Author's Note:Happy New Year everyone!
Disclaimer: Naruto and Inuyasha belong to their respective owners.
Dialogue Legend:
"Unforgivable" – Normal dialogue
'Unforgivable' – character's thoughts/speaking to Inner Demon/Inner Spirit/Supernatural Being telepathically through a seal
"Unforgivable" – Jutsu name; Inner Demon/Inner Spirit/Supernatural Being speaking to someone directly.
'Unforgivable' – Inner Demon/Inner Spirit/Supernatural Being speaking to someone telepathically or through a seal
Chapter 36 – Takigakure Burns
"Damn it! How did it go so wrong? Who are these bastards?!" Fuu sobbed after killing a man wearing a black robe and armed with only a spear. She had no time to rest or run before twenty more people wearing black robes and wielding a wide assortment of weapons surrounded her. Iwa's invasion had been anticipated by Takigakure's elders. They knew they had no hope of besting Iwa, but they could and did bleed them for weeks. The invasion force was at least ten thousand Shinobi strong, and that was not counting the battalion of ninja that Takigakure knew from bitter experience was composed of Iwa's most elite forces: the so-called Sinister Eight.
The clans comprising that deadly group were known to Takigakure, and countermeasures for their specialties had been implemented where possible. Completely countering their Jutsu was not possible; the Sinister Eight is too versatile and powerful a group for any Shinobi village to neutralize them fully, but Takigakure's forces were successful in keeping the bulk of Iwa's army outside the village for nearly a month. The few Shinobi who did make it inside the village were dealt with by Fuu.
The Jinchuriki of the Nanabi was far from fully trained. The majority of her eighteen years had been spent developing her as a kunoichi first and a Jinchuriki second. The Nanabi's previous hosts were trained with the opposite mentality, which had always resulted in disaster. Its Chakra ravaged the hosts who attempted to use it too soon. Fuu had been trained nearly from birth to not rely on her Tailed Beast's Chakra, and as a result, she was now a Jonin of Takigakure with the skills and power to match. Now, she was capable of safely wielding the Nanabi's Chakra, but had very little experience in doing so.
The little control of her soul-tenant's power she had managed to gain before the invasion began served her well. No Iwa ninja crossed her path and lived. A week ago, Takigakure had managed to slip several scouts through the Iwa forces surrounding them who carried missives begging the other major Shinobi villages for aid.
Fuu doubted that any of them made it. The Kaigan Clan excelled in pursuit missions, and they were the most populous member of the Sinister Eight. The fighting had stopped three days ago while Iwa's invasion force waited for reinforcements.
Takigakure had used the interim to arm a self-destruct Fuinjutsu array that would obliterate the entire village when as much of the invasion force as possible was too committed to even think of escaping the blast. At least, that was the plan before a legion of men and women wearing black robes seemed to pop out of nowhere and began slaughtering Takigakure's civilians!
Takigakure's buildings were adorned with surveillance seals. Sure, they weren't foolproof and could be countered with the right Jutsu, but it shouldn't have been possible for them to miss thousands of these black-robed freaks.
And freaks they certainly were. Most of the ones Fuu had killed were high-Genin level, with some being low-Chuunin level. As a Jonin herself, she should have had no trouble slaughtering them. Especially since they didn't use any Jutsu and only used Chakra to enhance their strength and speed. Unfortunately, most of Fuu's combat training had been in a controlled setting. Sure, she'd been on missions, but the village elders weren't very keen on letting their only Jinchuriki leave the village.
So yes, she'd killed people before, more than a few. But she'd never encountered berserkers, let alone fanatical berserkers. They didn't care how many of their own died, as long they brought their target down with them in the end.
A singular opponent with that mentality was terrifying, a small group would be at least a hundred times worse. A ten-thousand-strong horde of them was the bane of an entire nation.
"GET OUT OF MY HOME!" Fuu lashed out with Fuuton and sliced her enemies to bits. Leaping to a nearby roof, the Jinchuriki didn't know whether to laugh or cry.
Iwa's forces were bursting through a breach in Takigakure's defenses like water from a broken dam. The black-robes' attack had diverted nearly a third of Takigakure's defenders away from the village walls, and Iwa had pounced. Once they saw them, the black-robes stopped killing denizens of Takigakure and engaged Iwa's soldiers. To Fuu, it looked like a black river and a brown river were trying to blot each other out. As the two colossal armies clashed, the black-robes all began radiating red Chakra auras, and their physical prowess skyrocketed. Very quickly, Iwa's forces were overwhelmed, and the black river split in two. One mass of black-robes surged out of the village to engage the Iwa; the other mass renewed its assault on Takigakure, this time targeting both civilians and soldiers.
