Thank you all so much for reading!
I've written to Chapter 24. Chapter 25 will be ready soon. I'm brainstorming what to write as my Chapter 25.5.
Without further ado...
CHAPTER 19
Lio sat inside a portable toilet close to the auction area.
She didn't need to use the toilet, setting down several pieces of toilet paper on the rim of the toilet seat and plopping down with a heavy exhale. Her waiter's uniform didn't stain in that fluid movement. She just wanted to be alone for a moment.
She grunted wearily as she loosened her bowtie and pulled off her white gloves, and she tucked them into a pocket inside her long-sleeved white dress shirt. Then she took out a scroll from her pants pocket and held it in both of her hands.
Her lips tightened into a straight line, looking down on that seemingly insignificant scroll with her luminously pink eyes.
"Absence makes the heart grow fonder…" she whispered and unfurled the short scroll, revealing an extremely complex and high-level storage seal. The seal looked to have been scorched black, and the strokes of the kanji crinkled when Lio absentmindedly brushed her thumb over it, destabilising the powerful storage seal.
The girl studied the seal, recognising the handiwork of Kushina Uzumaki and frowning disapprovingly; besides any of the tailed beasts, the seal would have securely held anything in its possession, but in this particular case, the seal was ineffective. Lio suspected that this same seal had been written over and over again for the past three years since Kushina had taken Lio's wings, for the simple fact that Lio's wings could not be contained.
At least, not using any conventional technique.
At that thought, Lio's head lowered and she gnawed on her tongue.
Memories raced in her mind of her time in Hidden Star, before Naruto set her free, and she grit her teeth, narrowing her eyes at the seal as her stare glazed over with hot tears—
"Subject appears to have an enhanced healing ability."
Another needle was driven under Lio's thumb, dislodging her fingernail as the girls screamed. Her vision turned hot, burning white and the sound of her wails shredded the atmosphere of the soundproofed, chakra-proofed room. She struggled and thrashed and twisted as hard as she could, but her limbs were restrained tightly to a chair that was nailed to the ground.
Lio's skeletal wings were outstretched on both sides, nailed to the wall by short, jagged stakes fashioned from the pink meteorite.
Pink chakra streaming out of Lio's pores set fire to the air, sucking out what oxygen there was in the room and inverting the effects of the earth's gravity. Any chakra other than Lio's pink chakra, including natural chakra, was immediately eviscerated and scorched out of the atmosphere in small bursts of air pressure. However, the Doctor had equipped herself with a hazmat suit, strong oxygen tanks, and shoes that kept her feet on the ground.
Try as she might, Lio couldn't free herself.
A spotlight beamed down from the ceiling through a shard of pink meteorite onto the girl, projecting turgid pink light onto the girl alone. The shard of pink meteorite hanging over her head weakened her, absorbing the pink chakra ebbing from Lio's body and reversing the disastrous effects of the girl's pain.
It was ironic that the source of Lio's unearthly abilities was also her greatest physical weakness.
The pink light dimmed slightly and the Doctor used a pair of pliers to clamp down on the ends of the two needles in Lio's thumbs. The needles impaled into her thumb were twisted out and the girl lost consciousness for the briefest moment, and the wound healed instantly; the droplets of blood on the needle floated from the needle and back into Lio's thumb, sealing up the wound.
A woman wearing a hazmat suit leaned forward, observing the weeping child with a sympathetic smile.
"That's a good girl," the Doctor cooed, stroking Lio's cheek as the girl breathlessly cried, twisting away from her hand. A frown flashed across her expression at Lio's anguished rejection, and she stood upright, out of the rays of the pink meteorite. She spoke aloud of the voice recorder on a trolley of instruments, "Subject's healing properties could be harvested and reproduced for medical purposes. Healing minor cuts and wounds…possibly."
The Doctor increased the brightness of the pink light, and Lio wilted with a whimper.
"Commencing the second test." She produced an electric bone saw from the trolley and Lio shook her head frantically, leaning away as much as she was able, but her left hand was caught and fastened down.
The Doctor began sawing off her hand
—Suddenly, she blinked and realised she was squeezing the scroll in her fists. She hurriedly tried to straighten out the scroll on her lap, leaning forward when she was satisfied that the seal had not been damaged too much.
