I'm weak, and easily torn between inspirations. Also hungry. That does odd things to my brain. Makes me try and experiment with writing styles I'm only vaguely familiar with.
Tell me what you think.
ETA: Now with second story in the series. Have a poke.
'How dare he?'
'How dare he do this to me?!'
'That ...'
'... that ...'
'Kusogaki!'
---
Foxfire
a Naruto fanfiction in response to the Squid's Fall/Winter Challenge of '06
by Griever
---
Uzumaki Naruto knows he is dying.
He knows it not because of the sucking chest wound, the massive amount of internal bleeding, or the burning of poison coursing through his veins.
No.
Though they contribute.
It isn't that he hasn't had worse.
Over the course of his career as a shinobi, he's been crushed, clobbered, cut, impaled, immolated, strangled, flash-frozen, had a hole the size of his head punched clear through where his heart was at the time, and was mauled by many and varied nin-beasts and minor Youkai.
Most of that during the last year and a half, actually.
His own prodigious constitution as well as the Kyuubi had carried him through most of those on their lonesome, with only occasional bits of assistance being provided from the outside.
The bastard fox shouldn't have taken more than a moment on the abovementioned. He should have been berating him and throwing him barbs all the while.
Should have been anything but silent.
He knows it because he can feel his very soul being eroded on the most base of levels.
So, Uzumaki Naruto knows he's dying.
Maybe even more than that.
He'd always thought there was something past that, not that he'd actually considered this in-depth. Not that he'd ever considered any matter like that, period. He was a simple person, with simple wants, simple needs, and simple desires. He lived by simple rules. He never pretended to be anything but.
But this, whatever it is, eats away at his very Self.
And Uzumaki Naruto, shinobi of Konohagakure, sways on his feet. His eyesight grows dim. And he collapses.
Even as he feels the body healing, even as a faint buzz that has nothing to do with the physical seems to hurl insults at him with its usual vitriol.
He's a simple person, with simple wants, and living on simple rules. So he doesn't really know why he does what he does next.
And, by the time the clearing is no longer empty, he is no longer sensate enough to perceive this.
***
Jiraya is flying.
Or as close to it as a shinobi in his fifties can manage, when assisted by a giant toad.
He has a bad feeling about this.
He doesn't know how the Akatsuki had found them, nor does he particularly care about that in the here and now.
Time enough for that later, when an old man can think in peace and gut the faulty parts of his intelligence network. Because there are obviously faulty parts, if it didn't give him any warning about this happening. He's determined to do something about that once the night is out.
Behind him, and getting farther by the moment, the sounds of swords clashing echo in the otherwise silent forest.
Not that Gama will hold the shark face for long, but just maybe it will be long enough for old, irresponsible and irreverent Sannins to find their students and haul ass.
But he has a bad feeling about this, and Gamabunta seems to feel likewise, since the Toad Boss is picking up speed faster than old Sannins had ever seen him do so.
"The air tonight. It's ominous," rumbles the oversized amphibian summon.
Jiraya agrees, and sweats.
***
Yakushi Kabuto succeeds in not smiling.
Smiling could be very dangerous right now.
So he resolves himself to wearing the indifferent mask of the consummate professional for just a while longer. He's done it before. Throughtout the course of his childhood and formative years, for most of his life.
The most prized of tools for one whose loyalty is always suspect.
The medic-nin is patient. He has to be.
A twitch out of place, a crack in the mask, and he knows he'll be joining his supposed target on its way to hell. There are those considered to be unforgiving among the shinobi. Then there are the Akatsuki.
_Then_ there is Uchiha Itachi.
Who is currently right behind him.
But Yakushi Kabuto could always balance himself perfectly. His aspirations, debts, loyalties ...
It's all a tightrope, and he's the best of acrobats.
So he kneels down beside the immobile body of the blond Konoha genin that's sprawled haphazardly on the ground in the middle of the clearing, and does his job.
There's no need to pretend here and now. If there was, he'd be dead.
Red Eyed Bastard, the Elder, may well have been arrogant - that seemed to be a defining trait of what was left of the Uchiha clan - but that meant relatively little when one was that good. Nobody had ever questioned whether or not Uchiha Itachi was that good. Certainly not long enough to tell the tale.
He doesn't even _think_ it, on the off chance that it'd be enough to give him away.
On a chilly night, in a no-name forest on the border of Ame and Tsuchi, Orochimaru's little puppet plays its part.
***
Uchiha Itachi doesn't frown.
His face remains emotionless even as he notices that things aren't working out in the way they're supposed to.
Back during the plans conception, he hadn't been for or against it. It simply wasn't necessary, but would be of benefit to them if it did work, so he kept his own council while the others ripped into one-another verbally.
Everybody had weaknesses, and while the Akatsuki was plagued by fewer of those than most, it was not immune.
Itachi had always liked to watch, and listen. To learn what made people tick, and prepare. Not even Kisame realized to him, there were no friends and no enemies. Merely people he hadn't decided on killing yet.
One day, the swordsman would understand. One day.
The thought of testing himself against the sort of power they were gathering makes the long unused corner of the eldest living Uchiha's Self tingle in anticipation.
Now, though, Itachi watches as the silver haired medic-nin does his job. It isn't an easy one, but the execution seems to be as flawless as could be expected given the nature of the task.
Some days, Itachi can almost see them. The bonds of a Soul. The essence of Self.
Those almost unbreakable elements of a person's essence seem almost fragile.
Some days, Itachi imagines he can hear it. The screeching of two Souls against one-another, mismatched and yet forced to interact.
Jinchuuriki.
To dislodge a Soul was no small feat. To dislodge a Bijuu, less so. Those were doubly Bound, once to their vessel, and once to it's Soul. And the Yondaime's Seal made all the others look like incompetent hack-jobs.
Because of that, the most difficult is the first.
A test.
Itachi understands tests.
The induced Chakra Virus slowly works on eroding the Bonds, and leaving the Bijuu only tied down to the physical vessel in the end, by which time the extraction could begin.
"Oh dear," Kabuto voices suddenly. And Itachi Looks deeper, and twice as hard.
The medic-nin looks almost haggard, hands flaring with blue chakra bleed as they struggle to intercept a potentially critical development.
The erosion hasn't spread over merely the Bonds, but is working at the very Soul it was meant to ignore. Not Kyuubi's, since it can hardly affect that directly, but the brat's.
***
Kyuubi growls.
He rages.
He throws himself against the bars that keep closing in, the walls that scrape their way against the floor.
And throughout it all, he can feel the brat slowly fading away. Not just being kept from him, like that time when the snake-ape thought to constrict his bindings further, but with the sort of inevitable decomposition that he hasn't seen in a long, long while.
Collapsing upon itself, the Soul that is his Key and Lock to the Gate of the Seal takes the prison along, piece by piece. Every bit of it.
Contents included.
It's so twistedly beautiful that, were it not directed at himself, Kyuubi would be admiring its efficiency.
The Youkai's teeth scratch at the bars, its paws trying to batter them down, its tails lashing about itself wildly ... all to no avail.
And for a moment, the pathetic nature of the struggle repulses him.
For a moment, he isn't _there_ anymore.
The light of Souls flitting by illuminates the countryside in lieu of a sun or moon, and it is Right. The breeze carries with it tantalizing flavors, and the sounds of battle. Blood pumps in his veins, pupils contract, and ground suddenly blurs. Bounding. Racing. Scaling a rocky hill at the head of the attack, then plunging down into the bloodbath. Jaws snapping, claws tearing, his two tails lashing out.
Shift.
Hands. How odd that felt. Out of place. Bedamned etiquette and its worthless spawn, he wanted to scream. Oh, surely, it was in his honor, but it was infuriating to no end. It seemed as though every conquest he so relished brought with it the necessity for even more silly posturing. Sometimes, he wondered whether the ape-rats he and his sometimes prowled the world of didn't take over without anyone noticing. The foppish nobles had to have picked it up from somewhere. Or were they stupid enough to come up with this crap by themselves?
Shift.
Pfeh. The stench was atrocious. What was even worse, he thought he was getting used to it. How sad was that? Humans. Such odd little beings. Sometimes, hardly worthy of any notice at all. At other times ... no. Still not really worthy of notice. Or so he would insist, and hope nobody found out about his fondness for this 'Tofu' stuff. Disgraceful. It wasn't even meat, for Jigoku's sake!
Shift.
Heh. The irony of the fact that this was increasingly becoming the Plane he could relax in was not lost on the Kitsune. As was the fact that with every bit of power he gained, there seemed to be more and more left to _do_. He wasn't even in his second millennium yet, and here he was, already bemoaning the fact that things seemed so much easier when it was just a matter of slaughter or be slaughtered.
Shift.
An exploding star, burning everything with its fury while five tails waved in the wake of its passing. Twisting, changing, forming itself back from the imitation ape-rat and into what he truly was with an anger that wanted to rip loose and devour. It was his third millennium, and for the first time he remembered, he felt a pang of something he couldn't identify. Much later, he'd find he'd just discovered what sorrow felt like. Fleeting, easily ignored little gnat that it was.
Shift.
The skies of Jigoku reflected in polished marble floors, moving below as he felt alive yet again. Bloody, scarred, but still gloriously alive in that simple, uncomplicated, uncompromisingly savage way he loved so much. Flashing past, tear, rend asunder, and try to ignore the necessity of responsibility and intrigue.
Shift.
The power _burned_, even as his body did, when he claimed his due from the defeated foe. Flesh, fur, fang ... melting, sparking away in an inferno of brilliantly burning Youki that he'd become, nine tails fanned out behind him.
Shift.
Shift.
Shift.
Then there is only pain, and light, and the silent, nearly extinguished echo of a scream ...
How odd ... it almost sounds like ...
"My name is Uzumaki Naruto, shinobi of Konohagakure! Nobody I could have saved dies because I could have done something but didn't! Nobody! That's my way of the ninja, dattebayo!"
The contrast is so startling, so deeply unsettling, that it takes almost half a minute for it to register.
Feeling the grass against his face, the cloths on his body, and smelling the scent of Blood and Death and Fire and Hunt in the amalgam of noise that is Night.
When it does, so does the sensation of pain. And *enemy*.
***
Samehada whistles through the air, slapping a Katon fireball away without any noticeable effort as its wielder rides a tidal-wave taller than the surrounding treetops.
Kisame isn't particularly worried. Or winded. In fact, he's only just gotten warmed up.
The Chakra-drinking sword is brought about for another swipe, even as the giant toad evades with a surprising amount of agility for its size. The shark-teeth of its blade still rip into skin and flesh, just not as deeply as they would have otherwise.
He puts the wave - a singularly odd sight when there's no body of water larger than a pond present within, oh, ten to twenty miles at least - into a charge, surfing on top of it with practiced ease, blade at the ready. It's met with the old hermit's scroll holder, which turns out to be reinforced. Enough so that Samehada merely scratches it.
"You're pretty quick. For an old guy."
The Sannin grins.
"When you're my age, you'll be _wishing_ you looked this good, kid."
Then the hermit jerks the contents of the scroll holder free, and the air in front of him is filled with unfolding streams of paper even as Kisame feels a spike of Chakra. Then another.
The air comes alive with steel, as the sealed kunai, senbon, shuriken and assorted other weaponry are released, then multiplied again by a Shuriken Kage Bushin as they shoot towards the shark-skinned Akatsuki member.
Samehada sweeps aside the first few, before Kisame interposes the broad blade between himself and the worst of the barrage. Then the water he's standing on erupts upwards to catch whatever gets past that.
By the time it's over, Kisame has a distinctly bad feeling about things.
Jiraya stands, on top of Gamabunta's head, inhaling and holding the Tora Seal.
Gamabunta, who lets loose a torrent of flammable oil towards the nukenin.
Oil which is then ignited via a simple Katon. The onslaught nearly burns through the water Kisame had summoned, evaporating more than three quarters of it, and giving the victim of the attack a few burns in the process.
'Alright,' Kisame thinks, 'no more playing around!'
Jiraya grins, preparing something of his own that he's probably certain will delay this obstacle to finding his wayward student ...
Black flames shoot into the sky from a ways off, so dark that they stand out, even against the backdrop of night.
'Three guesses as to where the brat is,' Jiraya gulps back a lump in his throat, at the realization exactly what those flames mean.
***
Itachi moves the moment he sees the Jinchuuriki twitch, having lived as long as he has by following his instincts, which are screaming at him. Because for some reason, not even Sharingan seems to be able to predict ...
A moment later, his trust in those hard won instincts is once again proved correct, as Kabuto's arm sails past, sans Kabuto, and trailing a spray blood.
Kabuto himself follows shortly, surprise etched into his features, chest caved in by a simple _palm strike_ from the kid!
Even without his Bloodline Limit, the Uchiha would have been able to see the air itself ripple around Uzumaki as he moved, as if in a heat haze. With it, the red Chakra pulsing on top of his skin is blatantly obvious.
It's obvious, even without Kabuto's input on the matter - he's too busy lying against a tree some twenty meters away, trying to put his ribs, sternum, not to mention lungs and other internal organs, in order - that things have gone awry in a disastrous way.
Normally, that would prompt a retreat, since the target really shouldn't be killed this time around.
Normally, Itachi is not easily rattled.
This isn't a normal situation.
The Kyuubi Chakra flared, exploding out of the Jinchuuriki's tenketsu ...
... and Itachi responded in kind, Mangekyo spinning, leaping back before unleashing ...
"AMATERASU!"
... the black flames that engulfed everything in their path, hungrily feasting on whatever they touched.
