RIFT
The air in the Final Valley was tense. It was also a little humid and the clouds were dark grey. Most importantly, three people were having a huge confrontation in that very area. One stood alone facing two others; a raven haired boy named Sasuke facing a blonde named Naruto and another boy who also spotted black hair; Shinra.
Sasuke had been adamant about leaving the village and joining with Orochimaru who had quite literally terrorized the village, ambushed Sasuke and made it clear that he wanted his eyes just a few days ago, yet for some reason Shinra and Naruto couldn't wrap their heads around, Sasuke was willing to go with that psychopath. Naruto was willing to make him go back home one way or another and Shinra wasn't about to let Naruto fight alone.
The boys stared each other down, all sweating and huffing heavily with their clothes soaked from constantly falling into the water in the man-made valley.
"Just come back and drop this already!" Shinra huffed out. "He's just going to use you and dump you like all his other vessels"
"If that's the price to pay for my revenge then so be it" Sasuke spoke flatly.
Shinra shook his head with wide eyes. He still couldn't understand how anyone could be this consumed by hatred.
"We're taking you back even if we have to beat you and drag you!" Naruto yelled and instantly the red Chakra cloak that was already around him flared harder.
That alone sent a burn through Shinra's system as he felt his chakra spike in response, sending him to his knees with a grunt. The child had a fraction of the nine tails chakra sealed in himself and with time, the portion that was trapped within him slowly evolved and grew into a tailed beast itself. The nine tails in Shinra always reacted once the original in Naruto made it's presence known.
Slowly he got back to his feet, his own body being encased in red Chakra that seemed to be so hot, it evaporated the water Shinra stood on. His teeth were now fangs, his fingernails almost shaped like claws and his eyes were red with black slitted pupils. Shinra had only felt this on one occasion before and that was on their first ever mission to the land of waves.
"You okay?" Naruto looked to him. Shinra nodded slowly, his eyes fixed on the Uchiha a few yards away from them.
Sasuke meanwhile was activating the second level of his curse mark; His skin was turning grey, his hair had become light blue, a black star shaped mark was across the bridge of his nose and webbed wings sprouted out of his back.
'Mother of kami... The hell is that?'
"Turn back now.." Sasuke spoke to Naruto. "You always wanted to become Hokage right? Chase that dream and leave me to chase mine"
"It seems you forgot who you're talking to" Shinra let out a small laugh. "Naruto doesn't give up when it comes to his friends.. you of all people should know that. He literally rampaged when you were supposedly killed"
"No one asked you, loser!" Sasuke hissed. "You're not significant in this battle. You don't even have a last name so I'm not even gonna waste my time with you"
"Son of a bi-" Shinra felt his jaw clench
"Take that back!" Naruto screamed at the Uchiha. "Shinra's just as special as the rest of us and you know it! He's saved your life more than once and that's how you talk to him?!"
"Naruto, it's fine" Shinra spoke up, giving a soft smile to his roommate. "Let's just save the talking and jump him"
Naruto gave his signature foxish grin and nodded in agreement. "let's bring Sasuke home!"
Sasuke immediately grabbed his left arm with his right hand, causing blue lightning to appear in his left hand before instantly turning into a mix of black and grey.. a black Chidori. It made a high pitched sound that resembled a bird chirping.
Naruto immediately gathered a good amount of chakra in his palm which started spinning until it was a blue orb roughly the size of a soccer ball. It then quickly turned purple due to the nine tails chakra influence..
'We're really doing this? Alright then...'
A second chirp pierced through the air as Shinra activated his own chidori in his right hand, which became a darker purple than Naruto's Rasengan.
Shinra and Naruto exchanged a single glance before dashing across the water towards Sasuke who immediately followed suit. The two jinchuriki moving side by side and the Uchiha moving all alone.
Shinra managed to get to Sasuke first, considering the speed at which the lightning made him move. He immediately thrust his arm forward, his chidori and Sasuke's clashing milliseconds before Naruto's rasengan came into the fray. Something about two lightning techniques and one burst of pure spinning chakra clashing created a black dome of overwhelming energy and the only one who seemed to notice they'd been surrounded by it was Shinra.
Time seemed to be frozen in there, nothing moved or made a sound. Not even the three high powered jutsus that clashed. The last thing Shinra saw was the red glow of Sasuke's Sharingan before an explosion of bright light filled the space, accompanied by the loudest crash he'd ever heard.
He felt something knock him back harder than he'd been in a while.. and that was saying something. His brown eyes looked around tried to piece together what was going on, but but all he saw was white and all he could hear was ringing.
Was he blind?
