Obito-Sensei Chapter 78
Meets Their Match
On the 27th of April, Konoha went to war.
Seven-hundred and thirty ninja departed the village on a mission of revenge, leaving with the sky still dark. They marched west, a rapid movement towards the Nation of Rain that would see them arrive at around noon with the sun high in the sky, though it would be concealed behind light rain. The mass movement of shinobi was a frightening thing, almost like a plague of locusts; hundreds of men and women spread out in a spearhead several kilometers long, leaping through the trees and then creeping amidst the slush-filled swamps and plateaus that defined the border between the Nation of Rain and the Land of Fire.
They moved quickly and quietly; just as Rain had sent over a thousand shinobi to assault Konoha with none the wiser, so too did the ninja of Leaf and Sand traverse the countryside out of sight of anyone but the animals. This was the particularly deadly thing about shinobi wars: the speed and stealth of competent ninja made the mass movement of forces efficient, and in a case like this where the assault was meant to be undertaken with surgical precision and not devolve into a siege supply lines were immaterial; each ninja carried enough personal supplies for two days, and nothing more.
However, being at full war footing, the borders of the Nation of Rain were lightly defended. The Leaf assault force came into contact with a half dozen roaming scout patrols, groups of two ninja who were watching the hundreds kilometer long border from concealed positions. Two of the scout patrols were destroyed without a chance of response, one was captured, but the other three managed to flee and spread word of the invasion. The unparalleled mobility of shinobi made this eventuality a well-understood fact of ninja warfare: in fact, Konoha's scout patrols being so comprehensively eluded or destroyed had been the mark of how highly unusual and coordinated Rain's initial assault against the village had been.
Minato Namikaze and Rasa of the Desert had supposed that Rain would send harrying forces after the invasion as it closed in on Amegakure in the final hours of the march, but in a surprise that one took as unsettling and the other as pleasant, no such forces materialized. They theorized that having already committed ninja to Frost and suffered grievous casualties in their attack on Konoha, Rain had decided to centralize their defenses around Amegakure; this theory was close enough to the truth to be accurate for the assault's purposes, with the caveat that Amegakure itself was also home to only two-thousand and some ninja at the moment. The rest of Rain's shinobi had spread out across the country so as to prevent a decapitating strike, though they had been assigned with care, kept out of the way of any likely marching path from the Land of Firee.
The sum of all this came to the situation that both sides of the conflict found themselves faced with when the Leaf/Sand invasion force reached Amegakure at around 11:20 AM, with most of its ninja requiring a brief rest before the battle after their forced march. The capital of the Nation of Rain was alert and expecting an assault. Its defenders did not have a severe numerical advantage as would be ideal, merely three to one, but were confident in the quality of their ninja, and especially their Amekage, to carry the day and rebuke Konoha.
The invasion force, on the other hand, was not concerned that their enemy knew they were coming. In fact, that was necessary for the assassination squad, as Jiraiya and Minato both were confident that Yahiko, the First Vanguard, would place himself at the forefront of any defense, and thus make himself vulnerable. His death was the main priority of the invasion; the destruction of Rain's infrastructure and the killing of its shinobi was considered a secondary objective, a backup in case the impossible happened and Minato Namikaze wasn't able to kill him.
The battle of Amegakure began at 11:40, and as was usual for shinobi, everything was over quickly. By noon, the future course of the war was decided.
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Sasuke had never been a part of a mass assault before, and he found seeing how everyone else prepared themselves for it interesting. Some prayed, some spoke to one another like nothing was about to happen, and others went through katas and stretched, steadying their bodies.
Rin was one of the second. As they lurked in the treeline beyond Kakō Lake, she leaned back against a tree and did her best to hold a conversation with him.
"You're used to getting teleported, right?" she asked, and he nodded as he checked over his vest, his pouches, his knives, his shuriken, and circulated chakra throughout his system for the fifth time, making sure that everything was ready, that he was ready. "With Obito, that's no surprise. You should see how depressed he gets when he realizes he actually has to walk to the store, it's hilarious. He said he hasn't seen any of you much?"
"We've been busy," Sasuke said, scanning the treeline. The first assault squads were about to be dispatched. He understood the principle of an attack against a larger fortified position like Amegakure in practice, and Konoha's tactics were pragmatic above everything else. Squads of three to six ninja were spread at intervals of about one-hundred feet, far enough apart that a single jutsu wouldn't be able to wipe out two squads with a lucky hit. In addition, since the assault would be made across the lake, shrapnel and fragmentation was less of a concern, though obviously once they were in the city it would become more dangerous than ever. They would charge, intending to penetrate the city proper as quickly as possible, and engage the defenders in close combat, spreading chaos while the assassination squad went to work.
If the Amekage had a bit of sense, the civilian population would have been evacuated to the bunkers that festooned the city, and the streets and buildings filled with traps, explosives, and ninja hiding in the dense urban jungle. The lake itself was a danger in that sense as well; underwater mines, shinobi lying in wait with water-breathing techniques, and other dangers were just some of what the assault squads had been briefed on, and Sasuke could imagine plenty more.
Sasuke had a flare gun at his hip, and he knew that across the rim of the lake other ninja were carrying them as well, but it was only a backup for communication. The signal that would kick everything off was more subtle.
'Alright everyone.' A pleasant female voice echoed through Sasuke's head, the voice of Fukuro Yamanka, the leading Intelligence Division ninja in the invasion. She was situated about a mile behind him guarded by several of her clansmen wielding the Yondaime's kunai and hooked up to a mysterious device the Yamanaka clan had dragged along on the march. Yamanaka techniques were none of Sasuke's business, and he barely knew more than he'd learned in a conversation with Ino long ago, but he knew enough to suppose the device made it possible for Fukuro and other ninja to connect to people telepathically across long distances, the same way Ino's father Inoichi had been capable of without apparent help. 'Good luck. Begin the assault.'
