CHAPTER 38
The Namikaze-Uzumaki household was sullen, starkly different from the screams of emergency vehicles in the town and the distant rumble of buildings, falling into themselves and burning. The flames turned the night into a hellish midday, lighting the entire world in shades of crimson and yellow, blotting out the moon behind dense curtains of smoke and soot.
Minato appeared in the master bedroom in a yellow blip, carrying his wife in his arms and hurriedly laying her on the bed, beside their sleeping child.
Kushina choked, gasping for breath, "Mina—" blood gushed from a deep cut in the side of her neck, tearing right through an artery. Red liquid painted the pillow, sputtering and seeping through Kushina's fingers. "Mina. Help."
Minato tore off the sleeve of his white cloak and pressed it into his wife's neck, grating his teeth, fighting back the rush of emotions, cursing himself again and again that he hadn't teleported to the hospital; he thought he had gotten to her faster than Kakashi's blade could bite into her neck.
He thought he was faster…
Haste and emotions and pride had clouded his judgement, again, and he had thought only of the comfort of their home, wishing that all of this chaos was a mere dream.
But it wasn't.
This was real.
He gently stroked Kushina's hair as he held the bleeding cut on her neck. "Hold on. Let me get you to help."
He made to pick her up but his wife, sobbing dryly, spasmed and shook herself, reaching her left arm to their baby. "No…"
"Kushina, please—"
"I'm not going to make it," she whispered, carefully setting a hand on their child's brow, leaving two bloody fingerprints on the child's temple. "No chakra…losing blood…I'm tired, Mina…" her eyes flickered, rapidly fluttering with unwept tears. Minato's hands pressed his brow to Kushina's shoulder. "Kyuubi needs…to be sealed…"
"I don't know what I'm going to do," Minato said in a defeated tone. His words carried multiple meanings; he didn't know what to do about Kakashi, about the Kyuubi, about Konoha, about their baby, and his dying wife.
All of his decisions that evening made him question everything; he should have assigned more guards instead of just Tenzo and a few ANBU, put heavier barrier seals, and brought Naruto to the village himself to act as overwatch. His young friend would have readily done that for them at no charge and without hesitation.
He should have found a way to take both his wife and their child away from that madman.
But…even Minato knew that was impossible. He wasn't that fast. He could have only chosen one person to save, and Kushina would have wanted them to save their child.
"Mina…" Kushina whispered, and Minato looked up, meeting her brilliant purple eyes. Eyes he had adored since the very first day he witnessed them. Eyes that cherished him and watched him lovingly as he ascended the village's hierarchy, setting aside her ambitions for him. Eyes that smiled at him, warm and deep, touching a part of his soul only the love of his existence could reach. "You know what to do."
Her words answered all his worries.
"Save Konoha…protect our baby…. I'll be…right…here." Her pallid expression lifted a little with her reassuring smile. With the little strength left in her body, she pulled their child closer and Minato helped keep the baby on Kushina's chest, letting the mother hold their child in her trembling arms. Minato sank into his wife and child, shoulders shuddering and breathing raggedly into Kushina's embrace. The blood seeping from her neck had stopped. Her voice was scarcely above an airy whisper, "Everything…will…be…okay…"
The man leaned back and kissed her lips, gentle and caressing, and his wife sighed out a tittering laugh, curling up into the ebb of their kiss. They parted and Minato's eyes glowed bright, finding his resolve.
Kushina sank into the bed, her arms loosening from their baby, letting Minato gather the child up in his arms.
Her eyes curled into a smile. "That's my Mina."
The man smiled sadly, helpless as Kushina wilted into the bed, shutting her eyes weakly. The smile never once fell from her face. The rise and fall of her chest slowed, became more prolonged, until the slight tremor of her torso levelled, stopping.
Kushina Uzumaki died peacefully.
He was gone in a yellow flash.
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
With Naruto and Kakashi
Kakashi moved first.
He stepped in with an elbow and Naruto dodged it, eyes widening when his brother flicked his sword across, primed for his throat, leaning away from it as well. Naruto batted away another strike to his neck with his tanto, deflecting a cut to his chin to the right, and using his knee to block a low kick.