Her heart sank when she started feeling a regular thrum on her fingers, transmitted through the seal and the scroll. Wisps of pink mist harmlessly oozed out of the burned seal and seeped into Lio's fingertips, merging with her chakra coils.
Pink light—gotten from shining a normal light through a section of the pink meteorite—and pink chakra, which was what happened when pink light mixed with chakra was dangerously radioactive. A little exposure could result in severe burns, destroyed cells that couldn't ever heal again, or birth defects if the person exposed was at any stage pregnant, and a strong exposure would result in immediate painful death at best and dispersed body parts at the atomic level at worst. Meaning, Lio's chakra could erase parts of a person's body like dandelions in a faint gust of wind, painfully and permanently
It was a terrible sight that Lio had been made to watch for as long as she could remember.
She didn't know how Kushina was able to keep her wings for three years without dying a terrible death, but it certainly couldn't have been good for her health.
That lifted Lio's mood a little, only for it to drop again when more pink mist coiled out of the seal, denser, and seeped into her hands, pleading for freedom. For her wings to be reunited with the rest of her being.
But when Lio made to release her wings, more memories flickered past her mind and she winced away.
"No…" she sobbed, reaching to unravel the storage seal again but getting bombarded with another memory. This one was when she was three years old with her first pet, a rabbit named Ito.
Ito lived only for four days before the uncontrolled radiation pouring from Lio finished searing off all the hairs on his body, mangled his bones, burst his eyes, loosened the cells in his lower jaw, and then finally killed him. All the while, the Doctor and the other scientists observed the demise of the poor creature, and the suffering of the child that unintentionally killed the rabbit by simply existing around it. They also took frantic notes of the girl's tormented reaction.
"Ito, no…" Lio whispered in a broken voice. The scroll in her hands flickered, changing for a split second into the hairless, mottled pink, eyeless animal as it tiredly gnawed at her fingers before it leaned into her hand and died. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry…"
She blinked and the scroll was once again in her hands.
The scroll started weighing ten times its normal weight. A sob racked Lio's chest and tears fell from her eyes, splashing onto the burned storage seal, and sizzling into steam on impact.
She blinked and she was five years old, cradling an old woman in her arms and weeping inconsolably as the woman closed her eyes for the final time, perishing. The woman had lost all of her hair and the skin of her hands and face was scorched off, revealing blackened bone. Her left eye was dried up and oozing down her cheek while the left was milky white with blindness.
"Ana," Lio said in a pained whisper. Shaking her head and sobbing. "It was an accident. I'm sorry."
Even after learning to suppress her pink chakra into herself, one small moment of anger during a simple game of checkers forced the chakra out and killed her friend.
The scroll containing her wings began to represent her old life.
Trapped.
Alone.
Surrounded by death, and a crowd of observing scientists.
That was her life before Naruto set her free.
Zooming out, Lio realised that every single day of the three years she didn't have her wings had been wonderful, especially because she had Naruto; she woke up and eagerly looked forward to the day ahead. She hugged Naruto to her heart's content, went off to school, returned and was given something of value to do to further the goals of the organisation.
She was treated like a normal human being.
She had dignity.
She had value.
Naruto had given her comfort in her abilities, handing over all of the lesson scrolls he had stolen from the research facility she was imprisoned in so that she could train to use her chakra more reliably. It was why the girl was more assured in using her chakra and her innate abilities provided by her chakra.
Lio inhaled deeply and palmed her eyes, messily cleaning her tears and sniffing. "Hold on," she whispered to the scroll, and the tendrils of pink mist flinched. The wings weren't sentient, it was simply a physical, tangible manifestation of her chakra that wanted to reconnect with the source of its chakra, like a close sibling that was returning from a long journey reconnecting with their sibling. Lio gave the scroll and watery smile. "Just…hold on."
Deep down, the wings represented a section of her mind that wanted her to be whole again. It was part of her body and had been since she was a baby.
She wanted to be complete.