Telepathic coordination was one of the secrets to Konoha's greater successes, and Sasuke could see the fruits of it almost immediately. Across the rim of the lake, ninja began moving; Amegakure was suddenly at the confluence of several hundred shinobi rushing towards it from every direction.
"Yeah, that guy doesn't know how to do anything but train," Rin said with a laugh, paying the battle little mind. "He feels left out with all you racing ahead, you know. You should make it up to him after this." She pushed herself off the tree and turned, raising her voice. "Sensei, you ready?"
The other members of the assassination team were all there, including both the Hokage and Kazekage. So was Gaara of the Desert, whom the Kazekage was quietly speaking with. Sasuke had heard that something had happened between Gaara and Sakura, but neither had been hurt so he hadn't cared to find out more; what was more interesting to him was that right now Gaara had both arms, the missing one replaced by a construct of sand that his chakra had bound to the stump.
Minato nodded at Rin with a thumbs-up, and a second later Sasuke saw flashes of light and heat in his peripheral vision. He turned his head slightly and saw Amegakure light up; long-range jutsu were being flung from its spiraling rooftops, and parts of the lake began to boil and explode from unknown sources. He saw two ninja in the distance flung away from a sudden burst of steam, one moving, the other limp.
"Go now," Rasa said in the commanding tone of an owner talking to its disobedient pet, and Gaara took off in a flash, sand pouring out around him and carrying him forward in a wave of dust. He burst across the lake, blowing aside a wake of water before him, and reached Amegakure in the blink of an eye. He was fast; even faster than he'd been in Waves.
If he survived this battle, Sasuke didn't know what he would do.
'Jinchuriki is in. Heaviest resistance on south-east side of the city,' Fukuro's voice echoed, slightly strained.
"Hizashi," Minato said as the assassination squad drew closer to one another, gathering in the small clearing between the trees. "You've located him?"
"I have, Lord Hokage," Hinata's uncle said, his face screwed up in concentration. He had been scanning the city with his Byakugan all the while; Sasuke had learned from Hinata that while his range wasn't as impressive as her own, both Neji and his father Hizashi had an incredible skill for perceiving detail with their Bloodline, which is probably why her uncle had been selected instead of another clan member, or her father.
Or perhaps it was because he was a Branch Clan member. Because he was disposable. Hinata had said that, so quietly but so certainly, and remembering it now, Sasuke's hands curled into fists.
"Unfortunately, it's as you feared," Hizashi continued, and Minato nodded, not looking surprised. "The Amekage are side by side. It looks like they're waiting."
"They're expecting us," Jiraiya grunted. Both he and the Hokage were in Sage Mode, and had been quiet and still up until this moment as they gathered the chakra necessary for it. "Let's not disappoint them."
Minato smiled, looking out towards the city and seemingly gauging the distance. A kunai slipped into his hand, and he weighed it, tossing it in the air once and breathing out. He drew another, and threw it into the ground where it stuck fast. "We'll try to deal with this as quickly as possible," he said, not for the first time. "Muta, Suzaku, pin down any interference. Sasuke, you deal with the Nibi if it shows up." He looked over at the Kazekage. "Rasa?"
"Ready," the Kazekage said, all of his gold dust suddenly clinging tightly to his body as armor. "At your discretion, Yondaime."
"Alright. Gather up. Hizashi, guide me," the Hokage said. He stepped forward and took the Hyuuga's hand like he was greeting an old friend and then looked back to the city, his placid face hardening with concentration.
Sasuke breathed out, readying himself. He and all the others gathered around the kunai stuck in the ground, and he raised one hand, confident he'd be able to react first with his Sharingan but taking no chances. His eyes activated, the pleasant burning of the Sharingan spreading out throughout his head and radiating down to his toes.
The Hokage flung his kunai, waited for a moment, and then both he and Hizashi vanished.
Sasuke gave it two heartbeats, and then began to slowly reach out. On the third beat, the Hokage reappeared in the middle of the group.
All of the ninja lashed out, taking hold of some part of the Hokage's body, grabbing his shoulders and arms or pressing their hands to his back. Then, there was a tear; the Hokage's chakra grabbed hold of theirs, and they were flung an infinite distance to a finite destination in an instant, emerging on the other side with so little transition that even Sasuke's Sharingan couldn't predict the movement.
The Hokage had flung the same knife twice; once into the air, and then again deeply into the city at Hizashi's direction. The assassination squad appeared on a rooftop next to a huge air conditioning unit which filled the air with a loud buzz, the rain pattering down around them drowned out by it.
Not next to, Sasuke realized. Behind. His every instinct was screaming at him that on the other side of the air conditioner, something terrible was waiting.
"Scatter." The Hokage didn't say it loudly, but the command was irresistible nonetheless.
The shinobi all jumped in different directions. For all but one, they were fast enough.
Sasuke watched as a distortion in space tore through the space he'd occupied just a moment before, a gravitational tear that his Sharingan could only see the outline of which pushed through the AC unit and crumpled it like paper. There was no moment of resistance; the metal just broke apart and was flung forward as an irresistible force rolled it over. The impossible gravity caught Suzaku Nara by the foot and carried her off; she had been just a heartbeat slower than everyone else.
Suzaku broke the speed of sound instantly and crashed through a solid concrete wall a block away. Sasuke didn't see her again after that.