Naruto ducked under a slice to his face, again, and side-stepped three stabs, raising his left arm and feeling Kakashi's blade bite into the sleeve of his winter parka, tearing the material of his forearm. White and yellow sparks shimmered on contact and the masked boy backpedalled, eye wide in sheer shock. Amazement, even.
Sewn under Naruto's winter coat was chainmail armour. It was a standard issue item to all Whisper Group members, particularly those posted to the colder climates of the northern regions—Hidden Chill, Lightning, Snow, and Iron countries.
Naruto, since he had appeared in Konoha, had been weighed down by not less than ten kilograms of metal, and yet he was still keeping up with Kakashi. This made the masked boy gnash his teeth in rage and flicker forward in a blaze of speed, honing his blade for the crook of Naruto's neck. This was dodged.
Kakashi's brother blocked a stab to his stomach with the flat side of his tanto, deftly shifting the strike aside and catching Kakashi's punch to his chest with his other hand.
Naruto's eyebrows furrowed and Kakashi snarled, dragging his fist back and hopping back twice.
"Fight seriously," the masked boy snarled between grit teeth, discarding all of his previous bravado, and Naruto lilted, frowning and shaking his left hand, feigning injury from catching Kakashi's punch. "Don't fuck with me, brother."
Kakashi's sharingan bled a deeper shade of red and the capillaries in his eyes trickled from his eyelids and wound around his thorn-like tomoe. He dipped into a run and Naruto's eyes bugged wide all that was left was an afterimage, rolling to the right from a stab to his torso—
Lightning arced from the tip of Kakashi's blade, carving a deep trench in the ground and incinerating the landscape. Naruto winced, cringing away from the blinding light. Thunder closely followed the light, exploding in Naruto's ears and making the mute boy wail, clutching his head as his brain rang inside his skull. He didn't see Kakashi's foot slamming into his face until it connected.
Naruto's back smashed into the ground, bouncing twice and losing his blade, crashing through a tree that crumpled around him, falling on top of him. He wheezed and heaved, clutching his face as leaves and branches stifled his vision. He touched his nose, not broken but bleeding profusely, clogged with blood and mucus. He spat out a tooth into his hand.
He coughed, falling out of the broken tree on his hands and knees, fighting for air through his abused airways.
"Still don't want to take me seriously?" Kakashi said in a faux gentle tone, squatting down to his brother's level, red eye curled into a waning smile. His tanto glowed eerily with phantom lightning, its sharp point stabbed into the ground and Kakashi holding onto the handle in his right hand. Naruto looked at him, red leaking into his silvery right eye, while his left was closed. Pained tears prickled his eyes, pleading with Kakashi.
As long as he had known his brother, he had only physically harmed the boy once; when the voiceless boy had been kicked in the throat and Naruto had lost his composure for a split second. His next actions were reflexive self-defence from being kicked in the throat; he blacked out for five seconds and battered Kakashi so badly the medics had to put him on life support.
Before and after that, he made it a point to take it easy on his brother.
He didn't want Kakashi to give him a reason to take off the training wheels.
Naruto shook his head vigorously, sitting back on the ground with a heavy head. His winter parka wrinkled with soot, scorched around his shoulder from Kakashi's lightning. He shut his eyes, inhaling and exhaling noisily. His bandaged fingers gripped the soil, hard.
"Hm…" Kakashi sighed, Letting go of his tanto and perching a hand on his cheek, idly wondering aloud, "Where's Tenzo…?"
Naruto's eyes opened and thunder pealed in the sky.
Kakashi chuckled in amusement, eye glittering with unvoiced laughter. He watched, patiently, as Naruto very slowly lifted his head and directed his pale eyes to his brother's red stare; Naruto's eyes were clear now, with not so much as an inkling of blood in his vision. The veins racing from his eyes to his ears ebbed with blood and chakra, steeling over and widening hauntingly.
"Oh, here we go." Kakashi smiled.
Naruto's body vibrated, hands still curled into the soil and gripping the soil as if using it to anchor himself firmly to the ground, afraid that if he eased his grip, he would fly and do something extremely drastic.