But Lio couldn't find the strength to follow through; she had dreamed of this day but now, having her wings back and in her hands, she couldn't…
She couldn't do it…
She cursed through grit teeth and sobbed, pressing the scroll to her brow as she leaned onto her knees. "C'mon, Lio. Do it." She ground her teeth and her right foot bounced repeatedly on the ground. "Do it. Do it. Do—"
"Miss Lio," a voice interrupted the girl's attempts at encouraging herself up and the girl shot to her feet in surprise. The person called her name again, politely knocking on the door of the portable restroom, "Miss Lio, are you alright? It's been twenty minutes…"
Lio cleared her throat and sniffed, rubbing her eyes. "I'm fine. Just lost track of time." She neatly pushed the scroll into her pocket and removed a handkerchief from the pocket of her dress shirt, dabbing at the corners of her eyes. "I'll be right out."
"You're sure you don't need anything?" the person leaned in close to the door and whispered in a desperate, yet delicate voice, "Did it happen? I've got wipes and a pad with me. Do you want me to come in?"
Lio blushed furiously. "I said I'm fine." She gaped in embarrassment as the door handle of the portable restroom rattled once, and Lio's face turned an even darker shade of red. She whisper-yelled in mortified outrage, gripping the handle before the other woman broke into the restroom, "Stop it! Stop it now!"
Her biology teacher in Kumo's Civilian Academy, a young woman who had been a teacher in the school for years, had spoken privately with One from Chill (Naruto's disguise) and alerted him to give Lio a personalised "sex talk" sooner rather than later. The girl was remarkably smart and years too mentally mature for any average eleven-year-old, so the teacher assumed that her body would soon catch up with her mind.
Since Naruto was also a child and his knowledge of the "sex talk" was painfully limited to the barest of the basics, he tasked a woman in their organisation who was a junior medical student in the Kumo hospital to talk to both of them about it. He also wanted to know what to keep an eye on in terms of his puberty, Lio's puberty, and everything afterwards. Killing three birds with one stone; Naruto was proud when he made that decision.
He soon regretted his decision.
It was a torturous experience.
Naruto blanked out and went into a catatonic state near the end of the extensive, detailed, and explicitly diagrammed lecture on the male and female anatomy, the gradual changes that were currently taking place in their bodies, the importance of those changes taking place, how it was perfectly healthy what was happening at that very moment, and the experiences that were to come. The natural and beautiful, yet horrible and awkward experiences that were to come.
She strongly recommended they both start using deodorant now so that they start getting used to it.
Lio's hands were essentially glued to her face throughout the ordeal. She begged for the ground to open up and swallow her.
They hadn't been able to hold hands for several weeks.
Somehow, word got out among the handful of female group members who worked close to Naruto and Lio, and they were constantly on red alert around Lio, ready and equipped for the girl's first menstrual cycle, just in case Lio herself was not ready for it.
Lio pushed the restroom door open and glared at the woman on the other side. The woman, a diminutive lady in her late thirties with curly, dark hair and black eyes, regarded Lio with a scrutinising stare, before a playful smirk lifted on her face, holding her hands up defensively when Lio's glare intensified.
"I just wanted to make sure, miss."
Lio pulled down her black beanie over her ears, walking around the woman. She tugged her bowtie neatly back into place and slid the white gloves back on her hands. "Mind your business, Miss Sachi," Lio rudely said. The girl's airy voice cracked, but only a little, and the woman named Sachi smiled innocently, trailing behind the Boss's Guardian Angel with her hands clasped behind her back. "Is everything in place?"
"Just some trouble with the sound system, but it's being sorted as we speak."
Lio nodded and strolled into the auction area, walking through the middle of a sea of chairs. The guests were beginning to filter into the hall and a low drone of conversation flitted around carelessly, and hardly anyone paid attention as Lio and Sachi passed them, strolling to the stage.
Breakfast, lunch and dinner for the guests was a 24/7 arrangement and the same went for room service, and general hospitality; the more rested and refreshed the guests were, the more likely they were to spend money, either at the auction or in the smaller stores in the hideout.
Lio stood aside as the Auctioneer bustled out of the backroom with a thick book, bowing to the girl in a graceful flourish and then continuing his journey to the lectern. He placed the book on the lectern and opened it, removing a pair of glasses from his front pocket and wearing it, peering down into the book and idly flipping through the pages.
The speakers squeaked and howled briefly as they turned on.