He turned in midair back towards the source of the blast, and took in the situation in an instant.
Eight shinobi, four wearing the garb of the Akatsuki, were spread across three nearby rooftops and already leaping into action. Sasuke's brain started analyzing, but it was an unconscious process that he contributed very little actual thought to. Both the Amekage were there, Yahiko and Nagato. Nagato was the one who had produced the gravitational blast, a lesser mirror of the technique he'd used to divert Cloud's Tailed Beast Cannon. With one exception, Sasuke did not know the other ninja, but they had obviously been selected as the Amekage's bodyguards which spoke to their strength. There was a mix of men and women, including a boy with a shock of spiky orange hair who was Sasuke's age.
The ninja he did know was the most shocking. Orochimaru of the Sannin leered at the assassination squad, his hands already going through the motions for a Wind jutsu. That the Sannin was still in Rain after Sasuke's warning was a surprise; that he was a part of the Amekage's defense team beggared belief. Had Yahiko seriously put a known traitor at his back? Or-
"Welcome, Hokage!" Yahiko called out. Orochimaru unleashed his Wind jutsu, tearing the roof to pieces as the assassination squad scattered. Yahiko too was in Sage Mode, his face marked with its golden colors and his pupils distended. Sasuke narrowed his eyes, taking in the full odds arrayed against them. "I hope-!"
In the blink of an eye, Minato was at Yahiko's side; he'd thrown his kunai so fast that Sasuke hadn't been able to keep up with what his Sharingan had already seen. The Hokage spun, a blade in hand set to pierce the Amekage's eye.
In the time it took Sasuke to land on a nearby wall and blink, Nagato had intercepted the attack, an iron arm shooting out of his shoulder and knocking the blade off mark. It scored across Yahiko's cheek, sparks flying as it chipped against the man's iron-hard skin, and the Amekage's expression shifted from spiteful to shocked in an instant.
"Kill them all." Once again, Minato's voice carried across the battlefield with irresistible import, and Sasuke's body started moving before his mind did.
He leapt at the nearest shinobi, a woman with short brown hair and a long scarf covered in jutsu formula; he could see the chakra imbued in it begin to respond to her command as she moved as well, about to throw up some kind of barrier jutsu that he would smash into.
But the distance between them was too short; the other ninja must have thought one-hundred feet would be enough, but Sasuke covered it in slightly less than a tenth of a second, shattering the sound barrier and leading with a flaming fist. The woman had enough time to look surprised before he punched her in the chest, shattering her solar plexus and sending her catapulting backwards as blue fire raced across her body. She slammed into a wall and fell into one of the alleys below, and all around Sasuke the world exploded into pandemonium.
Ninja fell on each other with abandon, trying to tear each other apart with jutsu and break their enemy's bodies with their own. The orange-haired boy slammed into Rin and carried her out of Sasuke's sight; Muta Aburame struck one of the Akatsuki members in the side and a huge beetle burst out of their throat a moment later; Hizashi was mobbed by two shinobi at once, brought one of them down with a strike to the throat, and was stabbed twice and struck with a Lightning jutsu that burned a hole in his arm in return; the Kazekage sent a spear of gold chasing after Yahiko, who retaliated with a fire jutsu that bounced off Rasa's golden armor as they both raced across the rooftops; one of the men in an Akatsuki cloak grappled with Jiraiya, using a jutsu that grew earthen spikes out of his body as the Toad Sage strangled him with his animated hair; the Hokage pursued Nagato, trying to keep the man off balance as he periodically hurled knives at Yahiko that resulted in three near fatal attacks in just a couple of seconds.
But among all those ninja, it was Orochimaru that charged directly at Sasuke, his pale face pulled back into a wide sneer.
Sasuke didn't have time to dodge and braced instead, and the impact smashed them through the wall he'd landed on, leaving them in a small apartment hall lined with doors. He rolled and kicked the larger man off him, and Orochimaru coiled on the ceiling like the world's largest spider.
That brief exchange told Sasuke two things as he rolled back to his feet and looked up, only a couple of feet between them. The first was that his foot hurt. The Sannin's body was diamond-hard. Sage Mode, body modifications, an unknown jutsu: the means didn't matter, only that he couldn't hurt Orochimaru with taijutsu alone.
The second was that Orochimaru had a Sharingan. He was looking up into a pair of three-tomoe eyes, red and black and swirling, and Sasuke felt his gut churn.
"Sasuke Uchiha," the man said with a sick grin. "You may not know it, but-"
"We've met before?" Sasuke said, and took advantage of the miniscule moment of surprise to analyze the chakra boiling off Orochimaru. Ridiculously thick and heavy, so much that he barely seemed human. It was just as he, his mother, the Hokage, and Obito had feared; with access to Madara's body and experiments, the Sannin had obviously modified his body using ancient secrets of both the Uchiha and Senju clans. Of anyone in the world, even more so than Nagato with his transplanted eyes, this man was the closest anyone had ever been to the Sage of the Six Paths.
A Senju body, so probably regeneration, at least according to what Naruto had told him. Uchiha eyes, and their acuity… but not, Sasuke noted, a Mangekyo Sharingan. That was his ace in the hole here, as much as he hated it. Sasuke had abilities that even Orochimaru hadn't managed to figure out yet. That, and the Lightning Rasengan, were probably his only hope of victory.
"You broke the jutsu," Orochimaru said after a moment, the battle still raging outside. He stroked his chin, looking impressed. "Well, that's unexpected."