Amaterasu, the Goddess of the Sun, come down to Earth to burn it with unmatched power and intensity, the pure black flames eradicating all life they as much as brushed against.
Shooting high.
Consuming the very light of the stars.
"Mhmmmm."
What?!
"Delicious."
The flames twist, momentarily ripped free of the eyes' command.
"And so ..."
Flaring a bloody, visceral crimson.
"... utterly ..."
Unfolding into rising, twisting, shimmering columns.
"... futile."
Nine of them.
In a heartbeat, they are gone, and in the middle of the black, shimmering obsidian that the ground at the epicenter of the display had been crystalized into, the Jinchuuriki stands.
"I have watched exploding suns."
No.
"I bathed in their power."
Not the Jinchuuriki.
"Ape-rat, I am the incarnation of hellfire!"
There is no more Jinchuuriki. That was what the erosion had been.
"And tonight, the Ignis Fatuus shall light the path to hell."
Kyuubi. Unleashed.
"Your path."
'Oh, fuck,' thinks Uchiha Itachi. And is gone.
***
It's raining.
Coming down in the barren crater, almost a kilometer across, and half as deep.
The walls are perfect, smooth, inky blackness. Unmarred, unscarred. There are no traces. No signs. No testament other than what is present and readily visible, as to what had occurred that night.
But he knows.
How could he not?
Standing there, tattered robes and blood-stained hair, and fists clenched in helpless rage.
Head bowed.
He's always had an odd relationship with the rain.
He claims he hates it.
Hates it, because it makes things look bleak and hopeless.
But he likes it for one reason in particular.
When it's raining, he can let himself cry.
For lost lives. For buried dreams. For abandoned hopes.
He stands there for a time, until the rain starts to slow down, and then shakes himself off. Spiky hair flings droplets everywhere.
He turns around, resolute.
And walks off.
Or, hobbles off, as the case may be.
Jiraya doesn't wipe his face though.
After all, it's just rain.
***
It's barren, so high up.
Cold.
Not that it matters.
'Hands. How odd.'
'Gaki.'
'Why the hell did he ...?'
'How dare he?!'
'How dare he do this to me?!'
'That ...'
'... that ...'
'Kusogaki!!!'
Fury wells up within, feeling as alien as everything else did. Fury should be a ball of Youki, a flare of power, an impulse. Not the burn, not the slow agitation of chemicals, not ...
Kyuubi slams a fist into a rock wall, burying it in the cliff-face in sheer, bloody minded frustration.
How dare the little bastard do this to him?!
Bind him to a body, will he?!
And one as pathetic as this, to add insult to injury!
Oh, he has his Youki, yes, but he has to channel it through this pathetically fragile shell! It should be second nature, and it actually takes effort, damnit!
It's a blow to his pride, that a mere human had dared to inflict upon him this indignity!
Jigoku! What the Kusogaki's father had done to him hadn't been this bad!
And that wasn't all of it, not by a longshot!
Oh, no! Simply leaving it at that? Too easy! Too trivial and trite!
"Makai take you, Kusogaki! You had to go and make me ..."
The blond shell quivers in barely suppressed fury, before forcing itself into choking the actual words out.
"Owe. You. Uzumaki Naruto. There! I said it! Are you happy now, you pathetic, dead piece of ego?! Are you?!"
The rage flars, momentarily manifesting and melting the snowflakes inches away from coming into contact with the Youkai in human skin.
Then it fizzles. The Kyuubi falters. Leans back against the stone, and looks down and out, into Grass Country, and Fire Country somewhere beyond.
"Kyuubi no Kitsune owes Uzumaki Naruto his life. And damn you, ape-rat, if he isn't going to pay his debts."
Kyuubi chuckle-growls bitterly.
***
'Fox in the snow, where do you go
To find something you can eat?
Cause the word out on the street is you are starving
Don't let yourself grow hungry now
Don't let yourself grow cold
Fox in the snow'
-'Fox in the Snow', Rasputina
***
***
***
***
***
EPILOGUE
***
A chamber.
A bed.
A window.
A sky.
All the glory of Jigoku dancing its violent, yet oddly serene ballet in the clouds.
Spirits floating past, casting light where there would be none otherwise.
Marble floor.
Obsidian walls.
Reflecting the sky, and the light, and throwing the room into shades of deep, rich, royal purple of the silks draped within.
A flicker, so brief it could have been the imagination.
Then, a moment later, another one.
And another, stronger.
Stronger still.
The shifting of silk on bare, flawless, ivory pale skin.
A mirror reflecting a flame that isn't there, casting the room into sudden, flickering scarlet.
"Found you."
A playfully sinister giggle.
The scarlet is gone.
***
END foxfire
***
"Hokage-sama," is said with such uncharacteristic lack of disrespect that Tsunade takes notice.
Enough to jar her out of the fog of disbelief she'd been floating around in ever since Jiraya had returned, not two months prior.
"As a Shinobi of Konohagakure no Sato, I must inform you that I am facing a ... conflict of loyalties."
The sound of metal on metal, then on wood, seems deafening.
---
Crazy like a Fox
second in the Kyuubi Chronicles line
by Griever
---
She isn't in very much of a hurry, because doing things that way rarely turns out for the best.
Besides, while rushing headlong into things might be her style, it isn't something she indulges in all too often. Living fast is all well and good. No, sometimes it's downright great. Sometimes, it's the only thing she thinks she has left that is truly her own.
Living fast may be well and good, but the key word in that phrase is still 'living'.
And throwing caution to the wind is a good way to get dead fast in her line of work.
Besides, this 'mission', as it was laughably called, didn't require much in the way of celerity.
Perception, on the other hand ...
The forest speaks to her, even as feet alight on branches and propel her farther without leaving as much as a mark, even with the chakra being channeled through the soles.
And she's good at listening to it. Some may see more, some may know more, but there's only ever been one who could listen as well as she does. And she's improved a lot since those days before childhood's end.
Neither is she traveling alone. Not when she has the option of doing otherwise.
Knowledge is power, especially to a ninja.
Who, in that position, would scoff at an extra pair of eyes and ears? Or several extra pairs, for that matter?
Which is why she pauses, for no noticeable reason, instead of rebounding off of a tree trunk. Instead, she crouches there, perpendicular to the ground, and waits as one of those sets of eyes and ears makes its way up.
It's a small one, hardly noticeable when you're not looking for it, meaning it's perfect for th job she'd given it and its kin. The larger and more powerful ones may be impressive, but there is only so much you can do with power alone. Subtlety isn't one of those things.
She notices it when the snake points out a direction - and it's faint, not old really, but rather well concealed and diluted. Still, it's unmistakable to her.
Mitarashi Anko smells blood.
***
The duty of a spy is survival. That's all there is to it.
You may be strong, and know how to fight, but you have to know where to cut corners and when to do your job.
Despite any and all inconvenience.
Like, say, getting your arm torn off.
For a medic-nin, especially a skilled one who knows how to stave off shock, that isn't outside of the range of survivable trauma.
And Kabuto's range of 'survivable' was defined by the snake Sannin himself, so it's safe to assume it's moderately impressive at the very least.
Had he been able to retrieve the missing limb, it wouldn't have been outside his capability to reattach it. Unfortunately, as it was turned into little more than charcoal and slag, along with more than a fair bit of the countryside he'd lost it in, that wasn't an option.
The spy wobbles, feeling the fatigue and phantom pain reaching for him, and staves them off with an effort of will.
Despite that, he runs. At a fair clip, too. Not very gracefully, or particularly quietly, but still quickly.
To his death, or to his pain. One or the other.
Indoctrination at its finest.
***
She sees.
She recognizes.
She's focused on the running, jumping figure.
She doesn't sense the presence.
But barely, just barely, she hears it. The vibration of a single, immediate footstep, right ...
A vice clamps down around her lower jaw.
... behind her.
The kunai goes underhand, sliding out of her coat's sleeve and being thrust backwards at where she knows the assailant most likely is.
Greased lightning, the reflexes motion as smooth and vicious as that of a striking mamba.
It hits.
Or, for a moment, so she thinks it does. There's no sound, no grunt of pain, no twinge in the hand holding her jaw. There _is_ a wet, sticky feeling, familiarly dripping onto her fingers. There is also the sensation of a hand having closed over her own.
A familiar, coppery smell fills the air.
The kunai must have punched through it, she thinks.
And she realizes, she knows this blood. She's smelled it before.
"Shh," a voice hiss-growls in her ear. "You'll scare my prey, wretch. You wouldn't want me to waste almost a week of patience, would you? That might make me ... upset. You wouldn't enjoy seeing me upset."
She's tasted it before.
Then she's free, and leaps, and twists around at the landing, fists full of kunai at the ready.
Ragged remains of clothes adorn his body, clearly recognizable but for the feral light in his eyes, and yet ...
"Aren't you supposed to be dead, brat?"
***
'Your dreams, gaki. I should trample them, out of principle.'
He's tempted.
So very _tempted_.
It might just be worth it.
Payback for the humiliation.
Payback for making him see ...
He shakes it off immediately.
A Kitsune is a creature ruled by its passions, and even if Kyuubi knows how to control his to an extent, he's still affected. It doesn't mean he'll let himself feel ... _that_.
The absurdity would kill him, if nothing else.
'Why didn't you just kill the bitch, then, oh great Youkai?'
He glares.
What did this result from? A bit of carelessness. Forgetting to check the corpses of his enemies ... or, char marks, as it were. Letting one escape.
The mistake of a rank amateur. One he hadn't made since he'd been just another one-tail in the pack.
Still, it had the potential to turn into an advantage, until his prey had picked up its second pursuer.
Snakes and blood, and steel ...
The gaki remembered her, and so Kyuubi did likewise.
'Why didn't I kill the bitch?'
'Because ...'
***
"... I'm paying back a debt."
It's been a week since the old pervert came back, and a week since the Hokage called together the Jounin to inform them. Not all of them, though ...
... and she herself was only there because it was relevant to her 'mission'.
To her, death was more than simply fact. She'd seen it happen, maybe in more varied and inventive ways than almost any other Konoha nin outside of the Godaime. The news that the old fart was supposed to have brought didn't as much as phase her.
Shit happens. Life happens. And then you die.
If you're very lucky, you'll have left behind something that makes sure you're remembered fondly.
It's her philosophy. The only one she has, the only one she needs, and the only one she dares to take.
Because sometimes, when she's all alone in the dark and sleep doesn't come, before she can drink herself into unconsciousness or exhaust herself through training, she's on the verge of understanding.
On the verge of damning her loyalty and walking down the path she'd once abandoned, in the wake of her sensei.
So she knows that Uzumaki Naruto is dead.
She knows this not because she'd been told, but because she's trailing behind his body.
"Since when do you give a damn about something like that?" she asks.
Some would say, suicidally.
She wouldn't be herself if she didn't, though, and if that cost her her life? Tough. The Council hadn't managed to change her, and she denied Orochimaru any further chance to do so. To change because of a 'little' fear? Ridiculous.
Besides, for some reason, he needs her. She can tell. There's always a way to tell that sort of thing.
"Since when is a mortal bitch expert on kitsune?"
"Dunno. I'm an expert on homicidal assholes, though," she gives her most honest grin, the one with the half-closed eyes ... the one that sends cold shivers down Jounin spines. "That counts, right?"
***
"Dead, you say? Well, then. Not a total loss, Kabuto-kun," the snake Sannin says. "Nothing to be proud of, either. Unfortunately for you."
The body hangs in the air, serpents wound around its limbs, fangs pinning it in place lest it starts to slip.
"Though I suppose you've done your work, and you _are_ still useful. Or, would be, if it weren't for this terrible disfigurement," slender fingers trail along the cauterized mess of the spy's shoulder as their owner stalks around the body.
Then dig in, pressing into the wound and the raw flesh and nerves underneath.
The echoing scream reverbs through the chamber, drawing a disdainful snort from the shadows.
"Yes, quite pathetic, Sasuke-kun. I know," Orochimaru's smirk doesn't falter, even as the now _sole_ living Uchiha's emotions churn in a rage as rich as a fine wine. "He's very fortunate that this little matter ..."
Fingers leave the bleeding wound, shedding crimson as if they were the mirror-polished surface of a blade.
"... is not beyond my ability to fix. To an extent."
***
"Feh. Call me whatever you wish ..." Kyuubi glares. "But don't dare to presume me an oathbreaker. I can no more break a promise than you can let go of your pathetic human hatred."
The two are perched, high in the treetops, unmoving among the branches and leaves.
"So what the hell do you want with me? Cold and lonely at night?"
Nearly ... _nearly_ too far, she notes. There's no tension to the muscles, no overt response, but she can hear the subsonic growl of the human-bound-demon.
"I'm going to ... what was the expression again ... kill two birds with one stone. The master," he says the last word of that disgustedly, "of this place and I have something to settle between us, but that isn't my sole reason for being here."
"Yeah, and that has so much to do with promises," she snarls back. Let it never be said that Mitarashi Anko bowed down to something as trivial as 'self-preservation'. Leaving was hardly an option, the demon had made that much clear, but it needed her alive for some reason as well ... so there was a little leeway she could make use of.
The burning blue eyes focus on her, freezing the words in her throat and making sure that she listens.
"The ... pathetic ... gaki who kept me prisoner died to keep me alive. He knew what he was doing, and let himself be ... consumed ... so that I could survive. Spite, I could have broken. Rage, I could have ignored. But in doing what he did, he put me not only in his body, but in his debt as well. To carry _his_ promises, _his_ obligations ... so take care not to taunt me, ku-no-ichi."