Sachi held the backroom curtain open a little and Lio ducked inside, entering the room. The room was not as congested as it had been previously, as most of the items that had been put on display in the auction had been sold and were moved to a separate room for the buyers to collect later. Whisper Group could also transport the products to the buyers, though at an additional cost.
Even at that, the room was still busy with people sorting the remaining items and dusting them. A suit of red samurai armour being worn by a faceless mannequin was being carefully raised onto a trolley, and a strange hourglass-shaped battle fan that went along with the armour was placed in the hands of the mannequin; the fan was made from an unnaturally hard material, far stronger and more durable than iron, yet it was extremely light.
The Fire Country Appraiser Whisper Group had hired told them that, though he didn't know what the hourglass was called, he could verify that the armour and the battle fan were dated from the time of the First Hokage and it was likely used during the Warring States Era. It could have very well been worn by Madara Uchiha up until his battle against Hashirama Senju, and that was the story their organisation was going with to add some mystique and wonder to their illegal acquisition of the armour, stolen from a noble in Kumo during their three days of robberies (Read: Chapter 6).
Naruto didn't particularly care about historical sentiments. The money that the armour and battle fan would be sold for would serve to further the organisation's widening reach across the continent.
Similar to her boss, Lio ignored the armour and her eyes drifted.
Some necklaces were arranged in such a way that after the suit of armour and battle fan had been sold, they would immediately follow to be presented at the auction.
At the end of the arrangement of items was a rough block of rock that was roughly seven feet long and two and a half feet wide.
Samehada.
It had been this way since it had absorbed One's senjutsu nature chakra (Read: Chapter 9). Lio could sense the life inside the sword, but it still didn't show any signs of breaking free of its rocky prison.
Maybe a wealthy person would buy it as a conversation piece in their house; whether the Samehada woke up was none of Whisper Group's business.
Lio went to the two accountants assigned to the backroom and told them that the auction was rounding up in four days and that she wanted every last item gone before then when she heard the Auctioneer tap the microphone on his lectern. "Testing, testing, one-two, one-two…" the speakers shrieked and the Auctioneer leaned away from the microphone, speaking to technical staff and instructing them to do something about the feedback on the speakers. "Testing, one-two. One-two." The feedback wasn't so bad this time and the Auctioneer rolled his wrist at the technical staff, telling them that the sound was getting better. "Good morning, everyone. We are about to begin. Please, if you wish to participate in today's events, kindly proceed to the Auction Area. Thank you."
Group members started placing numbered paddles on the seats, also politely answering questions from the guests about the faulty speakers.
Lio and Sachi made their way out of the backroom, quietly walking off the stage and into the main area. Lio's eyes darted to the left when she caught someone raising a paddle for attention. She jerked her head to the person and a group member rushed to them, but the man declined without a word, waving the server away and pointing at Lio.
Lio paused, squinting her eyes at the guest who wanted her attention. It was an ancient man with shaggy, brittle grey hair that reached his lower back and deep, jagged wrinkles on his tersely frowning face. Lio felt a heavy sigh come out from her nose at the man's disapproving black eyes, more so at his rigid posture and his wrinkleless black and red kimono; she was getting tired of telling guests that she wasn't a debt slave and that they couldn't afford her services if they even tried.
She squared her shoulders and walked to the man, holding up a hand and stopping Sachi when she made to follow her. Sachi nodded curtly and drifted out of the area, while Lio walked to the eighth row of the seats on the left side of the hall, standing with her hands tucked formally at her back and a slight smile on her lips.
"Morning, sir."
"Hm…" the old man looked at her, from head to toe. Lio prepared herself for the wave of disgust that inevitably would turn her stomach at the man's critical stare, but nothing like that happened. Although he was scowling irritably, his gaze wasn't lecherous. He dropped the auctioning paddle on his lap. "You seem to be the one in charge of this whole operation."
Lio's smile became tighter. "That would be my boss, sir."
"That may be so, but you hold significant sway among your older colleagues, or am I wrong?" the man snapped impatiently. His voice was deep but wheezing, as if every word took the breath out of his lungs, deflating him. All the more astonishing how the man could spew so much from his mouth. "Don't lie to me, girl. I have eyes, you know."