He moved, and Sasuke found himself in the strange quick-draw that resulted from fighting another Sharingan user: the moment of delayed feedback as both acted on what was going to happen instead of what was actually happening. He was clearly more used to it than Orochimaru, but the man was faster than him. Even though Sasuke dodged and counterattacked with Orochimaru's precognitive movement in mind, his kick missed; the Sannin ducked back at the last second as he crashed into the floor and then struck, a small white snake launching from the sleeve of his robes and nearly fixing itself in Sasuke's throat.
Sasuke caught and crushed the snake's head in his bare hand, and Orochimaru laughed.
"Do you have any idea where your ancestor may have run off to?" he asked, and he and Sasuke became embroiled in a hand to hand duel without any further fanfare. Sasuke didn't have time to answer: his whole world became strike, feint, counterstrike, everything else washing away and leaving only his footwork, the recoil of his strikes, the way his body rattled whenever he redirected one of Orochimaru's monstrously powerful punches and kicks.
He needed time to create the Lightning Rasengan, but there was no way he'd be able to escape now. Orochimaru was just too fast and too strong; it was all Sasuke could do to keep up, accruing bruises and small cuts from near misses with every exchange.
"Not talkative today?" Orochimaru laughed. "You were usually terse, but this is a new low, Sasuke." He swept Sasuke's legs, but Sasuke managed to just barely jump the attack, the concrete floor of the hall torn up by the force of the strike. He slammed into the ceiling, not wanting to be stuck in the air, but Orochimaru was already running through hand-signs: another Wind jutsu, more focused than the first one. A spear that would impale Sasuke through the lung and then expand like a blender's blades.
The future spooled out, almost against Sasuke's will. He saw what he had to do if he didn't want to be split into five pieces. The only thing that would save him now was a clash of jutsu.
No time to think, and from this range no time to dodge. Sasuke ran through hand-signs of his own, seeing Orochimaru's eyebrow come up in the future as the man reacted to his jutsu before it emerged. He clapped his hands together, praying the technique would save him for a second time. Blood dripped from his eye, and Orochimaru's curiosity transformed into something entirely more menacing.
Katon: Mekkyaku Eiso.
The laser burst from beneath his hands and collided with Orochimaru's invisible javelin in the same instant it emerged.
The whole hallway exploded, the laser supercharged by the complementary jutsu. Sasuke felt the beam carve through the building and emerge from the other side, keeping his aim steady despite the flames scorching his arms and setting his hair alight. He watched as the laser pierced directly through Orochimaru's heart, burning a hole in the man's chest, and then he whipped it to the side, carving an arc through the man's torso, vaporizing most of his internal organs and slashing across his left arm, removing it.
Sasuke fell from the ceiling, landing gracelessly and feebly batting out the flames whipping across his body. He looked up, expecting his opponent to collapse. Even with regeneration, having your heart incinerated and half your upper body torn apart should be enough to finish off anyone.
Instead, he watched through the flames filling the hallway as Orochimaru caught his arm before it could fall away from his body, glaring down at Sasuke the whole time. Smoke was filling the air, and there was suddenly steam accompanying it; with a counterclockwise whirling, flesh and bone appeared from nowhere and sealed Orochimaru's wounds, grafting his arm back in place without a sign of its separation and instantly regrowing his heart, lungs, spine, and ribs.
"Oh…" Sasuke had time to say before the Sannin laughed and kicked him in the face.
"What a heroic move!" he said, slamming a fist into Sasuke's side as he stumbled back, feeling blood fill his mouth. He slammed into the wall and began to collapse, but Orochimaru wouldn't let him, striking him so furiously and constantly that Sasuke was simply forced back, unable to fall. "Almost sacrificing yourself like that? You know, on anyone else it would have worked! I didn't think someone like you had that kind of foresight, Sasuke!" He laughed again, cuffing both of Sasuke's ears and sending his head ringing as he threw him back with another kick to the gut. "How unfortunate it means nothing."
The kick sent Sasuke to the edge of the hallway, back to the break in the wall. Distantly, he could hear that the fighting was continuing. He groggily looked back, and found that Jiraiya, Minato, Rasa, and the Amekage were still fighting. The other ninja were gone or down; Hinata's uncle was the closest, bleeding on the ground.
Sasuke's heart was beating so fast he thought it might burst. It was obvious now that didn't have a chance in hell of beating Orochimaru. He had to run away, but with his ears ringing and at least two of his ribs broken, there wasn't much chance of that either.
"What do you think, Sasuke?" Orochimaru said, standing over him. "Would it be better to kill you in front of the Hokage, or just throw your corpse at him?" He paused, thinking. "Or perhaps send you against him as a Reanimation. That would probably distract him, wouldn't you think? I had thought-"
It was only thanks to his Sharingan that Sasuke saw the slight narrowing of Minato Namikaze's eyes as the man took a fraction of a second, in the midst of fighting two of the most dangerous ninja in the world, to glance in his direction.
As Orochimaru reached down, the Hokage flung another kunai out; it buried itself in the wall beside Sasuke, and Orochimaru glanced over at it, his eyes going wide in anticipation. He twitched, anticipating Minato's teleportation; as Jiraiya leapt forward, taking on the burden of fighting both his students at once for a moment, the Hokage vanished.
Sasuke didn't see the moment of impact. One moment, Orochimaru was reaching out; the next, he had a knife through his head. He stopped, reached up, and carefully removed it as the Hokage knelt over Sasuke, the Hokage's hand pressed lightly against his chest.
"Still so fast, Minato," Orochimaru said with a laugh. "And yet, lacking in imagination. Did you really think that a knife would be enough?"