"Beautiful isn't it?" A woman mused calmly just behind Fuu. The Jinchuriki snapped her head around, and her jaw hit the floor.
"T-Tara-sensei?" Fuu couldn't believe one of her teachers was just enjoying the view. And was she stripping out of her armor?
"Kindly refer to me only as Priest of Jashin-sama, Fuu-chan. All who enter his service abandon their names upon swearing themselves to our Lord and Master, the first sacrifice to the future ruler of this world! For the sake of infiltrating your village, I was permitted to use what I'd thrown away. Now, I am once more only Jashin-sama's tool, and tools do not need names. Only Hidan-sama, the greatest instrument of Jashin-sama, may keep his name regardless of his current duty." While she spoke, the woman once named Tara summoned a robe from a storage scroll and quickly donned it. The garment was not black, but the deep-red color of blood.
"Fine, Priest, go to Hell!" Fuu formed wind blades and charged at her foe. The cultist drew two swords of her own and unleashed a barrage of strikes that forced Fuu onto the defensive. The Chakra pulsing through her blades kept them from being cut to pieces by Fuu's Jutsu.
"Oh, dear Fuu-chan, were you expecting me to be as easy to kill as my Acolytes?" The Priest of Jashin cackled. "If so, I'm overjoyed to disappoint you! You have my thanks; I thought sabotaging the surveillance Jutsu array would be the most ecstatic deed I'd accomplish this day. We Priests aren't supposed to participate in the slaughter tonight until the Acolytes have killed their fill. With both Iwa and your own soldiers at far less than their best, I feared my blades would be unbloodied for the entire evening!"
"DAMN YOU!" Fuu roared and the resulting wind blast demolished the building she and Tara were standing on. Jinchuriki and Priest clashed on the ground below, and Fuu gritted her teeth. Tara was substantially more skilled than her Acolytes, at least mid-Chuunin level from what Fuu could tell. That shouldn't have been a problem for the young Jonin, but Fuu was emotionally devastated from the surprise attack on her home and her failure to save a great many civilians. Since the cultists had launched their attack, she'd watched them kill at least ten families that had been randomly selected to escape Takigakure before the self-destruct seals were triggered.
The faces of the cultists she'd killed that day flashed through her mind. Tara was not the only familiar one.
'Fucking Hell! Tara-sensei moved here when I was still in the Academy. How long have these bastards been planning this?!' Fuu's thoughts were literally cut short when Tara broke through her guard and sliced her right forearm. Rather than press her advantage, the Priest of Jashin leaped away and gazed longingly at the blood adorning her blade.
"Hidan-sama's associates need you alive, Jinchuriki, but Jashin-sama does not! The Guardian sealed within you is a hindrance to his plans." Tara licked Fuu's blood off her sword and then dropped the weapon before pulling a vial of blood from her robe's pocket. She threw the vial on the ground. When it shattered, far more blood than could possibly fit in such a small vial erupted and formed a circle surrounding a triangle beneath her.
Fuu tried to fire a Jutsu at Tara to stop whatever she was getting ready to do, but her whole body was numb after Tara cut her. 'No! I've been trained to notice when an enemy's weapon is poisoned, and Tara knows that! Whatever she used must be something I've never seen.'
"Killing you will not permanently kill the Guardian, but by the time it reforms Jashin-sama will be more than capable of holding this world by the throat!" Tara held her remaining blade above her right knee. "Behold the power of my God!" The blade entered the most complicated joint in the human body and utterly destroyed it.
"AAAAAHHHHGGHHHHH!" Fuu's scream tore through the air as an identical wound manifested on her right leg. Before she finished falling to the ground, the sadistic priest had impaled her other knee, denying Fuu the ability to even try standing up.
Tara ruthlessly mutilated one of her hands next, taking away Fuu's ability to weave hand seals. She then carved herself up like a turkey, dozens of lacerations crisscrossing her body made Fuu woozy with blood loss.
"You'd probably prefer it by now if I destroyed something vital, eh Fuu-chan?" Tara rasped. To Fuu's shock, the fanatic's wounds were steadily healing. "We Priests are ranked far too low in Jashin-sama's ranks to recover from such an injury. Death is no consequence to us, but we are expected to kill as many as possible before our end. My work is not done, there are far more for me to kill before this night is over."