It's like a bolt of lightning that crackles through Anko's mind. She hadn't really known the brat, no, but she'd heard enough about Uzumaki from others.
"The Uchiha kid," she whispers.
"The kusogaki promised to drag him back to that pathetic shithole of a village," Kyuubi's fingers sink into the trunk of the tree he crouches on without any effort, digging deep gouges. "Your little teacher, I have my _own_ business with."
"Oh? So why'm I along? You need an audience?"
"I just want him _dead_, I don't much care for the how, but 'painfully' would be preferable. I'm not without a sense of irony."
***
She knows what this is. A bribe. Pure and simple.
But even knowing that, she wonders.
She wonders about loyalty repaid in mistrust.
About devotion cruelly me with pain.
About being cast aside as insignificant even before deciding to leave, and being written off as an acceptable loss.
She doesn't wonder about good or evil. Those, she knows, will never really be a factor.
Finally, though, she wonders about the sort of mind, be it ever so inhuman, that would go so far for a debt. Even if said debt is to something that mind considers little more than an insignificant speck.
It's a spark, and something long abandoned awakens. Or begins to.
Mitarashi Anko looks at the Kyuubi no Kitsune, and finds that life is indeed not without a sense of irony.
***
Old things. Forgotten things.
This weakness of having a body again, with flesh to be torn and blood to be spilled.
Revulsion and melancholy, he thinks, an odd, odd combination.
Neither pertinent to the matter at hand, though.
He hadn't survived long enough to become Kyuubi without knowing that there was a time and a place for such things. And this was not it.
In fact, he feels faintly smug. The kunoichi could be so very _useful_ if handled correctly.
A moment later, the consideration and likely complications no longer matter very much, as he lets them fade away into shadows in his mind.
And he goes back, figuratively speaking.
Back before Kyuubi, back before a time when his body was the incarnation of power.
Back to Nogitsune, of tooth and claw and malice tinted with mischief.
The Den lay below. It is the only thing it could be, with the feel of secrets about it. Besides, it only seemed right for a snake to take shelter underground.
With watchers, hidden in the trees, guarding the entrances.
Pfeh.
They don't notice either of them, of course. Her, because she is very good at her job. Him, because this is equally his nature. Just one he hasn't used in a while.
He retrieves a kunai - a poor replacement for a claw, but then, this was an equally poor replacement for his original body. Even before he'd become a mass of burning Youki - and weighs it in his hand.
The toils of having nigh-unlimited power, but needing to use it in doses that seem microscopic or risk suiciding in a spectacular manner.
No matter.
Nogitsune knew how to improvise, and Kyuubi would learn again.
They were so fond, these shinobi, of using unnecessary flash. But occasionally, they actually did come up with something useful.
***
The twinge in her neck is unmistakable.
Otogakure no Sato. The Village of Hidden Sound.
Below them, heavy gates close the underground home and fiefdom of her old teacher away from the rest of the world.
She wants nothing more than to dive downwards, the slow burn of anger in her gut coming to the fore.
Still, she forces it back.
Borderline psychotic, and very much unstable she may be ... it's the only way she knows of that lets her retain her sanity, cracked and bent as it is.
She isn't stupid.
So the kitsune's action is first met with puzzlement, then with incredulity.
There is a flash of movement, a spark of killing intent that touches more primal parts of her brain than any she'd felt before, and a flare of the Demon's chakra. Short, sharp, and very, very distinctive.
That's not being subtle. That's as good as putting out a flag saying 'here I am, please stick me full of kunai'.
Then again, the damn fox could well be her better where sheer insanity is concerned.
What follows is a single, fluid, impossibly vicious motion.
An arm wrapped in coils of pulsing red and black flings a kunai forward, roughly in the direction she can hear the nearest Oto-nin's location being. A ripping, tearing noise fills the treetops, as ten, twenty, fifty, a hundred, more than she can count ... a multitude of small puffs of pitch black smoke erupt around the single projectile.
There is no in-between.
One moment, a single kunai flies, charged with enough chakra to make it a formidable threat but not actually heading to hit anything.
The next, the air is full of shattered wood, splinters, torn leaves, and pierced, pincushioned, _torn-apart_ bodies of Oto-nin that tumble gracelessly and break upon the ground below, trailing a fine bloody mist through the air.
"What the *fuck*?!" she hears someone ask and startles before she realizes it was her own voice.
The brat's body meets her with crimson eyes that slowly fade into ice-cold cerulean, and a smug, toothy grin. It seems to consider something, before saying, mockingly:
"Majutsu: Mugen no Hagane."
Then the Kyuubi dives through the bloody mist, towards the gates, crackling viciously and blazing killing intent like a lighthouse.
A moment later, her own voice joins in, her body following.
A moment after _that_, a flare of that feral, deadly chakra flashes into being around the blond obakemono, and another storm of steel tears into the gate.
***
He runs through a scene from nightmares.
The main cavern lies in ruins, walls and pillars scarred and marked with signs of searing heat.
The corridors flow with blood.
And the walls are decorated with kunai, shuriken, swords and knives, and spears, and even spikes of rock torn from the underground landscape. All of them bathed in blood. Most of them, serving to uphold a grotesque example.
Oto-nin.
Torn apart, charred, burned, frozen, bleeding from wounds or bodily orifices ...
... here, a severed arm with a kunai through the palm of the hand, pinned to a pillar ...
... here, a gutted kunoichi, unrecognizable because of the stone spear put through her face and dangling from it like a madman's fantasy of butterflies ...
... a corpse, burned to a crisp ...
... swollen, discolored skin that seems to crawl, and the reek of venom ...
... a Jounin, still twitching, hung from the ceiling by his own intestines ...
... and, most frightening of all, those who died without as much as a mark on them, expression of overwhelming terror etched into their features, their glassy eyes wide and unseeing.
Otogakure no Sato.
The place Uchiha Sasuke has called home for the past several years.
These aren't the results of battle.
No.
This is a massacre.
It doesn't matter.
This was only a tool for him, after all. Another step on the path to power. Another level he'd needed to reach to finally attain his revenge.
Sharingan eyes watch, seek, tomoe spinning wildly.
There is something eerily familiar about the situation, but he doesn't pay the nagging feeling any mind.
It doesn't matter.
It is merely another test he needs to pass.
Sentimental foolishness is something he cannot afford. After all, in the greater picture, only power truly matters.
It's the shadow that warns him. The flickering flames that seem to consume the rock on the other side of the cavern throw everything into a stark contrast of crimson and orange, with dancing shades thrown in.
The Sharingan catches a flicker, his mind analyzes it, his body moves.
A leap, twisting out of the way, charging the edge of his hand with chakra to slice the attack in half.
Sizzling, both from the burning, white hot electricity of his defense and the dripping, sickly and smoking venom filling its disproportionately gaping maw, the head of a serpent hits the ground.
Drip.
Drip.
Drip.
The venom trickles to the ground, smoking and burning all the way. Sasuke doesn't pay attention.
"Well, if it isn't the little traitor-brat," the kunoichi grins at him, pushing off the body of the gutted Oto-nin she'd been hidden by - partially underneath it, partially within.
He knows her. He's seen her before, back in Konohagakure. During the Chunin Exam.
He's heard about her, a little. Rumors, mostly. A bit from various Oto-nin, some snippets from his ... 'sensei'.
Orochimaru's first little project, and first student.
Did she do this?
If so ...
Good.
Very, very good.
He meets her deranged grin with a disdainful grimace.
It's the closest to a pleased smile he's gotten in the past six months.
The old against the new, to prove his superiority.
To prove to himself that he'd attained power.
With a burst of inhuman speed, electric discharges crackling along his legs for a moment, the Uchiha charges.
He is met in kind.
***
The darkness is almost total, the chamber sitting deep in the bowels of the complex. Illumination comes only from the relics of times long past, flickering merrily with images of the bloodbath above.
The watcher doesn't really care all that much.
After all, if a tool breaks, does one lament its passing, or does one simply prepare to acquire another?
He isn't too nervous, either.
Power? Yes, there is power there, but all in all, little experience. Little finesse.
"I see. So, Kabuto-kun was mistaken after all. Such a pity."
He does spend a moment to wonder at the viciousness of the proceedings, and at how the Jinchuuriki could have come this far into his own whilst being watched by those ever annoying old 'friends' of his.
Perhaps his vassal's efforts were not wholly futile, he thinks, examining the Berserkergang of the demon vessel, his injuries spreading even as havoc spreads all around him.
One by one, the ancient devices spread across the compound fall silent, the images replaces by hissing static.
Oh, well.
He moves to stand, much like a serpent would uncoil. As if his body didn't have to obey the limitations of joints and bones.
The Otokage isn't truly concerned. After all, it isn't a Village he seeks, and creating another will not be all that difficult.
The world is full of malcontents, and precious few can truly exploit this fact. He himself is a virtuoso of the act.
Calm. Controlled.
It's almost shattered when he feels the sympathetic flare of the Heaven Seal, and Sasuke-kun's chakra.
A snake knows its Den.
Orochimaru knows that the flare was nowhere near where the Jinchuuriki was still slaughtering his way through the Village.
"Ne."
His head whips around to face ...
"Ne."
... and again ...
"Ne."
... and again ...
"Hebi-yarou."
... and finally.
Blue eyes and fox grins.
"You better not ..."
A puff of black smoke as a kunai whips through the first.
"... even think of ..." the second is caught in the gut by a spread of shuriken.
Poof.
"... leaving the party before the last dance," the third gets a hand through the chest.
Bamf.
"Or I'll stick my sandal so deep up your ass, you'll be tasting leather in the afterlife! Believe it! Konohagakure's Number One Surprising Ninja!"
How is he doing this? The spark that marks the creator of the Shadow Clones keeps jumping around in his senses, from one version of the kitsune-gaki to the next, until there's only one left.
Hands bat away handseals, kunai clash, Sannin's hand-strike is parried to the side with a wince.
"Uzumaki Naruto!"
Orochimaru presses the attack, since trying to disengage only brings the brat back with him, and finishes with a double palm strike that is barely diverted and seemingly leaves the snake Sannin open.
"Is here!"
Blood splashes on the floor of his private chambers.
Open to spear the little blond annoyance with the Kusanagi no Tsurugi, the blade shooting forth from his mouth and hitting cleanly, neatly, right between the ribs.
It isn't fatal.
As the body falls, he can feel the Demon chakra within already acting to heal it.
"Impressive, Naruto-kun. You've improved. But I think I should leave Sasuke-kun the pleasure of ending ..."
Wait.
The Heaven Seal is still *there*, still channeling chakra, still active ...
"You weren't alone," a statement, no question.
Orochimaru's eyes widen slightly at the realization. The machines hadn't caught anyone but the brat, and yet, evidence ...
Poof.
The doors to his chambers explode in a wave of flame, and even the Doton shield the snake summoner calls up crumbles away with the assault of charring heat and chunks of flying stone.
The speared, healing version of Uzumaki is gone.
Grin. Baby blue eyes. Kyuubi's chakra burning like a bonfire.
"Fooled ya, didn't I, Hebi-teme?"
***
He plays the role. Plays it well.
Too well, some would say.
He would sneer.
Kyuubi.
Kyuubi no _Kitsune_.
So many forget.
Why correct them, though? If they understand, eventually, it's of no consequence _then_. If they do not?
Fools, the lot of them. Pathetic little ape-rats in their little cubby-holes of thought, thinking they knew _his_ limits.
Those sniveling brats on the face of the world that hasn't even heard, much less seen Jigoku in centuries, thinking themselves lords and ladies of creation.
And he plays, because eventually, this would be the path of least ... complication.
Use it, employ those old skills, make even the debt.
Might as well practice, since it's been a while.
And the Fool is a mask he's played before. Not this particular fool. Not in this particular place. But it isn't foreign to him in the least.
It is, in part, his nature.
Taunt them, anger them, enrage them, uncover their faults in front of their and others' eyes and humiliate them. Bring them down totally and utterly before you destroy them.
It works on the snake, his ego so bloated it echoes within the very walls he built. Within his every action.
It isn't rage yet.
But it will be.
Oh, it will be.
Kyuubi grins Uzumaki Naruto's grin of demented glee as he fills the chamber with doubles, faking the Seals and using the body's chakra instead of drawing up his Youki just yet.
Who knows, this could actually be fun.
***
He's fast.
A combination nearly catches her by surprise, forcing a retreat and rebound. A brief clash in midair, then a dash aside and momentarily keeping him at bay with a burst of Katon-created flame.
Maybe as fast as she is, and with the Seal, faster.
Strong.
Crackling, shrieking, the lighting-encased hand shoots after her, dragging the rest of his body along.
His chakra capacity, already significant, enhanced further by the Heaven.
Anko grins, setting herself.
The Uchiha flies, head over heels, fast as the Chidori had been pulling him along and slamming into and through a house carved out of one of the cavern's stalagmites.
Dust settles, revealing the flame-like offshoots of the Heaven Seal dancing along Uchiha Sasuke's exposed skin, as he shrugs off the debris and shakes his head to clear the puzzlement.
"Aww, did the widdle boy get a boo-boo?"
Trained by Orochimaru.
Orochimaru, who'd been her old teacher.
Orochimaru, of whom she knew the fighting style.
Orochimaru, who - as far as she knew, was a knowledge-freak as well as a jutsu-freak ... but had barely ever innovated at all.