Did he die?!
Before he could even start to question anything or even call out for Naruto, he felt himself slowly slip out of consciousness. Try as he might to fight out of it, he was spent and he knew it.. Shinra's own chakra was gone and the damn fox had taken his back, leaving him to succumb to exhaustion as he closed his eyes.
Unknown to him, his life was about to get a lot weirder.
"It's not getting away from me this time" Sokka smirked as he and his sister sat in a boat. "Watch and learn, Katara. This is how you catch a fish"
Katara looked at him with disinterest before looking down at the water as a fish swam by. Taking off one of her gloves, she extended her arm towards the water started moving her arms with a focused expression on her face. The water then moved around the fish, trapping it into a bubble of water before she raised ot up.
"Sokka look!" She yelled with excitement. Sokka however wasn't even looking in her direction, his focus more on the fish on his side.
"Shhh" he whispered. "Katara, you're gonna scare it away.. mmm, I can already smell it cookin'"
"But Sokka, I caught one!" Katara said and tried to bring the bubble into the boat, only for Sokka to accidentally pop it with his spear, causing the water fall on him as the fish landed back into the water. "Hey!"
"Why is it that Everytime you play with magic water, I get soaked?" Sokka asked in annoyance.
"It's not magic, it's waterbending" Katara started to say. "And it's..."
"Yeah yeah" Sokka cut her off. "An ancient art, unique to our culture, blah blah blah.. look I'm just saying if I had weird powers, I'd keep my weirdness to myself-"
Sokka was cut off by a bright flash of white which caused both siblings to jump back. A splash immediately followed after.
"Spirits! What was that?" Katara yelped once the light had died down. Looking to the direction where the lite had come from, she saw something floating in the water. As it surfaced, it looked like a... Person.
"Sokka there's someone in the water!" Katara called her brother's attention.
"Are they water tribe?" Sokka asked.
Katara tried to get a look at the person's clothes. All she saw was green with a bit of black. "No, but it looks like they might be from the Earth Kingdom"
"What would someone from the earth kingdom want all the way here?" Sokka furrowed his eyebrows.
"Does it matter?" Katara shook her head. "We can't just let them drown"
"They could be a fire nation spy" Sokka countered.
Katara ignored her brother and used water bending to draw the person over to them. It was considerably harder than pulling a fish out of the water but Katara was willing to do it anyway if it meant the person would live. Once the person got close enough to them, Katara pulled them into the boat.
Looking him over now she could notice that he was a boy. He looked roughly her age and had a complexion similar to her and Sokka's. He had black hair that draped over his forehead which was covered by a blue headband tied around his head. The symbol on the metal plate looked nothing like anything she'd seen before.
"He definitely doesn't look Fire Nation" Katara said.
Before Sokka could retort, the boat accidentally slammed into a piece of ice and before the teens could react to what'd happened, they were caught in a current.
Sokka started to row quickly to avoid getting trapped by the ice which seemed to be closing in on them as they moved, only for him to knock into another piece of ice, this time awakening their unexpected passenger who let out a groan as his head hurting was the first thing he felt waking up.
"Watch out!" Katara yelled. The boy slowly became aware of his surroundings and that he was soaking wet.. and really cold.
"Go left, go left!" Katara instructed, only for her brother to go right instead, causing the boat to eventually get crushed between two big pieces of ice and the impact sending the three onto a giant ice platform.
"Ow..." Shinra groaned once again.
"You call that left?" Katara asked Sokka.
"You don't like my steering," Sokka asked, offended. "Well maybe you should've water bended us out of the ice"
"So this is my fault?" Katara asked.
"I knew I should've left you home" Sokka folded his arms before gesturing to Shinra. "You picked up a stranger and ruined this entire fishing trip. Leave it to a girl to screw things up"
Shinra himself was just trying to piece together what was even going on. How did he end up here? Where even was here??
"You are the most sexist, immature, nut brained... I'm embarrassed to be related to you!" Katara roared in anger. Shinra instantly noticed something.. the water was reacting to all her movements and apparently emotions. He couldn't blame her for being angry cause the comment the guy made was insanely disrespectful, but she was unintentionally cutting the iceberg behind her.
"Uh... Ma'am..." He tried but was cut off.
"Ever since Mom died, I've been doing all the work around camp while you've been off playing soldier!" Katara continued, either not hearing or just ignoring Shinra. Sokka then noticed what was going on as well.
"Uh... Katara-"
"I even wash all the clothes!" Katara continued, continuously cracking the iceberg as her voice got louder. "Have you ever smelled your dirty socks? Let me tell you, not pleasant!!"