"You're not wrong, sir." Lio shrugged, the wane smile on her lips never reaching her watchful pink eyes.
The man seemed to relax a little at her response, sitting back and breathing in slowly. He closed his eyes. "Good. Now, listen carefully, girl." His eyes snapped open and his irises were red, twisting hypnotically with three tomoe, meeting Lio's eyes and holding her stare. "Bring my gunbai, my armour, and your boss. Now."
The man's eyes reflected on Lio's pink eyes, imprinted and whirling clockwise in her sockets, and the girl cocked her head to the side. "Oh…"
The man snapped, sitting forward, "What are you waiting for?"
Lio blinked and the sharingan in her eyes shattered, breaking the illusion. "You've got the sharingan…that must mean you're an Uchiha." She smirked curiously and crossed her arms, savouring the man's visible surprise at her feet; breaking a sharingan genjutsu was rare for anyone without a sharingan. Someone her age shouldn't have that ability. "I like your eyes. Can I have them?"
Her hand shot down to the man's face in a blitz of speed and the man, defying his age, caught her wrist an inch from his face, pointer and middle finger poised to scoop his eyes out from his upper eyelid. The man gaped, shocked at what had happened. His sharingan evolved and his eyes widened, catching Lio's gaze again and freezing her under his look. He put aside his search for his legendary equipment and the boss of the organisation, and asked, "Who are you? Speak now, girl."
No normal person her age could dispel a sharingan illusion, especially not that quickly. Lio understood that much.
Lio lilted to the side, swaying as if she was sleepy before she became rigid and the Mangekyo sharingan in her eyes splintered in half, dispelling the illusion as she blinked once. Her pink eyes darted down to the hand on her wrist, then back to the man's eyes. She bared her teeth and her eyes glowed. "Don't. Touch." She ripped her wrist from his hold, amazing the man again at the strength of the move. Pink chakra frothed in her eyes and she said in a deathly low voice, "Let's take this elsewhere, sir." Her burning eyes danced from left to right, spotting some eyes on them and the small commotion that had arisen from Lio reaching for the man's sharingan. The ninjas in the midst also sensed the low burst of chakra whenever the man cast an illusion on the girl. Lio spoke through her teeth, a deadly edge in her voice, "We don't want to make a scene."
The old her would have allowed her pink chakra to escape her body and scatter the man's molecules into oblivion, but she was different now.
She stood over the man and stared brazenly into his sharingan, her face contorted in suppressed anger at his audacity.
The man met her fierce look, holding it for a moment before he scoffed and deactivated his eyes. "Fine." He stood up and walked ahead of her with regal steps, hands at his back. "Hurry now, child."
Lio ground her teeth and hot air exhaled from her nose, clenching her hands to reign in control of her rampant emotions. She bowed stiffly and muttered apologies to the ruffled guests who watched them, following the man out of the auction area.
"Good morning once again. We are all set to begin," the Auctioneer announced over the loudspeakers. As if on cue, more people filtered through the entrance of the hall, surging in at a dignified pace and finding their seats; from crime lords to petty thieves who still had some cash to spend on this momentous occasion, they filled the hall as they did previously, though this particular time, Lio was no glad that they did.
She weaved through the crowd diligently, resembling a blur that doggedly zigzagged after the man with the sharingan, who seemingly walked with even, careful steps but also looked to be ten steps ahead of her, gaining further distance.
Lio grated her teeth and finally burst out of the hall, looking around her and scowling fiercely when she didn't see the man anymore. She lifted her right wrist to her lips and muttered, "Lock down the exits. No one leaves the area. Find him."
She didn't get any verbal response, but there was an imperceptible shift in the air.
Half of the waiters in the hall—those trained in the shinobi or samurai fighting styles—excused themselves, dipping out of the hall in speedy runs from both of Lio's sides. The waiters joined the guards and blocked the exit out of the hideout, also flooding down the tunnels and kicking down doors to the accommodations area, commencing impromptu searches for the man who had attacked Lio with the genjutsu.
"Shadows, remain in your positions till I say otherwise." There was a soundless crackle in Lio's ear after her order, and the group members residing in the shadows in the vast tunnel remained situated in place, not moving.