The moment stretched, and the battle fell away. Sasuke watched the flare of chakra between the two men rebound off their steely auras and crack the concrete around them, shaking the whole building as the Hokage's hand pressed more firmly into his chest.
"You gave up your humanity, huh?" Minato said, his tone light despite the physical murder boiling off him. "I guess that's to be expected."
"I've been preparing for this day, Yondaime," Orochimaru spat, his Sharingan whirling. "I know everything you have, but I have become something more. Ignore the rest; let's have our battle. I'll show you the mistake sensei made."
Minato smiled, and it somehow looked genuine despite the horrible situation. Somewhere behind him, Jiraiya let out a grunt of pain, and Sasuke felt the attention of the Amekage return to him like someone was positioning a block of stone over his head. "You always liked novelty, Orochimaru." The gravity wave was coming, he could feel it; the only reason it hadn't already been thrown was because Orochimaru was in the way.
"So why don't I show you something you haven't seen?"
The world ripped as Sasuke was torn away, teleported to another rooftop in a disorienting instant. The Hokage pulled his hand back, and as three S-rank ninja hurled themselves at him, glanced back at Sasuke.
"Sasuke," he said, his hands coming together in something like a prayer. "Get everyone off the roofs."
In the blink of an eye he was engaged in a fight for his life against three remorseless opponents, the battle drawing away from Sasuke instantly. Nagato, Yahiko, and Orochimaru all pursued Minato like men possessed, hurling deadly jutsu, ninja tools, and flares of gravity that threatened to pin down and destroy the Hokage with every moment. But Minato wasn't known as the fastest man in the world for no reason, and he stayed just ahead of the relentless assault with both his own speed and the Hiraishin, blinking out of existence moments before he was struck again and again.
But his opponents were catching on, destroying his kunai before he could deploy them and sending them off course when he did. The Hokage was steadily being pushed into a corner that would force him to retreat or die, but he didn't seem to care; he just kept running and dodging, and began to rub his hands together, generating friction.
Sasuke was moving the whole time, the terrifying battle kept in his peripheral vision. Rin had returned and was tending to Hizashi, but it only took a look for her to understand his intentions; she scuttled over the roof and took her patient with her, bound for the alleys below. Rasa did the same, flying away in a glittering sphere of gold. Sasuke raced towards the Toad Sage; the man had been left alone, but a pitch black rod had been stabbed through his forearm, and Sasuke could see it was draining his chakra away with tremendous speed. The older ninja's Sage Mode had faded, and he was struggling to stay conscious, calling out ferocious curses.
"Sorry," Sasuke said matter of factly as he skidded to a stop at Jiraiya's side and ripped out the rod, the man coughing with pain as he did. "We've gotta go."
Two things happened at that moment. The first was that the Hokage jumped, Orochimaru clawing at his heels with an Earth jutsu that raised a golem out of the concrete which nearly smashed Minato into paste.
The second was that it stopped raining.
All the moisture in the air instantly evaporated; Sasuke's mouth went dry. He looked back, his instincts howling, and found Minato's opponents scattered below him as they moved to pursue him into the air.
The Hokage was holding something; it couldn't be described as anything less than a small sun, wisps of plasma arcing off it and orbiting around it in vicious rings of incineration.
Sasuke's Sharingan took it in as he scrambled to drag Jiraiya away towards the edge of one of the buildings. He was entranced by it: there couldn't be any doubt that it was the most beautiful jutsu he'd ever seen. A Rasengan, but only in the same way a tent and a skyscraper were both buildings. The core structure of the jutsu had been augmented by two different elemental chakras whirling about each other in perfect harmony; Fire and Wind, somehow kept separate enough to intensify the other without combining and detonating in a conflagration that would vaporize Minato.
The Hokage had turned the Rasengan into a jutsu of unmitigated devastation; Sasuke was more than eighty feet away, but he was still sure he wasn't close to out of the blast radius.
At the same time Sasuke dove over the edge of the roof carrying Jiraiya after him, the future spooled out, showing him exactly what happened as he fled.
The Hokage's opponents were fleeing; Nagato backed up, raising his arms and bracing himself. Whether he intended to try and deflect the jutsu or absorb it, Sasuke wasn't sure, but Yahiko and Orochimaru both ran to his side, seeking shelter from the holocaust that was about to rain down on them.
"Burn away," the Hokage declared, still soaring up but surely not high enough to escape his own jutsu. He cocked his arm back for a perfect throw, and the trails of plasma around the Rasengan began to spin more wildly, the chakra natures finally allowed to touch and intensify one another beyond the point of no return. "Goen Bakufu Rasenshuriken."
He threw the Rasenshuriken down like a god swatting the sun out of the sky and immediately vanished, teleporting somewhere far away. The scorching sphere, bright enough that looking directly at it was impossible, left an afterimage across Sasuke's future-sight of twisting, eye watering colors, slammed into the roof, and detonated.
It happened in three stages, and Sasuke was sure that no one but he and Nagato had ever been able to observe the Hokage's Scorch Release Rasengan in such detail for fear of being reduced to a shadow on the nearest wall. The shell of the Rasenshuriken burst, releasing its deadly payload; raw chakra burst out, enough to tear a building apart by itself, followed by the Wind chakra.
It came as a storm of razors, ten-trillion invisible knives that sundered the air and slashed apart whatever they made contact with so comprehensively that in many places the rooftop was reduced to less than dust. An undodgeable, unsurvivable attack, making everything that came after overkill. And yet, all three shinobi remaining on the rooftops survived it.
From Nagato's hands a shimmering energy field expanded, devouring every bit of chakra that came in contact with it and leaving everything behind him unscarred. The bearer of the Rinnegan turned aside Minato's annihilation: behind him, Yahiko stood firm, trusting in his friend to protect him.