Tara limped over to Fuu, her blade positioned above the Jinchuriki's heart. "Praise be to Jashin-sama for the honor of a Jinchuriki's death!"
The sword fell, but it never reached its target. Fuu was covered in a bubble that blocked the fatal strike. Another bubble streaked toward Tara and blew her head off. Fuu turned her head in the direction the bubble came from.
A tall, thin young man with pale golden eyes and brown hair covering most of his face emerged from a nearby building. He wore a light blue kimono with an orange sash and held a bamboo pipe. "Can you move?" He asked.
"No," Fuu grimaced, "she got my legs. Nice Medical Ninjutsu, by the way." The bubble that shielded her from Tara's deathblow was now healing Fuu's injuries. She knew her knees and hand would take a much more potent Jutsu than this to fully recover, but she didn't have to worry about dying from blood loss any time soon.
"Understood." The man grunted before blowing another bubble through his pipe. It merged with the bubble still covering Fuu and she found herself floating several feet off the ground. In seconds, she was elevated far above Takigakure. Her savior was also airborne; two bubbles beneath his feat served as his means to defy gravity.
"Wait, the village!" Fuu pleaded.
"Look below you, Takigakure is gone." The man gestured below him. Fuu gulped and took a moment to steel herself before looking down.
She was grateful she'd been too busy fighting for the past few hours to eat, otherwise she would have vomited. The entirety of Takigakure was ablaze. She had no clue who started the fire. Could have been Iwa, the cultists, or even her fellow Shinobi of Takigakure. Tara sabotaged the village's surveillance Jutsu array, who's to say she didn't tamper with the self-destruct array too? In that case, the village's contingency protocol said to destroy as much as possible, as quickly as possible, to deny the enemy Takigakure's secrets.
"You heard the woman, whatever she serves wants the Tailed Beasts incapacitated." The man's voice cut through Fuu's despair. "I've been watching. You're good, but you have no idea how to use your partner's power do you?"
"Partner?" Fuu echoed softly.
"Jinchuriki shine brightest when working with their Tailed Beasts, not against them. Not all the villages, or even all Jinchuriki, see it that way though. Usually, trying to manhandle your partner ends in a Jinchuriki's destruction."
'That explains why my predecessors all died. They must have treated her like nothing more than a tool and got punished for it.' Fuu realized grimly.
"I can teach you how to establish contact with the Nanabi. Everything after that has to come from you." The man willed his bubbles to carry Fuu and himself away from Takigakure. "Jinchuriki that befriend their Tailed Beasts usually gain at least some degree of accelerated healing. If your partner proves unwilling to gift you that ability, I have more powerful Medical Ninjutsu for your hand and knees."
"And in exchange?" Fuu challenged.
"Nothing. That woman called your partner a guardian for a reason; the Tailed Beasts serve a vital function, and if this cult seeks your death then they'll be after me to incapacitate my Tailed Beast as well." The man replied.
"Fair enough, but where will we go? Also, since I'll be traveling with you, I need a name!" With this stranger's help, Fuu had a sense of purpose. Purpose was good, very good. It let her forget that everything she'd come to love was now burning to the ground.
"I have a few safe houses in the region. For now, Iwa hasn't spotted them. We go to ground, and, hopefully, you and your partner become good friends very quickly. After that, we'll see." The man willed his bubbles to move faster, almost at the speed of sound.
"Your name?" Fuu insisted.
"Utakata, Jinchuriki of the Rokubi." A burst of Chakra saw the bubbles break the sound barrier several times over. By the time Fuu turned her head to see Takigakure one last time, it was concealed by the curvature of the earth.
KA-10, commander of the Takigakure invasion force and Jonin of the Kaigan Clan, surveyed the burnt remnants of the village he'd been ordered to capture with as few casualties as possible. The enemy Shinobi, with the exception of the Nanabi's Jinchuriki, were to be killed to the last man, but Onoki-sama wanted the civilians alive. Adult civilians could be brainwashed and turned into disposable soldiers. Children could be cultivated and raised into Shinobi once they were relieved of any loyalty or affections outside of Iwa.
"KA-10-dono, DO-20-dono has completed her initial scan of the village and reports no further Fuinjutsu arrays." An Iwa scout, one of the very few who had survived the disastrous arrival of the black-robes, reported in.
The Sinister Eight clans never used their names while at war or on missions. The letters in their call signs indicated their clan, while the numbers referenced their approximate skill and power levels. With the exception of numbers one through five, the numbers could be held by multiple people.