The guests inside the auction hall were none the wiser, hardly noticing as most of the servers vanished as their eyes were drawn to the regal and powerful samurai armour set that was wheeled out, accompanied by the gunbai. Lio warily looked at the armour reportedly used by Madara Uchiha, and her mouth was pressed into a tense line.
Through the veneer of the sharingan illusion, the man had asked for his armour and the battle fan—the man had called it his gunbai. She didn't want to believe that it was indeed Madara Uchiha who had tussled with her, given that that would make him over a hundred years old…
The group members stalking in the shadows near the entrance of the auction area watched the grim expression that fell over Lio's face, and she clapped her hands together and shut her eyes, flashing through sixteen intricate hand seals as she mumbled the seals under her breath, moulding her chakra.
"Mysterious Peacock Method: Fish Eyes."
Blips of pink and white particles shed from her hands and neck, corroding and fraying the collar of her dress shirt, as well as the bowtie and her gloves. The particles fell off her skin like faint sparkles that rose in the air like a thin mist. Gradually, the particles clumped together till they were roughly the same size as tiny fish eyes, numbering about a hundred and glittering faintly like distant stars as they lifted higher into the ceiling, spreading around in all directions.
Lio's pink eyes dimmed and turned milky white, distributing her sense of sight to all of the eyes floating away until her natural eyes became blind. She shut down her True Spatial Awareness ability, not wanting to be overextended by juggling both techniques at the same time. She would have to trust that the group members in the shadows would watch her back—
Lio's pale eyes widened.
Twenty of the fish eyes found dead group members close to the mechanical elevator at the exit of the hideout. The group members that were still alive savagely hacked at each other, battling viciously with their weapons, and when their weapons became too slippery with blood and they could no longer hold it in their hands, they resorted to slamming hard blows at each other, strangling and kicking with an intensity that shocked Lio to the core.
There were about twenty people strewn on the floor, bleeding and dying. Some crawled painfully, searching for others to fight, and those that were still on their feet stomped on their downed comrade's skulls; waiters and guards, it didn't matter, their clothes were damp with blood and viscera.
Lio saw that their eyes were covered by the sharingan.
The illusions forced on them made them see each other as enemies.
Meanwhile, a dozen of the fish eyes saw the Uchiha man walk over the dead, his sharingan turning and sending a jagged, toothy smirk at the eyes staring at him. He walked to the mechanical elevator and pressed the button.
Lio's legs moved before she tore her hands apart, ending the jutsu; the fish eyes popped into nonexistence and the loose bits of Lio's chakra wandered the air, floating back to the girl as she raced to the area. The milky sheen of blindness lifted from her eyes and her piercing pink vision narrowed.
She exited the main area and sped into a wide corridor. The lights overhead barely caught the girl as she blazed down, deftly turning left when she met a sharp corner and burst into the entrance hall, which was packed with dead bodies. Lio recognised all of them.
The last surviving group member pulled a kunai out from his weapon pouch and stabbed it straight into the left side of his neck, dragging it across his throat to the right side, just as Lio tackled him to the ground.
He gurgled and shook, the red sharingan in his eyes blinking off and replaced by the murky brown eyes of the fallen man, who looked up at the alarmed girl hurriedly staunching the long, deep wound in his throat with her handkerchief. It was futile. His chest vibrated and the girl, eyes glazed with tears, pushed as hard as she could on the weeping wound on his neck, but the man eventually slumped, head falling back and facing his left as the light in his eyes faded.
Ding!
The mechanical elevator sounded. Lio's head swivelled toward the sound and her stare was vengeful, baring her teeth like a feral animal. Her eyes shone wide like spotlights, trained on the Uchiha man who had committed this heinous act. Radiative pink chakra fell from her skin like a dense toxic fog, covering all of the corpses but not touching them, rather floating wide and surging to Madara Uchiha as he stepped into the elevator.
The girl vanished as the pink fog consumed every corner of the room.
His cocky smirk never left his face, even as the elevator door shut and the pink fog slammed into the elevator. His expression fell when wisps of pink mist seemed into the elevator, trickling through the tightly sealed doors and pooling on the floor.
He hissed in pain as a loose coil of the thickening mist lapped at his feet, corroding one side of his shinobi sandals at that slight graze.