Orochimaru had been far from either of them, too consumed in his pursuit of the Hokage to possibly take shelter behind Nagato. A field similar to Nagato's burst out of his body, but it faltered and shattered after absorbing only half of the Rasenshuriken.
Nonetheless, despite taking much of the deadly wind head on, he did not die; even as his body and chakra system were shredded apart by trillions of blades that tore into even his cells, the rogue ninja stood, glaring up at where Minato had been in fury as steam exploded off of him and the roof disintegrated under his feet. His clothes were torn away, revealing an inhuman pale body as sleek and featureless as a snake's.
Then, the second stage. The Fire chakra expanded, greedily feeding on the Wind.
The ten-trillion invisible knives caught fire, transformed into a field of lasers that stood superimposed against Sasuke's future-sight for a moment before they detonated in a tremendous explosion. The building was blown away, sending all the Hokage's opponents spiraling through the air like errant confetti. So were all the neighboring buildings, with Sasuke only barely outpacing the blast wave and debris in the present. It was a force comparable to the Tailed Beast Bomb Sasuke had witnessed, but compressed and limited to such a small space that it was almost comical.
The blast tore Orochimaru in half, and it was then that his rampant regeneration stopped. With everything below the chest shorn away steam kept blowing off the man's body, but no new limbs accompanied it. The Hokage's jutsu had shattered the limits of his regeneration, killing him ten-thousand times over. Despite that, there was no indication of pain on the Sannin's face, just hatred.
Then, the third stage. The pressure wave.
The origin point of the explosion became a complete vacuum, the blast wave of the jutsu rolling back on it as the Wind and Fire consumed absolutely every bit of the local atmosphere. It literally sucked the tossed bodies of both Orochimaru and the Amekage back towards it, a reversal that only Sasuke could have seen. Perhaps because he was weakened, the vacuum burst Orochimaru's still intact eyes and pulled something up into his throat, likely his lungs; still, he squirmed and feebly fought all the while, crashing into a nearby wall and falling out of sight.
It was this final stage that finally had an effect on Nagato; despite having weathered the razor winds, the lasers, and the explosion without difficulty, he vomited up a great gout of blood as the vacuum tore at his insides, his face growing white as paper. Yahiko shouted something, lost against the blast; perhaps because of Sage Mode, the vacuum didn't have as dramatic an effect on him, and he spun in the air, changing his trajectory with invisible energy and throwing his friend to safety.
There was more, but none as important. Sasuke was drawn back to the present as the Hokage instantly appeared at his side, knocking away a couple errant pieces of debris without looking as he checked Sasuke and his master over.
"Good job," he said, touching Jiraiya and teleporting him away instantly. His master had been carrying a knife, but he left it in the air and returned to catch it before Sasuke could blink. When he returned, Rin was with him.
"Rin, work on him," he said, but she already was, running glowing golden hands over Sasuke's wounds and mending his ribs. "Rasa and I will finish Yahiko," he said, looking up. "The others have already been evacuated."
"Orochimaru's still alive," Sasuke gasped, his mouth still dry, and the Hokage grunted.
"Then you two finish him," he said, and Rin nodded. "The Nibi and Gaara are fighting; you're off Tailed Beast duty, Sasuke. We're almost done here."
He vanished for the final time, and Rin looked over Sasuke; she had a heavily bleeding shallow scalp wound, but seemed fine otherwise, and she gave him a vicious grin.
"Let's go then," she said. "He's hurt, right?"
"He was torn in half," Sasuke confirmed as he looked around, orienting himself. He knew this street; the buildings the Hokage had just obliterated concealed the exact address, but if Sasuke recalled correctly (and the Sharingan meant that he did), Orochimaru had fallen only a couple of blocks away. He took off, the rain starting up again with a soft patter as Rin dashed after him. The distant sounds of conflict rang through the city and there were towering blue flames in the distance visible over the western high rises, but the ferocity of the Kage's battle had chased off any nearby ninja. For the moment, he and Rin could move with impunity.
Past two toppled buildings, through an exploded sandwich shop, and Sasuke skidded into an alley past two fallen ninja, one from Rain and the other from Konoha, united in death.
If it weren't for the Sharingan, the Earth jutsu that roared down the alley would have drawn him down and suffocated him. Sasuke leapt over it, sticking to the wall and calling out a warning to Rin.
"He's here!" he called, and Rin altered her trajectory, smashing right through the wall of the building instead of coming out into the alley as she beelined towards Orochimaru. Still, even as Sasuke called out the warning his throat was closing up, revulsion pinching it shut.
The thing at the end of the alley no longer resembled a human being. What had been Orochimaru bled thick white fluids copiously across the ground, chakra sparking and crashing into the world around it as it manifested as random elemental jutsu that tore apart everything close to it. His body was misshapen and obloid, spikes of greenery pushing themselves out of the swelling, corpulent flesh, and eyes were opening across it: dozens of them, each glaring out with a three-tomoe Sharingan. The Sannin's head was visible in the center of the abomination, glaring down the alley with hatred plain on his face; despite everything, he was still conscious.
"You!" it spat, and Sasuke found himself racing towards the thing rather than away, like any sane person should. He had no idea if Orochimaru could recover from the damage he'd taken, but the fact it seemed possible made it clear to him he had to kill the thing now. "Bastard little Uchiha! Stay away!"