"Good, I have new orders for the Dorunuma. They are to stand down and await further instructions." KA-10 knew the Dorunuma had worked themselves ragged trying to counter the surveillance Fuinjutsu array. He had no doubt their skills would be needed again soon, but they'd earned a break.
'All of my surviving soldiers need rest, even if it's just a few hours.' KA-10 grimaced. The black-robes had destroyed nearly the entire force. The only divisions left were the once composed of Sinister Eight clan members. Even those took some casualties before the black-robes were killed. Where did they come from? Which village, if any, did they serve? And how were they conditioned to fight with such utter disregard for their own lives?!
KA-10 had fought berserkers before; some of Iwa's forces even encouraged such tactics. But most of them needed a trigger of some sort, and their rage only lasted so long before leaving them helpless. But the black-robes were cut from a different cloth. Typically, berserkers utilized techniques that made them immune or highly resistant to pain. Such Jutsu remove the limiter the human brain imposes on the muscles to prevent self-harm, allowing a berserker to fight with the entirety of their physical might.
The black-robes used no such technique. The pain inflicted upon them as they hurled themselves against the Iwa and Takigakure soldiers brought them to varying degrees of ecstasy. It wasn't arousal, not quite, but it was very close. KA-10 couldn't fault his men for faltering against such a foe. Especially not when all of them fought with the might and skill of a low-Chuunin. The invasion force was primarily composed of low-Chuunin and high-Genin. The black-robes not only equaled or exceeded Iwa's army in skill, but their Kinjutsu granted them physical prowess beyond what any Genin could hope to match.
The only saving grace was that the Jutsu that turned their Chakra red was fatal if maintained for too long. Hundreds of the black-robes had died from overusing it before they could be killed by Iwa.
It took two more hours for what was left of the invasion force to set up camp inside the charred corpse of Takigakure. The fires that destroyed the village left few structurally sound buildings in their wake, but that was what Doton Jutsu were for. A few reinforcement techniques here, some collaborative house-creation Jutsu there, and Iwa's invasion force no longer had to worry about the elements while they slept.
Fully investigating the village's remnants could wait until morning. 'At the start of this invasion, we were ten thousand strong without counting the Sinister Eight Division, which comprised another thousand. Takigakure bled us to five thousand conventional soldiers and even killed fifty of the Sinister Eight. It took them nearly a month to do that, then the black-robes appear and kill nearly all of the remaining conventional soldiers and another twenty Sinister Eight in a single night!' KA-10 wanted to laugh at the absurdity of it all, but his men were watching. He couldn't afford to break down in front of them; morale was already low enough.
An hour later, KA-10 had finished giving out orders to his men and was about to get some sleep when a woman's voice thundered across the Iwa encampment.
"Oh, this is too precious! A shattered legion taking a nap in enemy territory? After killing all our Acolytes? That won't do, that simply will not do at all!"
"Quite so, my fellow Priest." A male voice boomed. "We must finish our Acolytes' holy task. They disposed of Iwa's trash, leaving the jewels for us to pluck. Such a thoughtful flock we lost today."
"We have lost nothing." Another woman's voice reprimanded. "When Jashin-sama conquers this world, even the lowest of his servants shall be substantially rewarded. Those who opposed him, however, will beg for death everlasting."
KA-10 was on the move from the instant the first Priest's taunt reached his ears. "How many?" His snow leopard was shivering, but managed to whimper out a response. "Ninety-nine? ALL FORCES, SEARCH AND DESTROY!"
"The Commander wants to play Hide-and-Seek."
"Does he think we're children or is he a child at heart himself?"
"Great question! We'll have to tear his still-beating heart out to get the answer!"
The threats and taunts of the Priests reverberated in the Iwa's ears long after they were spoken. They tried dispelling what they thought was a Genjutsu of some sort, but what was afflicting them was no Jutsu but something much more primal.
Pure, unadulterated terror.
Still, they were the Sinister Eight. If they couldn't fight through fear, they'd never have reached that status in the eyes of the other villages. They were also all at least mid-Chuunin level, with some of them being high-Chuunin.
Over the next four hours, one by one, KA-10's units stopped reporting in. The ruins of Takigakure had become a tomb for his men. He refused to let it become his tomb. He and his snow leopard awaited their prey in what used to be Takigakure's largest market square. Three Priests soon walked into view. Not a single scratch was on them.
"Nearly a thousand Sinister Eight members killed by less than a hundred of you. How!?" KA-10 demanded.