Naruto swallowed. A curtain of emotionlessness slowly draped over his byakugan eyes; he was blacking out.
He asked, mouthing the words slowly and carefully, "Where…is…Tenzo?"
Kakashi shrugged, smirking. "Ask nicely."
He didn't know his mistake until it happened; all at once, Naruto's body stilled, becoming eerily calm and statuesque. A cold mask settled over Naruto's face, sliding down from his temple to his chin like a second skin. His wide byakugan dimmed, narrowing into glaring slits.
Kakashi's sharingan turned…
He saw it all happen long before it happened; the lowered shoulder tackle and the carnage that followed, but his body was physically unable to keep up, just like with Minato.
This was speed comparable to the Yellow Flash brought about by his taunting.
The masked boy grunted all of a sudden, tackled from his middle, one of Naruto's hands wrapped around his throat and the other hand at his lower back. Kakashi's feet weren't on the ground, splayed out as were his arms.
Kakashi hung in the air in that vulnerable position for what felt like an eternity, frozen by the rush of time as Naruto's killer intent blocked his windpipe and his life flashed before his eyes.
Then something in the air snapped and the world moved.
Naruto body-slammed his brother on his back in less than a second. An elbow snapped into Kakashi's jaw, jarring his head to the right and a wild punch bashed his face to the left. He tried to lift his right hand, summoning a pair of shuriken into his fingers, but Naruto stabbed his pointer and middle fingers into Kakashi's shoulder, sinking his fingers between the joint and popping it out of its socket, sealing the chakra point in that same movement. The masked boy's hand collapsed uselessly to the ground as Naruto pulled his fingers out.
Kakashi roared in agony but was abruptly silenced by a backhand slap from his brother.
The scramble on the ground continued.
Left arm effectively dead, the boy tried forming seals with his right hand but Naruto caught his fingers and twisted, snapping Kakashi's fingers gruesomely and without so much as a twitch of his brow. And, not hesitating, he plunged his still blood-soaked right fingers into Kakashi's elbow, tearing the muscles and destroying the joint, sealing the chakra point. He then twisted, dragging his finger out at the same time, snapping Kakashi's elbow like a chicken wing. It bonelessly fell on the ground.
Pain blinded the masked boy's vision, mouth open and screaming soundlessly while his legs thrashed, but he was again muzzled by a slap to the face. He heaved, facing the right and slobbering in pure agony, groaning breathily and afraid to utter any noise from his mouth. He sealed his lips shut, whimpering stifled tears and panting raggedly from his nose.
Naruto looked down at him, deathly stoic and moonish pale eyes burning with molten lava.
His hands gripped the front of Kakashi's cloak, lifting his brother a bit and then slamming him down, jarring the boy out of his tortured delirium.
Kakashi met Naruto's eyes with his, but another slam into the ground stopped him from using a genjutsu, this one harder, concussing him a little. An elbow dropped onto Kakashi's face, smashing his nose and breaking the mask in two; the left side of the mask fell off, showing the boy's defiant snarl, teeth painted in blood and mouth bleeding from biting the tip of his tongue. A shallow web of cracks raced from the back of Kakashi's head.
The masked boy was faced with the horrible realisation that he was nowhere near his brother's level. The sacrifices he had made, the corners he cut, the surgeries he allowed himself to be subjected to, and the torturous training he endured meant nothing against raw skill and murderous intent.
Naruto was still many leagues above him.
Tears trickled from his eye.
Naruto's lips peeled back and he bared his teeth, face contorted demonically, mouthing in a harsh exhale of smoke, "Where. Is. Tenzo?"
He wasn't playing around.
Kakashi spat, hatred oozing venomously off the tip of his mutilated tongue. "Chopped to pieces. In a trunk. At the bottom of the ocean!"
Naruto's blood ran cold and his fingers slackened ever so slightly.
Poof!
The Kakashi below Naruto was replaced by a log, and Naruto swore a foul, hateful swear, standing up and shoving the log away with his foot. His eyes looked around, scanning the densely silent forest for signs of movement, life, or chakra, and he found none. He forced his vision to push through any fog, searching for a cloaking genjutsu, but he found nothing.