_His_ old sensei had been gathering and mastering techniques for so long, he'd become known as the Professor, but old-man Sarutobi actually integrated every single technique he knew into his style. It was why he'd been so powerful. Flexibility. Orochimaru took this to the extreme, but forgot adaptation somewhere along the line. Apparently, he'd thought knowledge to be enough.
Which is why he wants the Sharingan so. Not just because of the jutsu he thinks he can gather with it, but also because it allows the user to 'see ahead', somewhat mitigating what the old snake knows is a weakness of his.
For all that the Sharingan is powerful, though ... trained by Orochimaru, its user is a tactical moron.
And she could see it. See the irritation in the Uchiha's moves, as each strike came just a little short. Evaded, deflected, or just plain _missing_ as Anko played the holding game.
As the gray-skinned, white-haired, winged - and, in Anko's mind, really really stupid looking - form of the Uchiha slammed past her, tearing into stone and ripping part of her longcoat away but not touching _her_ at all, the kunoichi crackled and snerked and ridiculed.
Oh, he tested the limits of her speed.
Like this, fueled by rage and the Heaven Seal, he is both stronger and faster than her. His chakra reserves are, comparatively, immense.
He is a monster, drunk with his own power, who'd forgotten how to be _shinobi_.
Anko, however, lives and breathed being a kunoichi.
It was the only thing she had _left_.
And the Sharingan may have been useful for a genin, or even a chunin of little experience ... but the truly experienced shinobi and kunoichi?
The blow is dodged, though she could only glimpse it coming. But she'd known how it would be coming, from where, and she'd heard it coming ...
He may be faster. The kunoichi knows, though, that in true combat true speed is but an illusion.
A feint, a counter, a follow up - all met by Sharingan foresight and Cursed Seal granted physical ability.
Her back brushes against a wall.
Chidori roars into being, its wielder screaming down at her through the air, backlit by the flames eating away at the cavern.
Mitarashi Anko's eyes go wide, and her muscles tense as she realizes that, this one, she cannot dodge or counter. She moves to try, anyway.
The traitor grins, corrects the trajectory of his path in just the right direction to take the chirping, squealing lance of chakra induced electricity through her chest ...
And she moves, in exactly the _opposite_ direction, as if the limitations of joints and muscles no longer applied to her, as she throws a mess of tangled brown Jounin coat into the traitor's face.
When the Chidori smashes into rock, Anko is in the air, chips of stone drawing bloody lines along her hips and side as she twists and ...
Metal meets skin, lashing against it and wrapping around it, binding and constricting and trussing up the Uchiha even as her other hand flashes in a short, vicious arc that the Sharingan sees coming, predicts it accurately, but his body can't actually _react_ to as metal mesh and serpents suddenly erupting from the rubble and wrapping around his legs stop it from moving.
The demented grin of a mostly nude kunoichi and the flash of steel are the last things he sees.
***
He wakes to pain.
To shackles.
To fear.
To bubbling beakers and cylinders of liquid, and walls full of blades, and saws, and syringes.
Among other, less ordinary implements.
Most of all, Yakushi Kabuto wakes to the dull, echoing sound of explosions that become increasingly louder.
It's self preservation that has him struggle, trying to get loose from the operating table, finally managing and ending up sprawled on the ground ...
It saves his life, as the far wall falls apart in a shower of rubble, and a piece of said wall smashes into where he'd been not moments ago.
Followed closely by Orochimaru, who scrambles, slithers, crawls across the ceiling with the sort of frantic anxiety Kabuto had never seen him exhibit.
Ever.
He knows the sound that follows him in, though ... and freezes.
"You ..." for a moment, he forgets self-preservation, as a patented impossibility presents itself.
He knows Uzumaki Naruto is dead. He saw his soul destroy itself, right before the loosed demon chakra of an enraged Kyuubi ripped the countryside apart.
Yes, he'd been running at the time, but he'd known the sort of power released there wouldn't have been something the Leaf genin could have survived. Ever.
Then the blond, holding the whistling sphere of Rasengan in each hand, grins.
A vicious, toothy, smug grin that has no place on the face of one Uzumaki Naruto.
"Heh. You figured it out? Only took you a moment too," the voice, too, was different. More guttural. Almost a growl.
Oh, yes. Kabuto knew.
The knowledge almost made him mess his pants.
"Faster than your so called 'boss' did, too."
Still groggy, the silver haired nin shoots his ... employer ... a look.
It's the last thing he does, as Orochimaru's palm smacks against his exposed back, smearing his own blood that rapidly expands into Seals running along the spy's entire body.
Whereupon Kabuto is introduced to Kusanagi. Or rather, the blade thereof.
Terminally.
Ironically, the last thing he feels is relief.
***
"What now, Hebi-teme? Is that it? Running out of tricks? You'd better have some more, or you're going down faster than Ero-Sannin's dignity at a bath-house! Believe it!"
At this point, no more pretense is made. It's not much of a voice, but a more than fair growl that delivers the message.
And then he's flying, leaping, spinning towards the snake Sannin ...
"Not hardly, Naruto-kun ... or should that be, Kyuubi-kun, maybe?"
Seals glow, spread across the ground in an instant, and the silver haired rat's death slams a surge of energy into this world's barriers ...
... Reality seems to tear, the ground shifts underneath ...
This time, though, both Rasengan spheres slam into and ricochet from the coffin that erupts from underneath, sending Kyuubi flying.
Fists clench. Spinning, spiraling, rolling chakra dissipates, even as feet make contact with the ceiling and stick.
Before and below him, inverted from this perspective, the corpse of the Sandaime Hokage steps from the coffin.
Then, a demented, blond pinball is dodging, bouncing, leaping out of the way as the Professor presses the assault with an impressive spread of jutsus, from Katon to Fuuton, with Suitons and Dotons thrown in here and there for good measure, Orochimaru adding his own array to the barrage ...
... and Kyuubi finally slides underneath a wave of water, going on to run across the snout of a stone dragon, and dive out of the way of one made of water ...
... only to be hit, head on, by a Grand Fireball.
Kusanagi is there, cleaving through the flames, blade almost seeming hungry for blood in the tenacity with which it seeks out its intended target.
Poof.
Clap.
Clap.
Clap.
Orochimaru blinks. Orochimaru stiffens.
Orochimaru looks around.
The growl echoes in the chamber the kitsune had been 'forced' into, and flickers of greenish-blue flame dance across the walls, painting the scene an unearthly shade of pale.
And the echoes aren't. Like a veil suddenly falling from his eyes, Orochimaru's senses finally register things and nearly overload with the concentration of Youki.
Foxes. Standing as tall as his waist, their furs as white as snow, their eyes the color of freshly spilled blood, fangs glinting. The Youki momentarily spikes ...
... and the reanimated corpse of Sandaime collapses, as if its strings had been cut ...
'Really,' Kyuubi thinks, snickering. 'Idiot. Using _that_ against me, when compared to Nibi, he's no more than a rank amateur.'
The foxes pounce.
***
He's not hard to find.
Just follow the demon chakra.
Dragging the 'package' isn't even all that hard, now that the added bulk is gone.
Finally, she's there, and she tosses it. All trussed up and made up and nowhere to go.
Giggle.
She probably looks a sight, herself, she thinks. Tattered remains of her coat hung over shin guards, fingerless gloves, the pair of weapons pouches, first aid kit, and naked, blood splattered skin.
It's quiet now, she realizes. Save for the crackling of far-off fires, the only thing in the air is her breath.
"Got you a present, bastard," she cheerfully proclaims, squinting her eyes. The unconscious, brutalized form of Uchiha Sasuke twitches, still wrapped in what used to be her metal fishnet outfit.
The Kyuubi looks at her, levelly, and she resists the urge to ... do what? Preen? Cower? Spit in his face? All of the above?
Maybe.
The Youkai in human flesh snorts, and motions to the chamber he'd just exited from.
Anko looks.
"Have a ball, bitch."
Kyuubi hefts the inert body onto his shoulder, not bothering to turn around.
The kunoichi enters, pulling the heavy doors closed behind her.
It's a large chamber, though most of it is bathed in darkness. One wall has a huge, gaping hole, looking over similar kinds of destruction that trail off into the dark, distant recesses of what's left of Otogakure.
That, though, isn't so interesting to her.
In the middle ... spread-eagled on the ground, unseeing eyes rolling about in mute terror and pain ...
Four huge foxes, once white fur splattered in drying blood, clumps missing here and there, have their jaws clamped on a limb each. What's left of the limbs, that is.
She moves slowly, carefully, eyes fixed on the body ... and hates herself for her reaction.
The undercurrent of the emotion that runs through her is almost sexual. It lights her nerves on fire, making them feel like live-wires as her breathing quickens.
She straddles the torso, lowers herself down, bends to bring her face down before his and look into those eyes.
And she's smiling, giggling, finally laughing and laughing and crackling insanely with glee and anger and sorrow and pain before she screams.
She screams louder than she ever has before, and her hands flash, and a pair of kunai flash in the unearthly light to cut, to slice, to plunge into flesh and be dragged back out with gouts of blood as teeth clamp onto the jugular and the head trashes to rip, tear ...
She doesn't know how long she continues, and screams all the while, even when the arms fall limp at her sides and she's sitting up, head thrown back, screams turning into wails, then into choked sobs.
For the first time that she can consciously recall, she's crying. Because, finally, it's over.
Minutes, hours, days later ... or so it feels when she stands ... she's empty.
No emotion.
Not even a care.
When she gets up, the foxes are still there, their pelts a running crimson starting to turn brownish.
Orochimaru, what's left of him, is still.
She takes one last, deep breath, and turns around.
"Get rid of it."
She walks out, not looking around, even as the sounds of jaws breaking bones and chewing can be heard.
She's done ...
***
... and the stars have never seemed so bright.
"Ne, aho ..." she starts, then stops herself.
Kyuubi snorts, not even bothering to look. The camp is a sight. Two ninja in looted clothes, one bundle of half-dead prisoner, and a roaring bonfire that couldn't ever be described as subtle in the middle of it.
She's since washed off the blood, and the kitsune never looked like he'd gotten any on himself.
Otogakure was a ribbon of smoke on the horizon.
"Well, what?"
She startles, then shakes her head at the kitsune.
Irony.
It all comes down to irony.
Irony that in what the bastard fox wants to do, irony in finding out why, irony in what he wants from her.
She owes him ...
... irony again.
To even be considering what she knows she's going to do ... she figures, she's finally gone off the deep end. It's crazy.
"You're really serious about that?"
But then ...
"... it's a demon thing, bitch."
... crazy's always been more interesting.
"Huh. Are ... you that serious about all your promises?"
"Why?" The tone is mocking, but the undertone ... "Interested?"
Right now, she's not exactly opposed to crazy, either.
Crazy like a fox.
***
'Girl in the snow, where will you go
To find someone that will do?
To tell someone all the truth before it kills you
They listen to your crazy laugh
Before you hang a right
And disappear from sight
What do they know anyway?
You'll read it in a book
What do they know anyway?
You'll read it in a book tonight'
-'Fox in the Snow', Rasputina
***
***
***
***
***
EPILOGUE
***
"Hokage-sama," is said with such uncharacteristic lack of disrespect that Tsunade takes notice.
Enough to jar her out of the fog of disbelief she'd been floating around in ever since Jiraya had returned, not two months prior.
"As a Shinobi of Konohagakure no Sato, I must inform you that I am facing a ... conflict of loyalties."
The sound of metal on metal, then on wood, seems deafening.
It certainly startles Tsunade out of the reverie, and has her finding an unexpected visitor in her office.
An unexpected visitor whose coat seems to be shedding Otogakure hitai-ite.
Bent, bloodied, charred, and scarred, bits of metal clatter down to the floor. The other sight that greets here down there is enough to send her up from the chair and around the desk, gaping ...
The eye sockets are empty, cauterized wounds. The face is drawn with pain, and scarred. The body, nearly painfully thin, and looking like it'd been brutalized by a horde of raging buffalo. But it's unmistakably Uchiha Sasuke. And he's somehow still alive.
Then the words she'd heard register.
"Mitarashi-san? What exactly do you ..."
She doesn't finish, in the face of the dangling bit of jewlery hanging from the Special Jounin's outstretched hand.
***
She laughs.
She laughs like a woman possessed.
She laughs like someone who knows that if they didn't, they'd likely not stop crying anytime in the foreseeable future.
The story she was told, the face it was told by ... it's all so far past unreality that she can only laugh.
Her little brother ... the wonderful, infuriating, brilliant, little brother it seemed she'd only just adopted.
That was how she'd always remember him. Unbowed. The eternal prankster.
She laughs because she's thinking she's on the verge of insanity anyway, but when you look at it from a certain angle, Naruto has the final laugh.
It's the biggest, most elaborate, most unexpected prank in the world.
And they're going to fall for it. She knows this. And when they do, even after it's done, nobody will ever realize a thing.
As surely as she knows that the main player hates it, that he hates wearing her little brother's face, and hates being put into this position, but that he will do it regardless.
As surely as she knows that this proves her little brother will never truly be gone if this is done.
Kyuubi no Kitsune. Hokage.
She doesn't even realize her laughter has gone into tears until Jiraya clumsily hugs her. She doesn't have the will to try and push him away.
Not then. Not for a while to come.
***
END crazy like a fox
***
Dunno about more. Ideas? Yeah. Coherence? No, not really. Gah. 5:30AM. Sleep now. Brain broken.
-Griever
When tact is required, use brute force. When force is required, use greater force.
When the greatest force is required, use your head. Surprise is everything. - The Book of Cataclysm
Tell me what you think.