"Bothersome child," the man spat and his sharingan evolved to the Eternal Mangekyo. A shroud of chakra covered him and a slim, red ribcage enclosed him, harshly pushing the strange pink chakra to the corners of the elevator, away from him. Even then, the chakra chipped away at the individual molecules of chakra that made up the ethereal ribcage, whittling it down at a surprising pace.
The group members at the top of the elevator cranked the gears, raising the elevator at a steady pace. The pink chakra receded the higher the elevator travelled, but the man suspected it was always nearby. He felt a hard slam underneath the elevator, at his exact position, and he frowned, looking down with his blood-red eyes.
"I wanted to do this discreetly," Madara said in a grumble, rolling his neck and tucking his hands into his sleeves. The elevator jolted to a stop, likely because the girl had commanded those at the top to stop; it was only because of the way the elevator was engineered that it wasn't freefalling. Madara's scowl contorted his face evilly and the ribcage flared, pushing away the pink mist briefly. The elevator started to descend. The Uchiha mused in a growling tone, "Mindless thugs like these should never have been reasoned with. I see that now." The pink mist surged into the elevator, pushing through the tightly sealed entrance. The elevator slammed as it landed unceremoniously. Madara's ribcage enlarged, becoming more defined. His sharingan watched the entrance of the elevator and his hands slipped out from his sleeves, now wielding two short scythes attached to the other by a long chain. The chain fell heavily on the ground. Madara rolled his shoulders. "I'll have Zetsu study that girl as soon as I get out."
A jarring slam smashed into the entrance of the elevator and the man braced himself, standing at a ready stance.
Another crash impacted the doors, jostling the elevator and deeply denting the doors inwards. More fog streamed inside and the man just about caught sight of a single shining pink eye peering inside through the small gap, glowering with animalistic fury.
The eye slipped back, vanishing into the fog.
A third slam punched into the elevator and a single hand gripped one of the doors, holding it so tightly that the metal groaned and bent. A fourth slam caved in the other elevator door, and the other hand tore the other door clean off the elevator, sucking it into the mist where it vanished and not so much as a thud could be heard.
Madara narrowed his sharingan into the fog, a bead of sweat trickling from his brow.
He couldn't see anything.
He couldn't sense anything.
His evolved sharingan didn't see any technique being used to copy; this was all chakra and killer intent.
Looking into the wall of pink fog with his sharingan on the other side of the elevator was like looking into the depths of pure nothingness.
It was limitless. Endless. Infinite.
For a moment, Madara felt as if he was floating. Astronomically high in the air, where oxygen was thin and no sound travelled. The only thing keeping him away from being sucked into the vacuum of space was the Susanno that shrouded him, though the effects of the girl's chakra and killer intent ebbed, weaving and weaving the very fabric of the ethereal ribcage.
The light in the elevator burst and sparks sprayed down on him, delving him into flickering darkness, barely illuminated by his susanno. He could only have a sense of his immediate environment because of his senses, but he couldn't feel anything outside of the elevator.
It was an isolating feeling that did something to the man, coming down on his shoulders and knees, as if he was carrying the full weight of the loneliness he felt all his life; a culmination of all his life decisions and ambitions raced through his brain. He was forced to face his selfishness for power and greatness, walking by himself on a wide and steep road paved with the dead bodies of both his allies and enemies, those who once loved him and those who hated him with all their being. The harder he climbed, the older he felt and the further away his goals were. The loathing and egotism of his goals hugged him like a deathly weight.
He was alone.
Tired and alone.
Madara shook his head and inhaled large gulps of air, fighting to stay on his feet and his old knees wailed for rest; the oxygen in his Susanno was becoming thinner.
The pink fog oozed into the elevator, moving with the oozing consistency of honey and surrounding the Uchiha's ribcage, further isolating him from the rest of the world. It was as if he was floating inside a shell of his own making, the Susanno, and the nearest person was lightyears away.
It was a vacuum, absorbing all light and sound.
Hashirama's face on Madara's chest opened its mouth and groaned silently, and yet even then, Madara didn't feel it. He didn't hear it.
The Uchiha gnashed his teeth and yelled, but his voice sounded as if he was whispering faintly from the end of a tunnel, "What is this…?"