Kakashi was gone.
Naruto punched his head twice, gripping his hair and staring hard at the ground. Darkness cloaked his form. Veins ran up his neck and blood ringed his byakugan eyes, gleaming a piercing shade of white as he fought for control.
He wanted to lose his mind.
Then he remembered where he was.
The sounds of the world seeped back into his consciousness; fires burning in Konoha, smoke stifling the night sky, and the distant bellow of the Nine Tails. His byakugan lifted and fixed on the tailed beast, seeing that it was forced to lie down on the earth by massive pink chains, its nine tails pinned on its back. Even from his distance, which was on the other side of the village, the beast still looked unimaginably mountainous, easily able to tower over the Hokage's Tower ten times over.
From his position, Naruto could clearly see the radiative Kyuubi chakra whittling away at Lio's radiative pink chakra, eating through her astral chakra as soon as she repaired it.
Lio's chakra didn't work like normal, human chakra. She couldn't create wind, fire, or water; she could only manifest physical structures or body parts with her chakra, such as her wings or a flight suit when she was leaving earth's atmosphere.
Unlike human or tailed beast chakra, Lio couldn't replenish her chakra by resting, eating, or meditating. Her reserves might have been vast and comparable to a grown Uzumaki in their prime, but it was finite. When she used her chakra to manifest, say, a bow and arrow, the constructs would inevitably crumble and the chakra would return to the girl. Normal chakra simply dissipated into the environment.
The Kyuubi's chakra warred against Lio's, eating hers as hers ate the Kyuubi's. And while the Nine-Tailed chakra replenished itself using its unending cycle of mania and rage, Lio replaced her destroyed chakra with new chakra deep within her reserves.
She couldn't maintain that forever.
Naruto started running toward his friend, pushing aside the simple matter of what he could possibly do to help.
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
Minato dropped into a confusing, chaotic scene.
Lio was sat on a floating pink platform, fingers laced into a strange hand seal—a butchered form of the dragon seal. Her wings were gone. Her legs were also terribly fractured, with her shinbone sticking out of her calf and the toes of her feet burned black, twisted into grotesque angles. She was still wearing her winter parka, zipped up to the bottom of her nose with the hood thrown over her head.
Minato couldn't see her face, but she looked to be at peace. Sweating profusely, yes, but she was calm. Eyes shut and posture upright, maintaining that hand seal despite all the carnage happening around her.
Barely twenty feet from her was the Nine-Tails; it was forced to lie flat on the ground, chest and chin pressed onto the earth and wound in massive pink chains that threaded out of the ground. Manacles were clamped around its wrists and ankles, and multiple chains were wrapped around its muzzle, keeping it from exhaling a tailed beast ball.
Its growls rumbled through the continent, sending fierce tremors to the Fire Capital and further. Smoke and lava oozed from the Kyuubi's clenched jaw, hatefully looking at the child that had restrained it. The creature's foul curses were understated.
It writhed madly, lashing out with its tails, but even those were soon caught by Lio's pink chains and slammed to the earth by serpentine chains. Still, Minato could see that the girl's chakra was being broken apart by the beast's chakra.
The girl, smaller than the elongated, vulpine iris of the tailed beast, blinked her eyes open and looked down at Minato. She studied the man's strong face, the torn right sleeve of his white cloak, and the slight bump inside his cloak, and she said, "Good. You're here. I didn't have a plan." She winced as the Kyuubi's left arm broke loose, breaking a cluster of chains and rising with a clawed strike, only to be clasped by two manacles that brought it to the ground with a shuddering crash. The girl gulped, lowering the platform she was sitting on to the man's height. Her glowing eyes went down to the child in the Hokage's arms, and it seemed that the noise had woken the baby; his eyes weakly opened and Lio's lips tightened into a frown, seeing the familiar pink stare looking up at her, sensing her chakra inside the child. The swear floated from her lips before she was even aware of it, mumbling, "Shit…"
"Yeah," Minato agreed.