ETA: Now with second story in the series. Have a poke.
'How dare he?'
'How dare he do this to me?!'
'That ...'
'... that ...'
'Kusogaki!'
---
Foxfire
a Naruto fanfiction in response to the Squid's Fall/Winter Challenge of '06
by Griever
---
Uzumaki Naruto knows he is dying.
He knows it not because of the sucking chest wound, the massive amount of internal bleeding, or the burning of poison coursing through his veins.
No.
Though they contribute.
It isn't that he hasn't had worse.
Over the course of his career as a shinobi, he's been crushed, clobbered, cut, impaled, immolated, strangled, flash-frozen, had a hole the size of his head punched clear through where his heart was at the time, and was mauled by many and varied nin-beasts and minor Youkai.
Most of that during the last year and a half, actually.
His own prodigious constitution as well as the Kyuubi had carried him through most of those on their lonesome, with only occasional bits of assistance being provided from the outside.
The bastard fox shouldn't have taken more than a moment on the abovementioned. He should have been berating him and throwing him barbs all the while.
Should have been anything but silent.
He knows it because he can feel his very soul being eroded on the most base of levels.
So, Uzumaki Naruto knows he's dying.
Maybe even more than that.
He'd always thought there was something past that, not that he'd actually considered this in-depth. Not that he'd ever considered any matter like that, period. He was a simple person, with simple wants, simple needs, and simple desires. He lived by simple rules. He never pretended to be anything but.
But this, whatever it is, eats away at his very Self.
And Uzumaki Naruto, shinobi of Konohagakure, sways on his feet. His eyesight grows dim. And he collapses.
Even as he feels the body healing, even as a faint buzz that has nothing to do with the physical seems to hurl insults at him with its usual vitriol.
He's a simple person, with simple wants, and living on simple rules. So he doesn't really know why he does what he does next.
And, by the time the clearing is no longer empty, he is no longer sensate enough to perceive this.
***
Jiraya is flying.
Or as close to it as a shinobi in his fifties can manage, when assisted by a giant toad.
He has a bad feeling about this.
He doesn't know how the Akatsuki had found them, nor does he particularly care about that in the here and now.
Time enough for that later, when an old man can think in peace and gut the faulty parts of his intelligence network. Because there are obviously faulty parts, if it didn't give him any warning about this happening. He's determined to do something about that once the night is out.
Behind him, and getting farther by the moment, the sounds of swords clashing echo in the otherwise silent forest.
Not that Gama will hold the shark face for long, but just maybe it will be long enough for old, irresponsible and irreverent Sannins to find their students and haul ass.
But he has a bad feeling about this, and Gamabunta seems to feel likewise, since the Toad Boss is picking up speed faster than old Sannins had ever seen him do so.
"The air tonight. It's ominous," rumbles the oversized amphibian summon.
Jiraya agrees, and sweats.
***
Yakushi Kabuto succeeds in not smiling.
Smiling could be very dangerous right now.
So he resolves himself to wearing the indifferent mask of the consummate professional for just a while longer. He's done it before. Throughtout the course of his childhood and formative years, for most of his life.
The most prized of tools for one whose loyalty is always suspect.
The medic-nin is patient. He has to be.
A twitch out of place, a crack in the mask, and he knows he'll be joining his supposed target on its way to hell. There are those considered to be unforgiving among the shinobi. Then there are the Akatsuki.
_Then_ there is Uchiha Itachi.
Who is currently right behind him.
But Yakushi Kabuto could always balance himself perfectly. His aspirations, debts, loyalties ...
It's all a tightrope, and he's the best of acrobats.
So he kneels down beside the immobile body of the blond Konoha genin that's sprawled haphazardly on the ground in the middle of the clearing, and does his job.
There's no need to pretend here and now. If there was, he'd be dead.
Red Eyed Bastard, the Elder, may well have been arrogant - that seemed to be a defining trait of what was left of the Uchiha clan - but that meant relatively little when one was that good. Nobody had ever questioned whether or not Uchiha Itachi was that good. Certainly not long enough to tell the tale.
He doesn't even _think_ it, on the off chance that it'd be enough to give him away.
On a chilly night, in a no-name forest on the border of Ame and Tsuchi, Orochimaru's little puppet plays its part.
***
Uchiha Itachi doesn't frown.
His face remains emotionless even as he notices that things aren't working out in the way they're supposed to.
Back during the plans conception, he hadn't been for or against it. It simply wasn't necessary, but would be of benefit to them if it did work, so he kept his own council while the others ripped into one-another verbally.
Everybody had weaknesses, and while the Akatsuki was plagued by fewer of those than most, it was not immune.
Itachi had always liked to watch, and listen. To learn what made people tick, and prepare. Not even Kisame realized to him, there were no friends and no enemies. Merely people he hadn't decided on killing yet.
One day, the swordsman would understand. One day.
The thought of testing himself against the sort of power they were gathering makes the long unused corner of the eldest living Uchiha's Self tingle in anticipation.
Now, though, Itachi watches as the silver haired medic-nin does his job. It isn't an easy one, but the execution seems to be as flawless as could be expected given the nature of the task.
Some days, Itachi can almost see them. The bonds of a Soul. The essence of Self.
Those almost unbreakable elements of a person's essence seem almost fragile.
Some days, Itachi imagines he can hear it. The screeching of two Souls against one-another, mismatched and yet forced to interact.
Jinchuuriki.
To dislodge a Soul was no small feat. To dislodge a Bijuu, less so. Those were doubly Bound, once to their vessel, and once to it's Soul. And the Yondaime's Seal made all the others look like incompetent hack-jobs.
Because of that, the most difficult is the first.
A test.
Itachi understands tests.
The induced Chakra Virus slowly works on eroding the Bonds, and leaving the Bijuu only tied down to the physical vessel in the end, by which time the extraction could begin.
"Oh dear," Kabuto voices suddenly. And Itachi Looks deeper, and twice as hard.
The medic-nin looks almost haggard, hands flaring with blue chakra bleed as they struggle to intercept a potentially critical development.
The erosion hasn't spread over merely the Bonds, but is working at the very Soul it was meant to ignore. Not Kyuubi's, since it can hardly affect that directly, but the brat's.
***
Kyuubi growls.
He rages.
He throws himself against the bars that keep closing in, the walls that scrape their way against the floor.
And throughout it all, he can feel the brat slowly fading away. Not just being kept from him, like that time when the snake-ape thought to constrict his bindings further, but with the sort of inevitable decomposition that he hasn't seen in a long, long while.
Collapsing upon itself, the Soul that is his Key and Lock to the Gate of the Seal takes the prison along, piece by piece. Every bit of it.
Contents included.
It's so twistedly beautiful that, were it not directed at himself, Kyuubi would be admiring its efficiency.
The Youkai's teeth scratch at the bars, its paws trying to batter them down, its tails lashing about itself wildly ... all to no avail.
And for a moment, the pathetic nature of the struggle repulses him.
For a moment, he isn't _there_ anymore.
The light of Souls flitting by illuminates the countryside in lieu of a sun or moon, and it is Right. The breeze carries with it tantalizing flavors, and the sounds of battle. Blood pumps in his veins, pupils contract, and ground suddenly blurs. Bounding. Racing. Scaling a rocky hill at the head of the attack, then plunging down into the bloodbath. Jaws snapping, claws tearing, his two tails lashing out.
Shift.
Hands. How odd that felt. Out of place. Bedamned etiquette and its worthless spawn, he wanted to scream. Oh, surely, it was in his honor, but it was infuriating to no end. It seemed as though every conquest he so relished brought with it the necessity for even more silly posturing. Sometimes, he wondered whether the ape-rats he and his sometimes prowled the world of didn't take over without anyone noticing. The foppish nobles had to have picked it up from somewhere. Or were they stupid enough to come up with this crap by themselves?
Shift.
Pfeh. The stench was atrocious. What was even worse, he thought he was getting used to it. How sad was that? Humans. Such odd little beings. Sometimes, hardly worthy of any notice at all. At other times ... no. Still not really worthy of notice. Or so he would insist, and hope nobody found out about his fondness for this 'Tofu' stuff. Disgraceful. It wasn't even meat, for Jigoku's sake!
Shift.
Heh. The irony of the fact that this was increasingly becoming the Plane he could relax in was not lost on the Kitsune. As was the fact that with every bit of power he gained, there seemed to be more and more left to _do_. He wasn't even in his second millennium yet, and here he was, already bemoaning the fact that things seemed so much easier when it was just a matter of slaughter or be slaughtered.
Shift.
An exploding star, burning everything with its fury while five tails waved in the wake of its passing. Twisting, changing, forming itself back from the imitation ape-rat and into what he truly was with an anger that wanted to rip loose and devour. It was his third millennium, and for the first time he remembered, he felt a pang of something he couldn't identify. Much later, he'd find he'd just discovered what sorrow felt like. Fleeting, easily ignored little gnat that it was.
Shift.
The skies of Jigoku reflected in polished marble floors, moving below as he felt alive yet again. Bloody, scarred, but still gloriously alive in that simple, uncomplicated, uncompromisingly savage way he loved so much. Flashing past, tear, rend asunder, and try to ignore the necessity of responsibility and intrigue.
Shift.
The power _burned_, even as his body did, when he claimed his due from the defeated foe. Flesh, fur, fang ... melting, sparking away in an inferno of brilliantly burning Youki that he'd become, nine tails fanned out behind him.
Shift.
Shift.
Shift.
Then there is only pain, and light, and the silent, nearly extinguished echo of a scream ...
How odd ... it almost sounds like ...
"My name is Uzumaki Naruto, shinobi of Konohagakure! Nobody I could have saved dies because I could have done something but didn't! Nobody! That's my way of the ninja, dattebayo!"
The contrast is so startling, so deeply unsettling, that it takes almost half a minute for it to register.
Feeling the grass against his face, the cloths on his body, and smelling the scent of Blood and Death and Fire and Hunt in the amalgam of noise that is Night.
When it does, so does the sensation of pain. And *enemy*.
***
Samehada whistles through the air, slapping a Katon fireball away without any noticeable effort as its wielder rides a tidal-wave taller than the surrounding treetops.
Kisame isn't particularly worried. Or winded. In fact, he's only just gotten warmed up.
The Chakra-drinking sword is brought about for another swipe, even as the giant toad evades with a surprising amount of agility for its size. The shark-teeth of its blade still rip into skin and flesh, just not as deeply as they would have otherwise.
He puts the wave - a singularly odd sight when there's no body of water larger than a pond present within, oh, ten to twenty miles at least - into a charge, surfing on top of it with practiced ease, blade at the ready. It's met with the old hermit's scroll holder, which turns out to be reinforced. Enough so that Samehada merely scratches it.
"You're pretty quick. For an old guy."
The Sannin grins.
"When you're my age, you'll be _wishing_ you looked this good, kid."
Then the hermit jerks the contents of the scroll holder free, and the air in front of him is filled with unfolding streams of paper even as Kisame feels a spike of Chakra. Then another.
The air comes alive with steel, as the sealed kunai, senbon, shuriken and assorted other weaponry are released, then multiplied again by a Shuriken Kage Bushin as they shoot towards the shark-skinned Akatsuki member.
Samehada sweeps aside the first few, before Kisame interposes the broad blade between himself and the worst of the barrage. Then the water he's standing on erupts upwards to catch whatever gets past that.
By the time it's over, Kisame has a distinctly bad feeling about things.
Jiraya stands, on top of Gamabunta's head, inhaling and holding the Tora Seal.
Gamabunta, who lets loose a torrent of flammable oil towards the nukenin.
Oil which is then ignited via a simple Katon. The onslaught nearly burns through the water Kisame had summoned, evaporating more than three quarters of it, and giving the victim of the attack a few burns in the process.
'Alright,' Kisame thinks, 'no more playing around!'
Jiraya grins, preparing something of his own that he's probably certain will delay this obstacle to finding his wayward student ...
Black flames shoot into the sky from a ways off, so dark that they stand out, even against the backdrop of night.
'Three guesses as to where the brat is,' Jiraya gulps back a lump in his throat, at the realization exactly what those flames mean.
***
Itachi moves the moment he sees the Jinchuuriki twitch, having lived as long as he has by following his instincts, which are screaming at him. Because for some reason, not even Sharingan seems to be able to predict ...
A moment later, his trust in those hard won instincts is once again proved correct, as Kabuto's arm sails past, sans Kabuto, and trailing a spray blood.
Kabuto himself follows shortly, surprise etched into his features, chest caved in by a simple _palm strike_ from the kid!
Even without his Bloodline Limit, the Uchiha would have been able to see the air itself ripple around Uzumaki as he moved, as if in a heat haze. With it, the red Chakra pulsing on top of his skin is blatantly obvious.
It's obvious, even without Kabuto's input on the matter - he's too busy lying against a tree some twenty meters away, trying to put his ribs, sternum, not to mention lungs and other internal organs, in order - that things have gone awry in a disastrous way.
Normally, that would prompt a retreat, since the target really shouldn't be killed this time around.
Normally, Itachi is not easily rattled.
This isn't a normal situation.
The Kyuubi Chakra flared, exploding out of the Jinchuuriki's tenketsu ...
... and Itachi responded in kind, Mangekyo spinning, leaping back before unleashing ...
"AMATERASU!"
... the black flames that engulfed everything in their path, hungrily feasting on whatever they touched.
Amaterasu, the Goddess of the Sun, come down to Earth to burn it with unmatched power and intensity, the pure black flames eradicating all life they as much as brushed against.
