fingernails and oozing from the cuts on his body. His blonde hair was matted to his head, jaggedly slashed in areas by rough blades, and his vision doubled from exhaustion.
He swung his fist into his sister's chin and the blow connected, bending under her stubbornly retaliating kick and rising with an uppercut. Her feet lifted off the ground and she fell back, landing hard on the ground.
Nine-Nine, stifling his crying through his clenched teeth, sped to her and picked up a discarded and bloodied kunai from the ground, straddling his sister's chest and plunging the blade into her chest. His knees forced her arms at her sides and his weight kept her down.
Blood bubbled from her throat as she gasped, wide-eyed at the blade sticking out of her heart.
A voiceless apology hissed from Naruto's lips and the girl looked at him, her vision hazy but still somehow struggling to live. Blood painted her teeth and she screamed, her blackened eyes bugged with mania and the urge to live.
Naruto pulled out the knife and stabbed her again, yanking it out and driving it in ten more times until her shirt and chest were in tatters.
She stopped moving after the tenth stab, but Naruto wanted to make sure she was dead.
He pushed the edge of the kunai into her neck and dragged it across her throat, hard enough to fling the weakened boy to the ground. Blood freely seeped from the deep cuts to her neck and chest.
Seventy-five.
Naruto though was heaving mournful breaths, lying on his front on the ground as pure mayhem ensued around him.
His body shook from his wounds, and he forced his arms under his body, pushing himself up with a visible tremble in his arms, clutching the kunai in his hands like it was his only saving grace. His byakugan flickered off and on, and the boy cursed his low chakra reserves. He closed his left eye and prayed for his chakra to stay with him for just five more minutes.
The scream of the sirens kept him conscious.
He sat back on his heels, shoulders heavy and panting raggedly, and looked up to the indoor balcony.
Danzo looked down on him with palpable hatred.
The tears prickling Nine-Nine's byakugan finally fell.
A jarring haymaker struck the back of Nine-Nine's head and he fell onto his face, the kunai flung from his hand and a kick to his side cracked against his left elbow, breaking his arm and smashing him into a wall. He slumped against the wall and his body sagged from his concussion.
Pure adrenaline and instinct alone pushed Nine-Nine's body to the right, scrambling blindly from the sharp bones impaling his former position.
His steps trembled as he forced himself back to his feet, blinking his eyes and catching sight of three of his siblings surrounding him with his back to the wall.
The lights kept blinking off and on, messing with Nine-Nine's vision.
They looked worse for wear, much like Naruto, and they each hefted chipped and bloodied swords.
Nine-Nine wordlessly glanced up at Danzo again, as did his three siblings, and their Master sent a nod down to the three siblings.
The message was sent.
Danzo wanted Nine-Nine dead no matter what.
The boy with the byakugan bared his teeth in a fierce snarl and faced his brothers and sister, raising his hands and closing them into hard fists, lowering into a simple fighting stance and swaying ever so subtly from blood loss. His one open eye blurred for a moment, but he shook away the urge to pass out.
Blood dripped from his nose.
There was no need for words.
Nine-Nine ran to them.
The blinking lights made it look like the boy was teleporting.
He zigzagged around bones blasting out of the ground and dipped under a horizontal slash aiming to cut off his head, punching the attacker's stomach with all of his strength and using a bit of his chakra to burst two chakra points in his opponent's gut, sending him off his feet and onto his back. The boy reeled in agony from his destroyed chakra points, but Nine-Nine was busy with his other two siblings.
The shouts and wails of death around the arena were stifled by the screams of the siren.
Nine-Nine loved his siblings dearly, even after knowing that they were purposefully sent by their Master to make sure he was killed, but the boy with the byakugan wasn't going to die.
The same sentiment was shared by everyone else in the arena.
From his low position, Nine-Nine swung his heel low and the opponent jumped, throwing his sword down at Nine-Nine.
The byakugan boy roughly flung himself out of the way, tucking into a roll and pushing off the ground with his hands away from a hail of swords. Nine-Nine latched onto the walls with his chakra but cursed again when he slid off seconds later as he ran out of usable chakra.
His byakugan deactivated.
He leaned to the left and a sword impaled the wall, barely cutting his cheek.
He grabbed the blade from the wall and crossed it over his chest, blocking a second sword, lowering the sword to his stomach and deflecting a sibling. With his other hand, Nine-Nine whacked his brother at the back of his head with a chop, driving a knee into the boy's nose and a left fist into the side of his head.