Maliciously, Lio had hoped Kushina's prolonged exposure to her poisonous chakra by the woman holding onto her wings for three years would have resulted in something else; cancerous tumours or barrenness or even a miscarriage, maybe.
She didn't think this would happen. She didn't think Kushina's Uzumaki vitality could keep up with the corrosiveness of her pink chakra, or that her chakra would target their then unborn child.
The child was a nuclear meltdown in the making.
This just complicated everything.
Her first instinct was to kill—
Lio bit her tongue, tensing her hands as they stayed in the hand seal, and slowly shut her eyes. She slid away a few centimetres and inhaled once, breathing out from her lips. She pushed that thought from her mind; Naruto wouldn't approve. That was the only thing holding her back.
Not conscience. She had none.
Not sympathy. That never existed.
And certainly not fear of what Minato would do to her.
"What are we going to do?" she said curtly, turning her face away and staring at the beast, who glared deathly at her, unable to utter a roar or wriggle free. It was patient though, glowering a cruel grin at her.
"Seal the beast into the baby," the man said, carefully lowering himself and bringing the baby out into the full view. He waved his left hand and a storage seal on his palm unfurled, summoning an altar, where he placed the child. "I know a seal stronger than the one Kushina had. The Eight Trigrams Seal. I can get it done."
"Having my chakra alone will put too much pressure on the child."
Lio saw a strange look in the man's eye. A sullen, dour expression lingered behind his glassy blue eyes. He stared for much too long at his child, a loving hand placed on the baby's crown, rubbing his head. "I'm sure." He licked his bottom lip and sucked in a deep breath. "I'll seal half in myself."
That didn't sound like a complete statement, and it alarmed Lio. Half of the Kyuubi in the child made sense since he was part-Uzumaki and could effortlessly accommodate that massive volume of chakra, growing with it in time, but Minato didn't have that privilege.
For all of the inhuman skills and abilities Minato Namikaze possessed, he was still human. Worst still, he wasn't Uzumaki by any stretch of the imagination.
Growing anxious from the look on his face, Lio tentatively said, "Nothing is ever that simple."
Minato snorted, flicking a humorous look at the girl. He spoke with an unhurried drawl. "There's no time, Lio. The Kyuubi's breaking out and Konoha's still in danger." he smiled, a resigned expression settling on him, and Lio became more alarmed, panicking at his accepting undertones. He didn't tell her his whole plan on how he, a normal human, would contain the Nine Tails. Instead, he said, "I'm sure the Council will find another Hokage."
Then Lio said it, blurting out a spur-of-the-moment decision that would impact her for the rest of her life, "What about sealing half of the beast inside me? I'm sure I can easily contain half of this." she gestured flippantly to the incensed creature, tied down by chains thicker than Minato was tall. "I re-engineered my chakra to not affect Naruto. I'm sure I can teach my chakra to hold down the beast." Her eyes glanced down at the child on the pedestal. "I'm sure I can teach the child too."
Also, even if it didn't look like it, both of her parents were of Uzumaki descent
.
Minato's eyes softened. "Lio, no."
And yet, the girl rambled desperately on, "That way, you get to live and protect Konoha to your heart's desire, fix up the place. No one gets hurt. No one has to suffer."
Minato's eyes crinkled. "Kushina's dead, Lio."
Lio pulled back with a start, surprised at the serene man's tired words. Resignation slouched the man's shoulders even more, looking at the girl with an expression Lio had never seen on anyone before; the resolve to die.
The man smiled again, a waning look that held back a dam of torrential emotions. "She's waiting for me."
That angered Lio.
"And what of the child?" she said coolly, pink eyes bubbling with power.
"The people—"
"No," Lio snapped, coming up to the man's face. "Nothing you say will ever be as good as having a parent. A living, loving parent. Nothing." Her eyes stormed at the man's audacity to toss his child into the wind, leaving them to chance and the hospitality of strangers. "Kushina wouldn't want that."
Lio wouldn't pretend that she knew Kushina personally, but she knew the woman through her friend, Naruto.
He spoke so highly of her that it boiled Lio's blood. She nearly wanted to stop hating the woman for what she did.