Shooting high.
Consuming the very light of the stars.
"Mhmmmm."
What?!
"Delicious."
The flames twist, momentarily ripped free of the eyes' command.
"And so ..."
Flaring a bloody, visceral crimson.
"... utterly ..."
Unfolding into rising, twisting, shimmering columns.
"... futile."
Nine of them.
In a heartbeat, they are gone, and in the middle of the black, shimmering obsidian that the ground at the epicenter of the display had been crystalized into, the Jinchuuriki stands.
"I have watched exploding suns."
No.
"I bathed in their power."
Not the Jinchuuriki.
"Ape-rat, I am the incarnation of hellfire!"
There is no more Jinchuuriki. That was what the erosion had been.
"And tonight, the Ignis Fatuus shall light the path to hell."
Kyuubi. Unleashed.
"Your path."
'Oh, fuck,' thinks Uchiha Itachi. And is gone.
***
It's raining.
Coming down in the barren crater, almost a kilometer across, and half as deep.
The walls are perfect, smooth, inky blackness. Unmarred, unscarred. There are no traces. No signs. No testament other than what is present and readily visible, as to what had occurred that night.
But he knows.
How could he not?
Standing there, tattered robes and blood-stained hair, and fists clenched in helpless rage.
Head bowed.
He's always had an odd relationship with the rain.
He claims he hates it.
Hates it, because it makes things look bleak and hopeless.
But he likes it for one reason in particular.
When it's raining, he can let himself cry.
For lost lives. For buried dreams. For abandoned hopes.
He stands there for a time, until the rain starts to slow down, and then shakes himself off. Spiky hair flings droplets everywhere.
He turns around, resolute.
And walks off.
Or, hobbles off, as the case may be.
Jiraya doesn't wipe his face though.
After all, it's just rain.
***
It's barren, so high up.
Cold.
Not that it matters.
'Hands. How odd.'
'Gaki.'
'Why the hell did he ...?'
'How dare he?!'
'How dare he do this to me?!'
'That ...'
'... that ...'
'Kusogaki!!!'
Fury wells up within, feeling as alien as everything else did. Fury should be a ball of Youki, a flare of power, an impulse. Not the burn, not the slow agitation of chemicals, not ...
Kyuubi slams a fist into a rock wall, burying it in the cliff-face in sheer, bloody minded frustration.
How dare the little bastard do this to him?!
Bind him to a body, will he?!
And one as pathetic as this, to add insult to injury!
Oh, he has his Youki, yes, but he has to channel it through this pathetically fragile shell! It should be second nature, and it actually takes effort, damnit!
It's a blow to his pride, that a mere human had dared to inflict upon him this indignity!
Jigoku! What the Kusogaki's father had done to him hadn't been this bad!
And that wasn't all of it, not by a longshot!
Oh, no! Simply leaving it at that? Too easy! Too trivial and trite!
"Makai take you, Kusogaki! You had to go and make me ..."
The blond shell quivers in barely suppressed fury, before forcing itself into choking the actual words out.
"Owe. You. Uzumaki Naruto. There! I said it! Are you happy now, you pathetic, dead piece of ego?! Are you?!"
The rage flars, momentarily manifesting and melting the snowflakes inches away from coming into contact with the Youkai in human skin.
Then it fizzles. The Kyuubi falters. Leans back against the stone, and looks down and out, into Grass Country, and Fire Country somewhere beyond.
"Kyuubi no Kitsune owes Uzumaki Naruto his life. And damn you, ape-rat, if he isn't going to pay his debts."
Kyuubi chuckle-growls bitterly.
***
'Fox in the snow, where do you go
To find something you can eat?
Cause the word out on the street is you are starving
Don't let yourself grow hungry now
Don't let yourself grow cold
Fox in the snow'
-'Fox in the Snow', Rasputina
***
***
***
***
***
EPILOGUE
***
A chamber.
A bed.
A window.
A sky.
All the glory of Jigoku dancing its violent, yet oddly serene ballet in the clouds.
Spirits floating past, casting light where there would be none otherwise.
Marble floor.
Obsidian walls.
Reflecting the sky, and the light, and throwing the room into shades of deep, rich, royal purple of the silks draped within.
A flicker, so brief it could have been the imagination.
Then, a moment later, another one.
And another, stronger.
Stronger still.
The shifting of silk on bare, flawless, ivory pale skin.
A mirror reflecting a flame that isn't there, casting the room into sudden, flickering scarlet.
"Found you."
A playfully sinister giggle.
The scarlet is gone.
***
END foxfire
***
"Hokage-sama," is said with such uncharacteristic lack of disrespect that Tsunade takes notice.
Enough to jar her out of the fog of disbelief she'd been floating around in ever since Jiraya had returned, not two months prior.
"As a Shinobi of Konohagakure no Sato, I must inform you that I am facing a ... conflict of loyalties."
The sound of metal on metal, then on wood, seems deafening.
---
Crazy like a Fox
second in the Kyuubi Chronicles line
by Griever
---
She isn't in very much of a hurry, because doing things that way rarely turns out for the best.
Besides, while rushing headlong into things might be her style, it isn't something she indulges in all too often. Living fast is all well and good. No, sometimes it's downright great. Sometimes, it's the only thing she thinks she has left that is truly her own.
Living fast may be well and good, but the key word in that phrase is still 'living'.
And throwing caution to the wind is a good way to get dead fast in her line of work.
Besides, this 'mission', as it was laughably called, didn't require much in the way of celerity.
Perception, on the other hand ...
The forest speaks to her, even as feet alight on branches and propel her farther without leaving as much as a mark, even with the chakra being channeled through the soles.
And she's good at listening to it. Some may see more, some may know more, but there's only ever been one who could listen as well as she does. And she's improved a lot since those days before childhood's end.
Neither is she traveling alone. Not when she has the option of doing otherwise.
Knowledge is power, especially to a ninja.
Who, in that position, would scoff at an extra pair of eyes and ears? Or several extra pairs, for that matter?
Which is why she pauses, for no noticeable reason, instead of rebounding off of a tree trunk. Instead, she crouches there, perpendicular to the ground, and waits as one of those sets of eyes and ears makes its way up.
It's a small one, hardly noticeable when you're not looking for it, meaning it's perfect for th job she'd given it and its kin. The larger and more powerful ones may be impressive, but there is only so much you can do with power alone. Subtlety isn't one of those things.
She notices it when the snake points out a direction - and it's faint, not old really, but rather well concealed and diluted. Still, it's unmistakable to her.
Mitarashi Anko smells blood.
***
The duty of a spy is survival. That's all there is to it.
You may be strong, and know how to fight, but you have to know where to cut corners and when to do your job.
Despite any and all inconvenience.
Like, say, getting your arm torn off.
For a medic-nin, especially a skilled one who knows how to stave off shock, that isn't outside of the range of survivable trauma.
And Kabuto's range of 'survivable' was defined by the snake Sannin himself, so it's safe to assume it's moderately impressive at the very least.
Had he been able to retrieve the missing limb, it wouldn't have been outside his capability to reattach it. Unfortunately, as it was turned into little more than charcoal and slag, along with more than a fair bit of the countryside he'd lost it in, that wasn't an option.
The spy wobbles, feeling the fatigue and phantom pain reaching for him, and staves them off with an effort of will.
Despite that, he runs. At a fair clip, too. Not very gracefully, or particularly quietly, but still quickly.
To his death, or to his pain. One or the other.
Indoctrination at its finest.
***
She sees.
She recognizes.
She's focused on the running, jumping figure.
She doesn't sense the presence.
But barely, just barely, she hears it. The vibration of a single, immediate footstep, right ...
A vice clamps down around her lower jaw.
... behind her.
The kunai goes underhand, sliding out of her coat's sleeve and being thrust backwards at where she knows the assailant most likely is.
Greased lightning, the reflexes motion as smooth and vicious as that of a striking mamba.
It hits.
Or, for a moment, so she thinks it does. There's no sound, no grunt of pain, no twinge in the hand holding her jaw. There _is_ a wet, sticky feeling, familiarly dripping onto her fingers. There is also the sensation of a hand having closed over her own.
A familiar, coppery smell fills the air.
The kunai must have punched through it, she thinks.
And she realizes, she knows this blood. She's smelled it before.
"Shh," a voice hiss-growls in her ear. "You'll scare my prey, wretch. You wouldn't want me to waste almost a week of patience, would you? That might make me ... upset. You wouldn't enjoy seeing me upset."
She's tasted it before.
Then she's free, and leaps, and twists around at the landing, fists full of kunai at the ready.
Ragged remains of clothes adorn his body, clearly recognizable but for the feral light in his eyes, and yet ...
"Aren't you supposed to be dead, brat?"
***
'Your dreams, gaki. I should trample them, out of principle.'
He's tempted.
So very _tempted_.
It might just be worth it.
Payback for the humiliation.
Payback for making him see ...
He shakes it off immediately.
A Kitsune is a creature ruled by its passions, and even if Kyuubi knows how to control his to an extent, he's still affected. It doesn't mean he'll let himself feel ... _that_.
The absurdity would kill him, if nothing else.
'Why didn't you just kill the bitch, then, oh great Youkai?'
He glares.
What did this result from? A bit of carelessness. Forgetting to check the corpses of his enemies ... or, char marks, as it were. Letting one escape.
The mistake of a rank amateur. One he hadn't made since he'd been just another one-tail in the pack.
Still, it had the potential to turn into an advantage, until his prey had picked up its second pursuer.
Snakes and blood, and steel ...
The gaki remembered her, and so Kyuubi did likewise.
'Why didn't I kill the bitch?'
'Because ...'
***
"... I'm paying back a debt."
It's been a week since the old pervert came back, and a week since the Hokage called together the Jounin to inform them. Not all of them, though ...
... and she herself was only there because it was relevant to her 'mission'.
To her, death was more than simply fact. She'd seen it happen, maybe in more varied and inventive ways than almost any other Konoha nin outside of the Godaime. The news that the old fart was supposed to have brought didn't as much as phase her.
Shit happens. Life happens. And then you die.
If you're very lucky, you'll have left behind something that makes sure you're remembered fondly.
It's her philosophy. The only one she has, the only one she needs, and the only one she dares to take.
Because sometimes, when she's all alone in the dark and sleep doesn't come, before she can drink herself into unconsciousness or exhaust herself through training, she's on the verge of understanding.
On the verge of damning her loyalty and walking down the path she'd once abandoned, in the wake of her sensei.
So she knows that Uzumaki Naruto is dead.
She knows this not because she'd been told, but because she's trailing behind his body.
"Since when do you give a damn about something like that?" she asks.
Some would say, suicidally.
She wouldn't be herself if she didn't, though, and if that cost her her life? Tough. The Council hadn't managed to change her, and she denied Orochimaru any further chance to do so. To change because of a 'little' fear? Ridiculous.
Besides, for some reason, he needs her. She can tell. There's always a way to tell that sort of thing.
"Since when is a mortal bitch expert on kitsune?"
"Dunno. I'm an expert on homicidal assholes, though," she gives her most honest grin, the one with the half-closed eyes ... the one that sends cold shivers down Jounin spines. "That counts, right?"
***
"Dead, you say? Well, then. Not a total loss, Kabuto-kun," the snake Sannin says. "Nothing to be proud of, either. Unfortunately for you."
The body hangs in the air, serpents wound around its limbs, fangs pinning it in place lest it starts to slip.
"Though I suppose you've done your work, and you _are_ still useful. Or, would be, if it weren't for this terrible disfigurement," slender fingers trail along the cauterized mess of the spy's shoulder as their owner stalks around the body.
Then dig in, pressing into the wound and the raw flesh and nerves underneath.
The echoing scream reverbs through the chamber, drawing a disdainful snort from the shadows.
"Yes, quite pathetic, Sasuke-kun. I know," Orochimaru's smirk doesn't falter, even as the now _sole_ living Uchiha's emotions churn in a rage as rich as a fine wine. "He's very fortunate that this little matter ..."
Fingers leave the bleeding wound, shedding crimson as if they were the mirror-polished surface of a blade.
"... is not beyond my ability to fix. To an extent."
***
"Feh. Call me whatever you wish ..." Kyuubi glares. "But don't dare to presume me an oathbreaker. I can no more break a promise than you can let go of your pathetic human hatred."
The two are perched, high in the treetops, unmoving among the branches and leaves.
"So what the hell do you want with me? Cold and lonely at night?"
Nearly ... _nearly_ too far, she notes. There's no tension to the muscles, no overt response, but she can hear the subsonic growl of the human-bound-demon.
"I'm going to ... what was the expression again ... kill two birds with one stone. The master," he says the last word of that disgustedly, "of this place and I have something to settle between us, but that isn't my sole reason for being here."
"Yeah, and that has so much to do with promises," she snarls back. Let it never be said that Mitarashi Anko bowed down to something as trivial as 'self-preservation'. Leaving was hardly an option, the demon had made that much clear, but it needed her alive for some reason as well ... so there was a little leeway she could make use of.
The burning blue eyes focus on her, freezing the words in her throat and making sure that she listens.
"The ... pathetic ... gaki who kept me prisoner died to keep me alive. He knew what he was doing, and let himself be ... consumed ... so that I could survive. Spite, I could have broken. Rage, I could have ignored. But in doing what he did, he put me not only in his body, but in his debt as well. To carry _his_ promises, _his_ obligations ... so take care not to taunt me, ku-no-ichi."
It's like a bolt of lightning that crackles through Anko's mind. She hadn't really known the brat, no, but she'd heard enough about Uzumaki from others.