The boy planted into the ground afterwards, using the momentum of his fall to roll on his side and flick his right wrist, forming another katana from thin air. The samurai could make blades from nothing, and he was among their Master's strongest CORE; he wasn't going to be brought down by a simple broken nose or bruised cheek.
Nine-Nine then grunted in pain as a sister, among those that ganged against him, materialised behind him and drove her sword into his lower back.
Bleeding from his broken nose, the samurai reared back at his voiceless brother and roared as he ran to Nine-Nine with his sword trained on Naruto's heart.
Nine-Nine, reeling from being stabbed in the back, drove an elbow back and cracked it against his sister's temple, forcing them to the side and her into the line of attack from the samurai.
The samurai's sword pierced her left upper arm clean through, cutting through her ribs, her left lung, her heart, her right lung, and then jutting out from her right shoulder.
Shocked stillness gripped the samurai at his mistake.
The impaled girl lost hold of the sword in her hand and Nine-Nine stumbled away, wobbling off his feet as the girl and the samurai collapsed onto their knees.
Nine-Nine collapsed onto his knees, the sword still cutting into his back and exiting his stomach. He blindly reached back, fumbling painfully for the handle of the sword and shuddering from agony.
He cried incoherently, heaving and reaching back for the handle of the sword.
His breathing quickened and he gasped when the blade was torn out from his back.
Nine-Nine looked at the bare feet of the person who had helped him, caked with blood and mud, and his eyes crept up the person's legs till Nine-Nine was sitting back on his heel, looking up at One.
The boy knelt helplessly before her.
The girl wore a stern frown, holding the katana in her right hand and breathing evenly.
Despite himself and everything he had done that night, Nine-Nine's eyes crinkled with a waning smile and chuckled breathily. She looked much worse than him, bearing a blackened left eye, stabs in her right forearm, standing with a limp and a deep cut across her stomach, bleeding heavily.
He didn't know how she was still on her feet.
The girl tipped her chin up and inhaled, exhaling from her mouth.
Too tired to lift his hands and sign, the boy mouthed, timing his words to when the lights were on. She read his lips as he mimed, "Make your move."
One chewed on her tongue and her frown became more visible.
Then she scoffed and a slight smirk lifted a corner of the lips.
She discarded the sword and held her hand down, just as the sirens stopped and the lights stayed on.
The siblings that weren't dead all turned to the analogue counter hanging above the arena, and they saw the number on the board.
One-hundred.
One helped her brother onto his feet, tossing his arm over her shoulders and helping him to stay on his feet.
"I'm glad you're still alive, brother," One whispered, unable to keep the pain from her wounds from her low tone. Naruto grunted, jokily bumping her head with his. He was still mad at her for attacking Kakashi all that time ago and claiming that his Hatake brother made him weak, and this was the first time they had spoken in months, but he was also glad she wasn't dead.
Nine-Nine's pale stare slowly turned from One and looked up at Danzo.
To the man's credit, his disdain wasn't plain on his face, though the dark glower in his black eyes was plain to any CORE sibling that caught it.
However, they didn't know whom the detestable look from their Master was directed at.
Except Nine-Nine.
The boy's heart broke and his knees weakened, only staying on his feet because One refused to let him fall.
The girl spied her brother's grief and her eyes widened, glancing briefly to her Master and then returning her horrified look to Nine-Nine.
She knew who her Master was looking so scornfully at, and her heart splintered with grief and betrayal. It was a weight of betrayal that made bile nearly surge up her throat.
Danzo's expressionless look turned away from Nine-Nine and he addressed the other CORE operatives, opening his arms welcomingly and saying, "Well done, children. You have all shown your superiority over your fallen siblings, and you have displayed your loyalty to our glorious cause." The children could barely stand, choking back their tears and looking up at their Master with glazed eyes. "The vision I have for Konoha will now be accomplished by you, my Chosen Hundred."
The entrance of the arena was unlatched and opened.
Nine-Nine tore out from One's support and ran out of the arena, bypassing the ROOT ninjas that had opened the entrance and speeding into the pitch-black forest.
The betrayed and distressed stares of his surviving siblings followed Naruto into the dark, as did the ROOT ninjas Danzo sent after him.
Authors note
That's it for this side story.
I didn't want to fit all of this into a flashback in the main story. I feel like doing that would break the flow of the main story, hence why I wrote a separate side story. Depending on how you all receive this, expect more separate side stories like this in future uploads. Maybe not a lot, but some here and there.
I'm having so much fun writing this fic. I appreciate all the favs, follows, reviews, and overall support I've gotten to this point.
Expect the next chapter on Friday.
See you when I see you.
Foy.