Lio also didn't want the baby to live in a world of uncertainty about who his parents were and how much they treasured him, unlike her. She was the child of a rape victim that was tortured and assaulted in the most inhuman, most degrading ways ever imagined throughout birthing Lio, and her "sperm donor" father was a nameless abducted Uzumaki whose body parts were recycled for later use.
The girl's only certainty when it came to her parents was how much her mother hated her, cursing the infant growing in her belly with every atom of her being, every bit of saliva in her mouth, and every fading sliver of energy in her spirit.
That was Lio's certainty.
"She would want you to think with your head and not your heart."
The man sighed.
"You can't die, Minato. Not now when everyone needs you," she said, sweeping a hand behind her, to the red and orange backdrop that was Konoha, shrieking with the screams of firefighter vehicles pouring gallons and gallons of water on flames. Emergency services rescuing and evacuating survivors. Shinobi of all ranks joining hands and protecting scared civilians.
"…You're right."
A tiny smirk jumped onto Lio's face. "I know I'm right."
The man faced the girl, looking hard at her. "But are you sure about what you want me to do?"
"Yes." She nodded once. Her choice was made and would have to live with it. "What do you need me to do?"
"Take off your coat. I need to draw the seal on your stomach."
She did as she was told, flushing furiously and muttering, "Why my stomach? Can't you put it in on my hand, or something?"
The man scoffed, turning to his child and busily drawing the Eight Trigrams seal on the baby's belly. "Your chakra core is in your gut area. Kushina…" he paused, gnawing on his bottom lip, "…told me that Lady Mito told her that sealing the beast at the centre of your chakra core allows the jinchuriki to better accommodate the beast. My seal will allow the jinchuriki to use the beast's chakra, mingling with your chakra and whatnot. There will be several countermeasures in case the Nine Tails tries manipulating either of you." He glanced at her. "It'll throw your centre of gravity off too. Your chakra control will be shot to hell. You'll have to relearn how to use your chakra. Kushina was much younger than you when Lady Mito transferred the beast to her and it tore her apart." He stopped and said again, speaking firmly, "Are you sure you want to do this, Lio?"
Lio had discarded her coat and pulled the woollen black turtleneck under her chest, exposing her pale gut. Minato summoned another alter, the same size as the one with Minato's child, and had Lio lie on top, head facing the glowering beast. Her mangled, burned feet hung over the edge.
He dipped his brush into a pot of ink and touched her stomach with it. She shivered.
"There's no going back from here—"
She clenched her teeth and lifted her neck, glaring impatiently at him. She didn't utter one word but her threat was passed clear as day.
"Okay…here we go!"
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
As the village cooled down, Danzo snuck into the Namikaze-Uzumaki home. Blade poised on his hand, he crept on the stairs, each foot barely sounding over the deafening silence of the house. He was alone, stealthily stealing through the quiet hallway. It was dark; the fuse had blown many minutes ago, so he only depended on his knowledge of the house's layout.
There was a familiar feeling in the air. The very silence and the terse atmosphere tickled at the back of his mind, reminding him of something.
He peeked into the baby's room and moved away immediately, looking into the guest bedroom but clicking his teeth to himself when he found nothing. He then moved to the master bedroom and ever so slowly turned the doorknob, looking through. His eyebrows lowered and a mist covered his eyes when he found Kushina.
He eased the door open, no longer bothering with being silent.
Kushina didn't react, not when he stalked to her and raised his blade to plunge it into her chest, hesitation thrown out of the window and letting himself fall into resolve.
Danzo came to a sudden stop when he saw the state of his precious student, his surrogate daughter; her red hair was tangled and dirty, pouring down the side of the bed like a bleeding waterfall. The white pillow was stained a deep shade of red, previously coming out from a deep wound in her neck. Her face was tranquil. Pale and angelic, hands folded on her abdomen and utterly at peace with the world. The lights from the town ebbed into the window, making the shadows denser but adding details to the still Uzumaki's expression.
His hand slumped, losing all of the determination he had been gathering since that morning.
He now knew why the atmosphere entering the house was so familiar.
Death.
"Oh, Kushina," he whispered mournfully.