"Okay, seriously calm down before you get us killed!" Shinra pointed behind her in alarm.
"No, I'm fine helping him, stranger!" Katara then turned back to Sokka. "You hear that? From now on, you're on your own!"
By the end of Katara's speech, the iceberg fully broke and created a wave that fully pushed their platform back. Katara and Sokka held on so they wouldn't fall off while Shinra channelled chakra to the soles of his feet.
'What kind of water style Jutsu was that?!'
'There was no chakra in that ability, idiot'
'if it isn't the wind beneath my wings' Shinra rolled his eyes as he heard the nine tails speak within him. 'surprised you're only just now talking after we almost got killed'
'shut up and listen, brat' the fox growled. 'There was no chakra in that water ability and I don't feel any Chakra anywhere else. In case you need me to spell it out for you, that's not good'
'How is that even possible?' Shinra shook his head. Every living thing required chakra to exist... even plants.
"Okay, you've gone from weird to freakish, Katara" Sokka informed his sister.
"You mean... I did that?" Katara asked.
"That's what we've been trying to tell you" Shinra replied just before a blue glow seemed to start floating up from below. "Oh boy..."
Sokka and Katara stood up just as a giant iceberg emerged from the water. There seemed to be two figures trapped inside; one looked like a boy and the other looked like... Shinra wasn't sure what it was but it had horns. Suddenly the boy's eyes opened and he seemed to be staring at them.
"What the..." The ninja furrowed his eyebrows.
"He's alive, we have to help" Katara immediately took Sokka's club and starting jumping from platform to platform.
"Get back here! We don't know what that thing is!" Sokka ran after his sister while Shinra decided to go after them by running on the water instead of jumping, which Sokka instantly noticed.
"How is he-" Sokka started.
"We'll ask him later" Katara cut her brother off before turning her attention to the iceberg. She immediately started swinging at it in an attempt to free whoever was inside.
"I don't think that'll do much" Shinra said as he walked up to them. "I think I have a better way"
"What do you mean?" Katara looked at him.
"Might wanna step back" Shinra captioned before stepping forward and running through a trio of hand signs.
Ox, Hare and monkey
He immediately grabbed his right arm, conjuring a decent sized chidori in his right hand. The noise alone caused Sokka and Katara to jump back in both amazement and fear.
Shinra took a little breath before reaching back and immediately thrusting the lightning attack into the iceberg. That impact alone sent a decent crack into the iceberg as it blew air at the trio and finally broke, causing a bright blue light to shoot out into the sky.
Shinra let out a laboured breath and fell to his knees. That single technique had taken a lot out of him.
'Your chakra levels are still low from the last fight, idiot. Watch how you use it'
'Gee, thanks I didn't notice'
While that exchange was going on, Shinra noticed the boy with tattoos faint and barely get caught by ponytail guy's sister. Speaking of which, the aforementioned guy started to poke the kid's head with the handle of his spear.
"Cut it out" Shinra groaned from where he was.
"What? We don't know him" Sokka shrugged. "We don't even know you!"
"Likewise but you don't see me yelling about it" Shinra was in no mood to deal with this.
"Please, come closer..." The boy whispered as he woke up in Katara's arms.
"What?" Katara looked both curious and concerned.
"Closer..."
"What is it?"
"... Will you go penguin sledding with me"
Shinra couldn't help but let out a laugh at the randomness of the question. This kid instantly reminded him of Naruto.
'Great, another hyperactive pipsqueak'
'Zip it, Fox'
"Uh.. sure, I guess" Katara replied, totally caught off guard.
The bald boy instantly pulled himself up, as if the air around him pushed him up. "What's going on here?"
"I have the same question" Shinra commented from his sitting position.
"You tell us! You, with the headband!" Sokka pointed at him. "How'd you get in the water earlier?! And you bald guy! Why aren't you frozen?!"
"We're right in front of you, why are you yelling?" Shinra asked with a deadpan expression.
"ANSWER THE QUESTION"
"I'm gonna talk to you guys from now on" Shinra turned towards the other two. "I was in the middle of a huge fight.. and three techniques all clashed, next thing i know I'm in this huge black dome.. last thing i see is my rival's Sharingan before everything goes white. I was pretty sure I was dead but I woke up in your boat.. thanks by the way"
"Your rival's what?!" Sokka.
"What do you mean by huge fight?" Katara added.
Before he could reply to anything, Shinra could feel himself getting dizzy, his vision was going out of focus and he felt himself about to fall over... His chakra levels were once again almost depleted
'No, no not again... Come on!'
'I told you'
Well today was just wonderful, wasn't it?