Sasuke hurled a kunai with an explosive tag down the alley, and a fleshy projectile that was half wood and half bone fired itself out of Orochimaru's side, striking the knife aside; it detonated and knocked down a wall, filling the alley with fire, but didn't touch the abomination. "This isn't meant for you!" Orochimaru raged, more grotesque growths forming across his body and firing themselves at Sasuke as he drew closer. "You're wasting my time!"
Sasuke dodged past the hypersonic projectiles, one barely skimming his arm but the rest missing as his Sharingan perfectly predicted their paths. His arm stung, and on instinct he ran his hand across it, feeling something in the wound and plucking it out in an instant. The glancing attack had left behind tiny sprouts that were piercing into his skin and drinking his blood; after being torn out their little roots wriggled, searching for something to dig into.
Two elemental Rasengan in one battle, Sasuke decided in that instant. Whatever Orochimaru had become didn't merit any less. He started running through the hand signs for the Rasenyarinage, not caring as his eye stung; what he'd suddenly found himself a part of wasn't just a dirty political conflict like the rest of the war, it was something far deeper and more important.
Another wave of projectiles, another near miss; Orochimaru was squirming, the head shifting as the corpulent body rolled away from Sasuke like a deflating ball. "You don't understand!" it laughed. "I know too much: I'm too important! Sasuke, if the Hokage learns what I know-!"
At that moment, Rin burst through the wall next to Orochimaru, leading with her fists. The ball of flesh spun, but too slow: with a primal roar, the Hokage's student slammed into the abomination's side with a full-body haymaker.
Orochimaru was launched like a bowling ball, slamming through the other alley wall and continuing on for at least a hundred feet, obliterating everything in his path and leaving behind a trail of pale, squirming flesh that sprouted grasping roots as it looked for something to attach itself to. Sasuke was right behind him, picking up his pace as he followed the mutant through the holes he was blasting in the iron and brick construction of Amegakure.
The Lightning Rasengan in his hand started screaming, a high pitched wail of sparking lightning as his control of the bomb was stretched to its limit. He heard Rin gasp behind him, but he didn't have even a second to consider why; everything in Sasuke's existence was focused on Orochimaru, the Rasenyarinage, and the distance between them.
"Raiton!" he shouted, focusing himself as his vision blurred. Some blood fell from his cheek and into the lightning, vaporizing instantly with a bizarrely strong smell of smoke. "Rasenyarinage!"
He hurled the jutsu forward, following the trail of the lightning lead as it quested out towards the enemy. Orochimaru was slowing down, vestigial limbs grasping at the ground and walls he was plowing through, chakra sparking and warping the environment with flames and stone as he tried to slow himself down.
"Another?!" he roared, dozens of eyes focusing on the lightning lead. "No… imagination!"
Orochimaru pushed himself up, the ground beneath him suddenly sprouting into a pillar, and Sasuke's heart stopped as the last of his chakra raced past Orochimaru, piercing through nothing as the abomination embedded itself in the ceiling of the building. Orochimaru leered down at Sasuke from around his writhing flesh, more bones and wood poking out of his flesh.
"You-" he hissed, and then Sasuke snapped back to the present.
He detonated the jutsu.
The ball of lightning was right below Orochimaru and it burst so quickly that all the Sharingan could see was the afterimage, the globe of lightning that carved out the lower half of Orochimaru's body, leaving it an eclipse. Orochimaru's head was untouched, and for a moment Sasuke feared it had been for nothing.
Then the man vomited, a great torrent of pale blood pouring out of his mouth as he detached from the ceiling and collapsed, crashing to the ground with a scream of frustration.
Sasuke fell to his knees, every breath hurting, his eyes burning; he'd pushed himself as hard as he could dodging everything, forming the jutsu on the go, and abusing both his eyes, and now he was completely spent. He watched as Orochimaru rolled and roared like a wounded animal, flesh regenerating and falling away from his body with every second. The monster began to shrivel up like a stone worn away by a river current, and Sasuke hacked, spitting up a gob of phlegm and blood as he took in the grotesque sight.
"Nice one." From nowhere, Rin patted him on the back, and Sasuke wheezed and gave her a thumbs up without looking, too tired to even turn his head. "I've got it from here."
"Stop!" Orochimaru rasped, but Rin just kicked him, rolling him over as he continued to sputter and leak. "You… Rin!" A dozen eyes focused on her, and the woman broke her pinky finger without blinking, shaking off a half-formed genjutsu. "Listen! You mustn't! There's too much undone!"
"Feel free to keep talking," Rin said, looking the heaving flesh over. "I'm not even sure how to kill something like you."
"I'm more than you know," Orochimaru said, his words interspersed with a broken cackle. "This body… it's full of ancient secrets now. You're a medic, Rin; you must be curious how the regeneration is so efficient."
"It's similar to the Kaguya, that's for sure," Rin said, finally laying her hands on Orochimaru as his flesh continued to melt away. Sasuke tensed, waiting for a weapon to emerge, but the man seemed truly spent; he just continued to diminish as Rin's medical jutsu probed him. "Inspired by Kimimaro, maybe?"
"You're close," Orochimaru grumbled, "but you cannot know how. Save me, bind me in whatever way you wish; I'll be happy to answer your questions." He grimaced at Sasuke, his face twitching as the muscles in it threatened to fail. "Wouldn't that be appropriate karma, Sasuke? Imprisoned and sworn to answer, just as your ancestor was? You couldn't come up with a better fate."
"Regeneration is neat," Rin said blandly, "but it's not worth becoming a monster like you." Her hands pressed into the flesh, piercing Orochimaru's body. "If it's like the Kaguya's, it can be driven out of control like theirs, right? I just need to find the right node…"
"Don't you dare!" Orochimaru spat. "There's more!" He was growing desperate now, thrashing and trying to escape Rin despite his body resembling melted clay more than anything else. "However impossible it may be, try to understand the consequences of your actions! The Rinnegan is within my reach! Save me, and it could be Konoha's!"