"The Uchiha kid," she whispers.
"The kusogaki promised to drag him back to that pathetic shithole of a village," Kyuubi's fingers sink into the trunk of the tree he crouches on without any effort, digging deep gouges. "Your little teacher, I have my _own_ business with."
"Oh? So why'm I along? You need an audience?"
"I just want him _dead_, I don't much care for the how, but 'painfully' would be preferable. I'm not without a sense of irony."
***
She knows what this is. A bribe. Pure and simple.
But even knowing that, she wonders.
She wonders about loyalty repaid in mistrust.
About devotion cruelly me with pain.
About being cast aside as insignificant even before deciding to leave, and being written off as an acceptable loss.
She doesn't wonder about good or evil. Those, she knows, will never really be a factor.
Finally, though, she wonders about the sort of mind, be it ever so inhuman, that would go so far for a debt. Even if said debt is to something that mind considers little more than an insignificant speck.
It's a spark, and something long abandoned awakens. Or begins to.
Mitarashi Anko looks at the Kyuubi no Kitsune, and finds that life is indeed not without a sense of irony.
***
Old things. Forgotten things.
This weakness of having a body again, with flesh to be torn and blood to be spilled.
Revulsion and melancholy, he thinks, an odd, odd combination.
Neither pertinent to the matter at hand, though.
He hadn't survived long enough to become Kyuubi without knowing that there was a time and a place for such things. And this was not it.
In fact, he feels faintly smug. The kunoichi could be so very _useful_ if handled correctly.
A moment later, the consideration and likely complications no longer matter very much, as he lets them fade away into shadows in his mind.
And he goes back, figuratively speaking.
Back before Kyuubi, back before a time when his body was the incarnation of power.
Back to Nogitsune, of tooth and claw and malice tinted with mischief.
The Den lay below. It is the only thing it could be, with the feel of secrets about it. Besides, it only seemed right for a snake to take shelter underground.
With watchers, hidden in the trees, guarding the entrances.
Pfeh.
They don't notice either of them, of course. Her, because she is very good at her job. Him, because this is equally his nature. Just one he hasn't used in a while.
He retrieves a kunai - a poor replacement for a claw, but then, this was an equally poor replacement for his original body. Even before he'd become a mass of burning Youki - and weighs it in his hand.
The toils of having nigh-unlimited power, but needing to use it in doses that seem microscopic or risk suiciding in a spectacular manner.
No matter.
Nogitsune knew how to improvise, and Kyuubi would learn again.
They were so fond, these shinobi, of using unnecessary flash. But occasionally, they actually did come up with something useful.
***
The twinge in her neck is unmistakable.
Otogakure no Sato. The Village of Hidden Sound.
Below them, heavy gates close the underground home and fiefdom of her old teacher away from the rest of the world.
She wants nothing more than to dive downwards, the slow burn of anger in her gut coming to the fore.
Still, she forces it back.
Borderline psychotic, and very much unstable she may be ... it's the only way she knows of that lets her retain her sanity, cracked and bent as it is.
She isn't stupid.
So the kitsune's action is first met with puzzlement, then with incredulity.
There is a flash of movement, a spark of killing intent that touches more primal parts of her brain than any she'd felt before, and a flare of the Demon's chakra. Short, sharp, and very, very distinctive.
That's not being subtle. That's as good as putting out a flag saying 'here I am, please stick me full of kunai'.
Then again, the damn fox could well be her better where sheer insanity is concerned.
What follows is a single, fluid, impossibly vicious motion.
An arm wrapped in coils of pulsing red and black flings a kunai forward, roughly in the direction she can hear the nearest Oto-nin's location being. A ripping, tearing noise fills the treetops, as ten, twenty, fifty, a hundred, more than she can count ... a multitude of small puffs of pitch black smoke erupt around the single projectile.
There is no in-between.
One moment, a single kunai flies, charged with enough chakra to make it a formidable threat but not actually heading to hit anything.
The next, the air is full of shattered wood, splinters, torn leaves, and pierced, pincushioned, _torn-apart_ bodies of Oto-nin that tumble gracelessly and break upon the ground below, trailing a fine bloody mist through the air.
"What the *fuck*?!" she hears someone ask and startles before she realizes it was her own voice.
The brat's body meets her with crimson eyes that slowly fade into ice-cold cerulean, and a smug, toothy grin. It seems to consider something, before saying, mockingly:
"Majutsu: Mugen no Hagane."
Then the Kyuubi dives through the bloody mist, towards the gates, crackling viciously and blazing killing intent like a lighthouse.
A moment later, her own voice joins in, her body following.
A moment after _that_, a flare of that feral, deadly chakra flashes into being around the blond obakemono, and another storm of steel tears into the gate.
***
He runs through a scene from nightmares.
The main cavern lies in ruins, walls and pillars scarred and marked with signs of searing heat.
The corridors flow with blood.
And the walls are decorated with kunai, shuriken, swords and knives, and spears, and even spikes of rock torn from the underground landscape. All of them bathed in blood. Most of them, serving to uphold a grotesque example.
Oto-nin.
Torn apart, charred, burned, frozen, bleeding from wounds or bodily orifices ...
... here, a severed arm with a kunai through the palm of the hand, pinned to a pillar ...
... here, a gutted kunoichi, unrecognizable because of the stone spear put through her face and dangling from it like a madman's fantasy of butterflies ...
... a corpse, burned to a crisp ...
... swollen, discolored skin that seems to crawl, and the reek of venom ...
... a Jounin, still twitching, hung from the ceiling by his own intestines ...
... and, most frightening of all, those who died without as much as a mark on them, expression of overwhelming terror etched into their features, their glassy eyes wide and unseeing.
Otogakure no Sato.
The place Uchiha Sasuke has called home for the past several years.
These aren't the results of battle.
No.
This is a massacre.
It doesn't matter.
This was only a tool for him, after all. Another step on the path to power. Another level he'd needed to reach to finally attain his revenge.
Sharingan eyes watch, seek, tomoe spinning wildly.
There is something eerily familiar about the situation, but he doesn't pay the nagging feeling any mind.
It doesn't matter.
It is merely another test he needs to pass.
Sentimental foolishness is something he cannot afford. After all, in the greater picture, only power truly matters.
It's the shadow that warns him. The flickering flames that seem to consume the rock on the other side of the cavern throw everything into a stark contrast of crimson and orange, with dancing shades thrown in.
The Sharingan catches a flicker, his mind analyzes it, his body moves.
A leap, twisting out of the way, charging the edge of his hand with chakra to slice the attack in half.
Sizzling, both from the burning, white hot electricity of his defense and the dripping, sickly and smoking venom filling its disproportionately gaping maw, the head of a serpent hits the ground.
Drip.
Drip.
Drip.
The venom trickles to the ground, smoking and burning all the way. Sasuke doesn't pay attention.
"Well, if it isn't the little traitor-brat," the kunoichi grins at him, pushing off the body of the gutted Oto-nin she'd been hidden by - partially underneath it, partially within.
He knows her. He's seen her before, back in Konohagakure. During the Chunin Exam.
He's heard about her, a little. Rumors, mostly. A bit from various Oto-nin, some snippets from his ... 'sensei'.
Orochimaru's first little project, and first student.
Did she do this?
If so ...
Good.
Very, very good.
He meets her deranged grin with a disdainful grimace.
It's the closest to a pleased smile he's gotten in the past six months.
The old against the new, to prove his superiority.
To prove to himself that he'd attained power.
With a burst of inhuman speed, electric discharges crackling along his legs for a moment, the Uchiha charges.
He is met in kind.
***
The darkness is almost total, the chamber sitting deep in the bowels of the complex. Illumination comes only from the relics of times long past, flickering merrily with images of the bloodbath above.
The watcher doesn't really care all that much.
After all, if a tool breaks, does one lament its passing, or does one simply prepare to acquire another?
He isn't too nervous, either.
Power? Yes, there is power there, but all in all, little experience. Little finesse.
"I see. So, Kabuto-kun was mistaken after all. Such a pity."
He does spend a moment to wonder at the viciousness of the proceedings, and at how the Jinchuuriki could have come this far into his own whilst being watched by those ever annoying old 'friends' of his.
Perhaps his vassal's efforts were not wholly futile, he thinks, examining the Berserkergang of the demon vessel, his injuries spreading even as havoc spreads all around him.
One by one, the ancient devices spread across the compound fall silent, the images replaces by hissing static.
Oh, well.
He moves to stand, much like a serpent would uncoil. As if his body didn't have to obey the limitations of joints and bones.
The Otokage isn't truly concerned. After all, it isn't a Village he seeks, and creating another will not be all that difficult.
The world is full of malcontents, and precious few can truly exploit this fact. He himself is a virtuoso of the act.
Calm. Controlled.
It's almost shattered when he feels the sympathetic flare of the Heaven Seal, and Sasuke-kun's chakra.
A snake knows its Den.
Orochimaru knows that the flare was nowhere near where the Jinchuuriki was still slaughtering his way through the Village.
"Ne."
His head whips around to face ...
"Ne."
... and again ...
"Ne."
... and again ...
"Hebi-yarou."
... and finally.
Blue eyes and fox grins.
"You better not ..."
A puff of black smoke as a kunai whips through the first.
"... even think of ..." the second is caught in the gut by a spread of shuriken.
Poof.
"... leaving the party before the last dance," the third gets a hand through the chest.
Bamf.
"Or I'll stick my sandal so deep up your ass, you'll be tasting leather in the afterlife! Believe it! Konohagakure's Number One Surprising Ninja!"
How is he doing this? The spark that marks the creator of the Shadow Clones keeps jumping around in his senses, from one version of the kitsune-gaki to the next, until there's only one left.
Hands bat away handseals, kunai clash, Sannin's hand-strike is parried to the side with a wince.
"Uzumaki Naruto!"
Orochimaru presses the attack, since trying to disengage only brings the brat back with him, and finishes with a double palm strike that is barely diverted and seemingly leaves the snake Sannin open.
"Is here!"
Blood splashes on the floor of his private chambers.
Open to spear the little blond annoyance with the Kusanagi no Tsurugi, the blade shooting forth from his mouth and hitting cleanly, neatly, right between the ribs.
It isn't fatal.
As the body falls, he can feel the Demon chakra within already acting to heal it.
"Impressive, Naruto-kun. You've improved. But I think I should leave Sasuke-kun the pleasure of ending ..."
Wait.
The Heaven Seal is still *there*, still channeling chakra, still active ...
"You weren't alone," a statement, no question.
Orochimaru's eyes widen slightly at the realization. The machines hadn't caught anyone but the brat, and yet, evidence ...
Poof.
The doors to his chambers explode in a wave of flame, and even the Doton shield the snake summoner calls up crumbles away with the assault of charring heat and chunks of flying stone.
The speared, healing version of Uzumaki is gone.
Grin. Baby blue eyes. Kyuubi's chakra burning like a bonfire.
"Fooled ya, didn't I, Hebi-teme?"
***
He plays the role. Plays it well.
Too well, some would say.
He would sneer.
Kyuubi.
Kyuubi no _Kitsune_.
So many forget.
Why correct them, though? If they understand, eventually, it's of no consequence _then_. If they do not?
Fools, the lot of them. Pathetic little ape-rats in their little cubby-holes of thought, thinking they knew _his_ limits.
Those sniveling brats on the face of the world that hasn't even heard, much less seen Jigoku in centuries, thinking themselves lords and ladies of creation.
And he plays, because eventually, this would be the path of least ... complication.
Use it, employ those old skills, make even the debt.
Might as well practice, since it's been a while.
And the Fool is a mask he's played before. Not this particular fool. Not in this particular place. But it isn't foreign to him in the least.
It is, in part, his nature.
Taunt them, anger them, enrage them, uncover their faults in front of their and others' eyes and humiliate them. Bring them down totally and utterly before you destroy them.
It works on the snake, his ego so bloated it echoes within the very walls he built. Within his every action.
It isn't rage yet.
But it will be.
Oh, it will be.
Kyuubi grins Uzumaki Naruto's grin of demented glee as he fills the chamber with doubles, faking the Seals and using the body's chakra instead of drawing up his Youki just yet.
Who knows, this could actually be fun.
***
He's fast.
A combination nearly catches her by surprise, forcing a retreat and rebound. A brief clash in midair, then a dash aside and momentarily keeping him at bay with a burst of Katon-created flame.
Maybe as fast as she is, and with the Seal, faster.
Strong.
Crackling, shrieking, the lighting-encased hand shoots after her, dragging the rest of his body along.
His chakra capacity, already significant, enhanced further by the Heaven.
Anko grins, setting herself.
The Uchiha flies, head over heels, fast as the Chidori had been pulling him along and slamming into and through a house carved out of one of the cavern's stalagmites.
Dust settles, revealing the flame-like offshoots of the Heaven Seal dancing along Uchiha Sasuke's exposed skin, as he shrugs off the debris and shakes his head to clear the puzzlement.
"Aww, did the widdle boy get a boo-boo?"
Trained by Orochimaru.
Orochimaru, who'd been her old teacher.
Orochimaru, of whom she knew the fighting style.
Orochimaru, who - as far as she knew, was a knowledge-freak as well as a jutsu-freak ... but had barely ever innovated at all.
_His_ old sensei had been gathering and mastering techniques for so long, he'd become known as the Professor, but old-man Sarutobi actually integrated every single technique he knew into his style. It was why he'd been so powerful. Flexibility. Orochimaru took this to the extreme, but forgot adaptation somewhere along the line. Apparently, he'd thought knowledge to be enough.