The fog pushed against the Uchiha's Susanno, crushing it little by little through sheer overwhelming power, but the man barely noticed; his eyes were brought down to a set of bright, compound pink eyes moving at the front of the red ethereal ribcage, contrasting against the blood-coloured tone of his Susanno.
A set of white, hungry teeth opened underneath the eyes, watering dangerously.
"I want those eyes…" Lio trilled in a light voice, her voice carrying over the vacuum of her pink fog. The corners of her eyes curled up with her wide smile and she slammed a firm hand on the ribcage, and a spiderweb of cracks formed, much to Madara's horror. Her voice deepened demonically and she punched the ribcage, harder, splintering the front. Pink chakra dribbled through the crack. "Give them to me."
At that moment, Madara had two options.
He could surrender and hand over his eyes, and possibly his freedom, to this strange child and her band of thugs.
Or he could attack with all his strength and hope for the best.
In that split second, Madara weighed his options for both.
For the first, he was sure he would be tortured and killed after relinquishing his sharingan, painfully, and even at that, the man's pride would never allow him to be subjected to such a shameful and forgettable death at the hands of filthy thugs. Besides, the eyes currently in his eye sockets weren't his; they were his dead brothers, and the only EMS left in his possession.
Madara's eyes were with Nagato of Hidden Rain…
The second option was even worse since he didn't know the full extent of the girl's power, aside from the immunity to his Eternal Mangekyo illusions, the crushing and isolating ability of the girl's killer intent, and the harmful corrosion when the pink fog touched his sandal a few minutes ago. Undoubtedly, fighting this force would result in his defeat and an even worse end in the hands of the girl's criminal gang.
Madara didn't like falling into such a lopsided battle without gathering all the necessary data.
Even now, he felt his chakra waver.
If he were younger, he wouldn't care about throwing caution to the wind for a taste of battle with this mysterious force.
Now though…
He needed to act fast.
And he needed to escape.
"Zetsu!" he roared with every fibre of his being, praying that his voice carried over the vacuum, and a pair of dull yellow eyes opened in front of Madara's feet. The pair of pink eyes outside of the Susanno darted down to the newcomer; her eyes widened with surprise and her mouth opened, releasing an unearthly scream that further splintered the Susanno. Madara opened his arms and physically held the Susanno together, shouting under the strain; shooting a look at the girl, he realised that she had not sensed White Zetsu, all the while Madara could sense Zetsu using the Hashirama cells in his body.
He stored that titbit of information for later.
"I was waiting for you to call~" White Zetsu sang playfully. The corners of my eyes crinkled genially, not at all taking the current urgent situation seriously. Madara snarled and the Susanno shattered, the pink chakra surged inwards at extraordinary speeds, but Zetsu laughingly called its jutsu, "Mayfly."
The pink chakra crashed noisily against the jaws of a massive Venus flytrap that swallowed the Uchiha, ripping the metal bottom of the elevator to shreds. It began to sink into the ground, slithering down and merging with the very earth.
White Zetsu trilled in a singsong voice, "Catch you later, friend~!"
And in seconds, both the Uchiha and the White Zetsu were gone.
Authors note
Jutsu List
Mysterious Peacock Method: Fish Eyes: Before fleeing Hidden Star, Naruto stole from the village's research facility a large number of Hiden ninjutsu instructional scrolls, and he handed them to Lio to learn at her own pace. Unsupervised. This particular jutsu creates small, fish eyes that can be sent a large distance away from the user, from as few as one pair of eyes to as many as a thousand. The natural eyesight of the user would be sacrificed, possibly leaving them vulnerable to attack. At her stage, Lio can only manifest one hundred and send them to cover a twenty-mile radius from her body. The quality of the eyesight through the fish eyes jutsu is lower than that of human eyesight, however it is good enough for light reconnaissance.
An alternate version of the fish eyes jutsu is Mysterious Peacock Method: Eagle Eye, which forms only one eye and temporarily sacrifices one eye from the user. The eagle eye jutsu can travel further than the fish eyes jutsu, and the vision is thirty times better than the latter jutsu.
Both techniques are unranked.
Done
That's that for this chapter
See you when I see you ;)
Foy.