That made Rin pause, and Sasuke too. Orochimaru gave them both greedy looks as he tried to prop himself up on stubby, shaking arms. "Madara doesn't know," he said, and Sasuke narrowed his eyes. "The idiot believes creating such a thing was as simple as combining the material of both Senju and Uchiha. But if it were that easy, I'd have a thousand of them by now." He chewed and spat out a chunk of white flesh; the roiling in his body was growing calmer, and so was his chakra. Even with most of his body vaporized twice over, the thing Orochimaru had become was still capable of stabilizing.
"There was something unique about Madara and Hashirama," the Sannin continued. "A divergent chakra, unlike anything else in the world; that was the focus of my studies. Return me to Konoha, and even if it's under Namikaze, I'll continue that work." The fervor in his eyes and his voice hit Sasuke like a physical force. "It's a chakra that transcends death. In this age of uncertainty, you cannot afford to kill me, either of you. You would be murdering an era of immortality."
Rin stood there for several seconds, clearly deep in thought; there wasn't much Sasuke could do but sit and try to catch his breath, his heart hammering as he considered Orochimaru's ultimatum. But eventually, Rin seemed to come to a decision. She looked back over her shoulder at Sasuke with an earnestly curious expression.
"Hey Sasuke," she asked, and Sasuke wondered if there was half as much clarity in his own eyes.
"Yeah?" he grunted, feeling like his chakra system was trying to tear its way out of his skin.
"Do you think something like the Rinnegan needs to exist?" Rin asked. Sasuke blinked. He saw all of Orochimaru's eyes do the same.
Everything he'd seen the Rinnegan was capable of flashed through Sasuke's mind: replacing his arm, binding peoples' souls, deflecting Cloud's cannon, withstanding the Yondaime's ultimate jutsu. The Rinnegan placed the power to alter fate in the hands of a single person; in a way, it was almost the perfect representation of Ninjutsu, but with equal capacity to heal as harm. Even if Rin didn't intend it, the question took on massive dimensions to Sasuke.
Should one person have the power to change the world?
"No," he decided, sure enough that the shaking in his body stopped. "I think we'd get along fine without it."
"Yeah," Rin said, and Sasuke had no idea if her line of thought resembled his in the slightest. "Same here."
"Wait!" Orochimaru demanded. Rin didn't. She pressed her fist deeper into the soggy flesh, her bright blue chakra racing over her arms as she searched the monstrous body for something. "Wait, you fraud! You must not-!"
"Here we go," Rin muttered, and pushed.
Orochimaru started to swell up again, his body twisting and mangling his vestigial limbs as his face was stretched out beyond human limits. He howled like a mad beast, spare bones dribbling out of his body, but his control was destroyed; Rin had found something inside of him and driven it wild, shattering his equilibrium.
Rin stood back and crossed her arms, and as Sasuke stumbled to his feet Orochimaru grew. His body sprouted thick roots that burrowed through the concrete around him, his chakra raging out of control like river rapids as branches and leaves burst from his flesh, Sharingan eyes curling up and becoming gooey flowers. The Sannin babbled, incomprehensible words pushed out through crushed lungs and a mouth distended several feet as he twisted, grew, and hardened.
In less than a minute, where Orochimaru had once lain there was a towering tree, nearly a hundred feet high, of wood as pale as bone. It punched up through the building, breaking through the concrete effortlessly, and was covered in fruit-like flowers of black and red. It was the most beautiful and disgusting thing Sasuke had ever seen.
"Gross," Rin muttered, shaking her hand out. It was covered in chakra burns, the skin ripped away and raw from the energy she'd forced into Orochimaru. "I doubt Tsunade would approve, but at least it worked…"
"What happened?" Sasuke asked, surprised at the hoarseness in his voice, and Rin shrugged.
"He's still alive," she said. Sasuke blanched, glancing at the tree. "In a manner of speaking. I don't think what he'd turned himself into could die. But he was so messed up… it wasn't hard to find the tenketsu that were keeping him shaped like a person." She let out a dry laugh. "If he learns how to move like that, it'll be Rain's problem, I guess."
A distant rumble, low and loud enough that it made Sasuke's bones shake, put a stop to both their musings. To the west, blue fires were raging across the horizon, and Sasuke realized that the air was full of tiny particles of sand. The Tailed Beasts were still fighting, which meant that the Hokage probably was as well; if he had won, he would have taken care of the Nibi by now.
"We should keep pushing in," Rin said, and then, as if talking to the air, "Fukuro?" Sasuke started to nod, ready to receive the telepathic instructions, but then a second, more unexpected sound came.
There was a voice in his head. But it wasn't the soothing, directed tone of Fukuro Yamanaka, who had been coordinating various ninja across the city.
'I recommend you surrender, Hokage,' Nagato Uzumaki said through the telepathic link, and Sasuke was sure that this broadcast was audible to everyone in all of Amegakure. Not just Konoha's ninja; the Amekage's voice was so loud that there wasn't a chance of it discriminating.
'Or all your ninja will die.'
AN: The entire battle in Amegakure was originally intended to be one chapter, but things sprawled out. I intended to just do a double update so the experience would be the same, but then things got busy and now I don't know what the ETA on the second half is, so I figured I'd just publish what I have. Don't worry, we will be swinging around for Kushina, Minato, Naruto, and Obito's conversation, just not right away. Hope you enjoyed it!