That was when Mikoto stumbled into the room. Her eyebrows creased on seeing Danzo, squinting at him and holding onto the door for support. She had been running around all night, looking for her friend and trying to survive the devastation. She said in a scratchy tone, "Sensei…?" her eyes turned with confusion, haggardly approaching the man. "I'm looking for Kushina…"
Slowly, she saw the kunai in his hand and the state of her best friend. In her feverish delirium, she couldn't look better at the situation and see that there was no blood on the kunai. It was far too dark to see that.
Danzo saw the realisation dawning in her eyes. He dropped the blade in his apprehension, holding out his hands and placating her, "Mikoto, wait. Let me explain."
She didn't wait.
Red bled into her eyes and she thrust her right arm forward, at Danzo, and a dark yellow, ethereal skeleton arm spiralled out from her in the blink of an eye, grabbing hold of Danzo's whole body and squeezing.
The man didn't even register his death, crushed into a gory red paste in a matter of microseconds.
One moment he was alive, and the next, he was floating in the ether. Gone.
Then the air screamed. Or rather, the magnetic fields inside the bedroom, and around the entire village, vibrated so intensely and violently that it caused a piercing shriek to echo in everyone's minds. However, the magnitude of the wailing was inside the bedroom. The air moved and shook so hard that the woman could see it, the faint bend and curve of the magnetic coils threaded throughout the room.
Her head rang horribly and she clutched her ears, covering them as hard as she could.
Her left eye popped out of her skull, hanging out of the eyesocket, down to her cheek by its optic nerve, unable to endure the high-pitched ringing in her head. Her other eye filled with blood, with the sharingan painfully flickering off. Her brain started to bleed, viciously being vibrated by the magnetic field, and her eardrums exploded, pouring blood and earwax through her fingers. She gaped in horror and turned, fleeing the room.
Only she didn't get far.
She didn't even make it to the door.
Wheelie, screaming mournfully from down the street and losing his sanity, where Danzo had instructed him to wait, grabbed hold of the magnetic fields in his hands and harshly stretched his arms, dragging them apart.
Mikoto's head twisted off her neck.
Her demise was not as painless as Danzo's, but it was no less swift.
However, even after her body had fallen to the floor and her head was bashed against the door of the baby room—shattering into a grotesque spattering of skull fragments, brain tissue, blood, and viscera—the savage vibration of the air didn't stop. It only increased, whistling and ringing at a tempo that agonised both humans and animals across the village.
Wheelie had lost control.
Danzo was gone, and nothing could contain his agony at that fact.
Finally, just about preventing the mass extermination of the people of Konoha, a tree broke out from the ground, through the cement sidewalk and loomed over the nearest house with its dense cluster of branches and leaves. Sage peeled himself from inside the tree and came up from behind his crippled brother.
Wheelie didn't hear or feel his approach, not in his sorrow.
Sage, for once dead serious, pressed a sheet of sealing paper onto Wheelie's face, restraining the other boy with a loose chokehold over the back of Wheelie's wheelchair. The seal forcefully absorbed the boy's chakra and severed his connection with his bloodline.
After a short moment, Wheelie slumped back into Sage's embrace, and the village was finally allowed to rest.
The green-skinned boy exhaled in relief and gripped the handles of his brother's wheelchair, turning it around and steadily making his way to the nearest forest. Meanwhile, the tree Sage had come from shivered in the still air, shaking its leaves and shuddering its branches, before it retreated into the ground, pulling itself down and carefully drawing its branches close.
"What a mess," Sage muttered.
Authors note
Well, that happened…
Let it be known that a CORE Operative losing their mind or getting reckless has devastating effects; recall CHAPTER 8, when One used her Sage Mode to chase down Kakashi and Rin while they were fleeing on Naruto's wolves. It took Naruto using Samehada to calm her down, and even then Samehada was petrified into stone.
I enjoyed writing that XD
Coming back to this chapter, I'm sure you must all have been wondering: Where was Sage when the Kyuubi was attacking?! Certainly, a wood release user would have been useful against the Kyuubi.
Also, where's Tenzo?
…All in due time, mes amis ;)
See you when I see you.
Foy.