"Like this!" All three Priests said in unison as a blood-red mist curled around them. It vanished almost as soon as it appeared, leaving their skin nearly the same shade of red.
KA-10 barely managed to dodge the Taijutsu assault launched by his foes. That Jutsu had enhanced their strength and speed tremendously and reminded him of the Green Beast of Konoha's signature technique.
"Are you comparing Jashin-sama's blessing to that primitive Eight Gates Technique?" One of the Priests noticed the contemplative look on KA-10's face. "You're not entirely wrong. The principles are similar, but our God's grace is given after sacrificing a great deal of lives to him. Our Acolytes were bound to us in life; every life they took became ours to trade for this boon. We've gained a tremendous amount of life force on this lovely evening. Jashin-sama will be pleased!"
"Hmph!" KA-10 grunted as he fended off his three assailants. His snow leopard killed one and he killed another before the third impaled his snow leopard on a spear and stabbed him in the shoulder with a dagger.
"You'll die for that!" KA-10 leaped away before flashing through several hand seals. The water vapor in the air flash froze into ice spikes that rushed toward the Priest. The man smiled and licked his dagger clean. With a single hand seal, the blood of his fellow Priests rushed toward him and formed a triangle with a circle in the instant before KA-10's Jutsu hit him.
The spikes were aimed at every vital organ, and all of them were annihilated by the Jutsu. The Priest died with a smile on his face, while KA-10 just died.
A man wearing a crimson robe with long black hair and piercing blue eyes strolled leisurely through the streets of Kusagakure. His halberd was slick with the blood of thousands of Kusagakure ninja and at least three times that number of civilians. The few Shinobi left in the village, including their leader, had rallied a few hundred feet ahead of him to make a final stand. There were no civilians to evacuate; the crimson-robed man had killed them all before switching his attention to the ninja in the village.
The Shinobi of Kusagakure had thrown everything they had at the intruder. Genjutsu, Ninjutsu, Taijutsu, and even a few Kinjutsu. Nothing worked for more than a few seconds. The man seemed immune to Genjutsu and had strength, speed, and durability far beyond anything they had ever seen. Three times, it seemed they had managed to overwhelm and kill him, but on each occasion he came back to life and all his injuries were healed. It was as if he had multiple lives. According to Kusagakure's sensor types, the man's Chakra was restored with each "resurrection".
Saito, village chief of Kusagakure, glared at the man. "What are you?!"
"Finally, the right question!" The man laughed. "The five Great Shinobi Villages have their Kage, and Hidan-sama has his five Cardinals. You can call me Tsuchisuukikyou!" (Earth Cardinal).
Tsuchisuukikyou rushed at the fifty Shinobi that now represented the entire population of Kusagakure. In less than a minute, all of them were dead. "Glory to Jashin-sama!" A black pulse radiated from Tsuchisuukikyou and washed over every corpse in the village. A contented sigh resonated in Tsuchisuukikyou's mind as Jashin claimed every soul in the fallen village.
As Tsuchisuukikyou left Kusagakure, he felt the death of the last of the one hundred Priests who had laid siege to Takigakure. "None of them survived? Excellent! Their Bishop will ensure that the souls they reaped are claimed by Jashin-sama." The servant of Jashin took a moment to sense Hidan's current location before walking in his direction. He knew that Hidan was already aware of what transpired this evening, but the High Priest of Jashin preferred to be informed directly of his cult's major victories.
Chapter End
Well, that escalated quickly! The war just started and already one village has been wiped off the map while another was completely depopulated. Both Nagato and Obito view Jashin's cult as a serious threat to Akatsuki's goals, and this chapter demonstrates some of the reasons why.
For context, the power boost the Acolytes get by draining their life force is equal to the power canon-Sasuke had in the Forest of Death when his Curse Mark activated for the first time. No normal Genin can hope to match that level of power, and even some Chuunin would struggle against it.
The Priests' power-up is equivalent to opening three of the Eight Gates. Imagine the damage that nearly a hundred people as strong as 3-Gates Rock Lee can cause, combined with their own version of Hidan's curse technique, and you can see why the Sinister Eight members were screwed.
The biggest weakness of Hidan's curse is the time he needs to draw the circle after he gets his victim's blood. That weakness doesn't matter much to him since he's immortal, but a mortal cultist is something else entirely. Giving them blood-manipulation techniques allows them to draw the circle much more rapidly, and thus eliminates the weakness.
Thank you for reading!