Which is why he wants the Sharingan so. Not just because of the jutsu he thinks he can gather with it, but also because it allows the user to 'see ahead', somewhat mitigating what the old snake knows is a weakness of his.
For all that the Sharingan is powerful, though ... trained by Orochimaru, its user is a tactical moron.
And she could see it. See the irritation in the Uchiha's moves, as each strike came just a little short. Evaded, deflected, or just plain _missing_ as Anko played the holding game.
As the gray-skinned, white-haired, winged - and, in Anko's mind, really really stupid looking - form of the Uchiha slammed past her, tearing into stone and ripping part of her longcoat away but not touching _her_ at all, the kunoichi crackled and snerked and ridiculed.
Oh, he tested the limits of her speed.
Like this, fueled by rage and the Heaven Seal, he is both stronger and faster than her. His chakra reserves are, comparatively, immense.
He is a monster, drunk with his own power, who'd forgotten how to be _shinobi_.
Anko, however, lives and breathed being a kunoichi.
It was the only thing she had _left_.
And the Sharingan may have been useful for a genin, or even a chunin of little experience ... but the truly experienced shinobi and kunoichi?
The blow is dodged, though she could only glimpse it coming. But she'd known how it would be coming, from where, and she'd heard it coming ...
He may be faster. The kunoichi knows, though, that in true combat true speed is but an illusion.
A feint, a counter, a follow up - all met by Sharingan foresight and Cursed Seal granted physical ability.
Her back brushes against a wall.
Chidori roars into being, its wielder screaming down at her through the air, backlit by the flames eating away at the cavern.
Mitarashi Anko's eyes go wide, and her muscles tense as she realizes that, this one, she cannot dodge or counter. She moves to try, anyway.
The traitor grins, corrects the trajectory of his path in just the right direction to take the chirping, squealing lance of chakra induced electricity through her chest ...
And she moves, in exactly the _opposite_ direction, as if the limitations of joints and muscles no longer applied to her, as she throws a mess of tangled brown Jounin coat into the traitor's face.
When the Chidori smashes into rock, Anko is in the air, chips of stone drawing bloody lines along her hips and side as she twists and ...
Metal meets skin, lashing against it and wrapping around it, binding and constricting and trussing up the Uchiha even as her other hand flashes in a short, vicious arc that the Sharingan sees coming, predicts it accurately, but his body can't actually _react_ to as metal mesh and serpents suddenly erupting from the rubble and wrapping around his legs stop it from moving.
The demented grin of a mostly nude kunoichi and the flash of steel are the last things he sees.
***
He wakes to pain.
To shackles.
To fear.
To bubbling beakers and cylinders of liquid, and walls full of blades, and saws, and syringes.
Among other, less ordinary implements.
Most of all, Yakushi Kabuto wakes to the dull, echoing sound of explosions that become increasingly louder.
It's self preservation that has him struggle, trying to get loose from the operating table, finally managing and ending up sprawled on the ground ...
It saves his life, as the far wall falls apart in a shower of rubble, and a piece of said wall smashes into where he'd been not moments ago.
Followed closely by Orochimaru, who scrambles, slithers, crawls across the ceiling with the sort of frantic anxiety Kabuto had never seen him exhibit.
Ever.
He knows the sound that follows him in, though ... and freezes.
"You ..." for a moment, he forgets self-preservation, as a patented impossibility presents itself.
He knows Uzumaki Naruto is dead. He saw his soul destroy itself, right before the loosed demon chakra of an enraged Kyuubi ripped the countryside apart.
Yes, he'd been running at the time, but he'd known the sort of power released there wouldn't have been something the Leaf genin could have survived. Ever.
Then the blond, holding the whistling sphere of Rasengan in each hand, grins.
A vicious, toothy, smug grin that has no place on the face of one Uzumaki Naruto.
"Heh. You figured it out? Only took you a moment too," the voice, too, was different. More guttural. Almost a growl.
Oh, yes. Kabuto knew.
The knowledge almost made him mess his pants.
"Faster than your so called 'boss' did, too."
Still groggy, the silver haired nin shoots his ... employer ... a look.
It's the last thing he does, as Orochimaru's palm smacks against his exposed back, smearing his own blood that rapidly expands into Seals running along the spy's entire body.
Whereupon Kabuto is introduced to Kusanagi. Or rather, the blade thereof.
Terminally.
Ironically, the last thing he feels is relief.
***
"What now, Hebi-teme? Is that it? Running out of tricks? You'd better have some more, or you're going down faster than Ero-Sannin's dignity at a bath-house! Believe it!"
At this point, no more pretense is made. It's not much of a voice, but a more than fair growl that delivers the message.
And then he's flying, leaping, spinning towards the snake Sannin ...
"Not hardly, Naruto-kun ... or should that be, Kyuubi-kun, maybe?"
Seals glow, spread across the ground in an instant, and the silver haired rat's death slams a surge of energy into this world's barriers ...
... Reality seems to tear, the ground shifts underneath ...
This time, though, both Rasengan spheres slam into and ricochet from the coffin that erupts from underneath, sending Kyuubi flying.
Fists clench. Spinning, spiraling, rolling chakra dissipates, even as feet make contact with the ceiling and stick.
Before and below him, inverted from this perspective, the corpse of the Sandaime Hokage steps from the coffin.
Then, a demented, blond pinball is dodging, bouncing, leaping out of the way as the Professor presses the assault with an impressive spread of jutsus, from Katon to Fuuton, with Suitons and Dotons thrown in here and there for good measure, Orochimaru adding his own array to the barrage ...
... and Kyuubi finally slides underneath a wave of water, going on to run across the snout of a stone dragon, and dive out of the way of one made of water ...
... only to be hit, head on, by a Grand Fireball.
Kusanagi is there, cleaving through the flames, blade almost seeming hungry for blood in the tenacity with which it seeks out its intended target.
Poof.
Clap.
Clap.
Clap.
Orochimaru blinks. Orochimaru stiffens.
Orochimaru looks around.
The growl echoes in the chamber the kitsune had been 'forced' into, and flickers of greenish-blue flame dance across the walls, painting the scene an unearthly shade of pale.
And the echoes aren't. Like a veil suddenly falling from his eyes, Orochimaru's senses finally register things and nearly overload with the concentration of Youki.
Foxes. Standing as tall as his waist, their furs as white as snow, their eyes the color of freshly spilled blood, fangs glinting. The Youki momentarily spikes ...
... and the reanimated corpse of Sandaime collapses, as if its strings had been cut ...
'Really,' Kyuubi thinks, snickering. 'Idiot. Using _that_ against me, when compared to Nibi, he's no more than a rank amateur.'
The foxes pounce.
***
He's not hard to find.
Just follow the demon chakra.
Dragging the 'package' isn't even all that hard, now that the added bulk is gone.
Finally, she's there, and she tosses it. All trussed up and made up and nowhere to go.
Giggle.
She probably looks a sight, herself, she thinks. Tattered remains of her coat hung over shin guards, fingerless gloves, the pair of weapons pouches, first aid kit, and naked, blood splattered skin.
It's quiet now, she realizes. Save for the crackling of far-off fires, the only thing in the air is her breath.
"Got you a present, bastard," she cheerfully proclaims, squinting her eyes. The unconscious, brutalized form of Uchiha Sasuke twitches, still wrapped in what used to be her metal fishnet outfit.
The Kyuubi looks at her, levelly, and she resists the urge to ... do what? Preen? Cower? Spit in his face? All of the above?
Maybe.
The Youkai in human flesh snorts, and motions to the chamber he'd just exited from.
Anko looks.
"Have a ball, bitch."
Kyuubi hefts the inert body onto his shoulder, not bothering to turn around.
The kunoichi enters, pulling the heavy doors closed behind her.
It's a large chamber, though most of it is bathed in darkness. One wall has a huge, gaping hole, looking over similar kinds of destruction that trail off into the dark, distant recesses of what's left of Otogakure.
That, though, isn't so interesting to her.
In the middle ... spread-eagled on the ground, unseeing eyes rolling about in mute terror and pain ...
Four huge foxes, once white fur splattered in drying blood, clumps missing here and there, have their jaws clamped on a limb each. What's left of the limbs, that is.
She moves slowly, carefully, eyes fixed on the body ... and hates herself for her reaction.
The undercurrent of the emotion that runs through her is almost sexual. It lights her nerves on fire, making them feel like live-wires as her breathing quickens.
She straddles the torso, lowers herself down, bends to bring her face down before his and look into those eyes.
And she's smiling, giggling, finally laughing and laughing and crackling insanely with glee and anger and sorrow and pain before she screams.
She screams louder than she ever has before, and her hands flash, and a pair of kunai flash in the unearthly light to cut, to slice, to plunge into flesh and be dragged back out with gouts of blood as teeth clamp onto the jugular and the head trashes to rip, tear ...
She doesn't know how long she continues, and screams all the while, even when the arms fall limp at her sides and she's sitting up, head thrown back, screams turning into wails, then into choked sobs.
For the first time that she can consciously recall, she's crying. Because, finally, it's over.
Minutes, hours, days later ... or so it feels when she stands ... she's empty.
No emotion.
Not even a care.
When she gets up, the foxes are still there, their pelts a running crimson starting to turn brownish.
Orochimaru, what's left of him, is still.
She takes one last, deep breath, and turns around.
"Get rid of it."
She walks out, not looking around, even as the sounds of jaws breaking bones and chewing can be heard.
She's done ...
***
... and the stars have never seemed so bright.
"Ne, aho ..." she starts, then stops herself.
Kyuubi snorts, not even bothering to look. The camp is a sight. Two ninja in looted clothes, one bundle of half-dead prisoner, and a roaring bonfire that couldn't ever be described as subtle in the middle of it.
She's since washed off the blood, and the kitsune never looked like he'd gotten any on himself.
Otogakure was a ribbon of smoke on the horizon.
"Well, what?"
She startles, then shakes her head at the kitsune.
Irony.
It all comes down to irony.
Irony that in what the bastard fox wants to do, irony in finding out why, irony in what he wants from her.
She owes him ...
... irony again.
To even be considering what she knows she's going to do ... she figures, she's finally gone off the deep end. It's crazy.
"You're really serious about that?"
But then ...
"... it's a demon thing, bitch."
... crazy's always been more interesting.
"Huh. Are ... you that serious about all your promises?"
"Why?" The tone is mocking, but the undertone ... "Interested?"
Right now, she's not exactly opposed to crazy, either.
Crazy like a fox.
***
'Girl in the snow, where will you go
To find someone that will do?
To tell someone all the truth before it kills you
They listen to your crazy laugh
Before you hang a right
And disappear from sight
What do they know anyway?
You'll read it in a book
What do they know anyway?
You'll read it in a book tonight'
-'Fox in the Snow', Rasputina
***
***
***
***
***
EPILOGUE
***
"Hokage-sama," is said with such uncharacteristic lack of disrespect that Tsunade takes notice.
Enough to jar her out of the fog of disbelief she'd been floating around in ever since Jiraya had returned, not two months prior.
"As a Shinobi of Konohagakure no Sato, I must inform you that I am facing a ... conflict of loyalties."
The sound of metal on metal, then on wood, seems deafening.
It certainly startles Tsunade out of the reverie, and has her finding an unexpected visitor in her office.
An unexpected visitor whose coat seems to be shedding Otogakure hitai-ite.
Bent, bloodied, charred, and scarred, bits of metal clatter down to the floor. The other sight that greets here down there is enough to send her up from the chair and around the desk, gaping ...
The eye sockets are empty, cauterized wounds. The face is drawn with pain, and scarred. The body, nearly painfully thin, and looking like it'd been brutalized by a horde of raging buffalo. But it's unmistakably Uchiha Sasuke. And he's somehow still alive.
Then the words she'd heard register.
"Mitarashi-san? What exactly do you ..."
She doesn't finish, in the face of the dangling bit of jewlery hanging from the Special Jounin's outstretched hand.
***
She laughs.
She laughs like a woman possessed.
She laughs like someone who knows that if they didn't, they'd likely not stop crying anytime in the foreseeable future.
The story she was told, the face it was told by ... it's all so far past unreality that she can only laugh.
Her little brother ... the wonderful, infuriating, brilliant, little brother it seemed she'd only just adopted.
That was how she'd always remember him. Unbowed. The eternal prankster.
She laughs because she's thinking she's on the verge of insanity anyway, but when you look at it from a certain angle, Naruto has the final laugh.
It's the biggest, most elaborate, most unexpected prank in the world.
And they're going to fall for it. She knows this. And when they do, even after it's done, nobody will ever realize a thing.
As surely as she knows that the main player hates it, that he hates wearing her little brother's face, and hates being put into this position, but that he will do it regardless.
As surely as she knows that this proves her little brother will never truly be gone if this is done.
Kyuubi no Kitsune. Hokage.
She doesn't even realize her laughter has gone into tears until Jiraya clumsily hugs her. She doesn't have the will to try and push him away.
Not then. Not for a while to come.
***
END crazy like a fox
***
Dunno about more. Ideas? Yeah. Coherence? No, not really. Gah. 5:30AM. Sleep now. Brain broken.
-Griever
When tact is required, use brute force. When force is required, use greater force.
When the greatest force is required, use your head. Surprise is everything. - The Book of Cataclysm
![[Image: happy.gif]](http://www.ezboard.com/intl/aenglish/images/emoticons/happy.gif)
Heres hoping you win the contest Kraken put forth