Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest

Earlier...

Hazou tore through the poor civilian's room on the upper story of the Kazumi Inn, ripping open cabinets and shelves for any clothes that would fit him. Unlike the other rooms, which were unused except by intermittent travellers, it seemed that this one held someone who made an extended stay. Unfortunately, if a fight broke out here, few would stay at the inn ever again.

Hazou didn't really care about the continued profitability of this one inn, of course. Not when Noburi was crippled and cornered in another part of the city, and Hazou was being corralled into a death trap of another sort. As always, the stakes were high, and the prizes were potentially even greater – if they made it out of this alive, they would have the Kraken Scroll to show for it.

Finally! Hazou cast off his soiled merchant clothing and put on the drab and well worn tunic and trousers. The nighttime would hide his scars, and he could adjust his posture so that his musculature would be hard to notice. He peered out the window as he did so to make sure there was no movement on the rooftops.

That marked the first step of the plan. The second would then be…

The door downstairs burst open with a slam, as the rising sound of crackling electricity and the entering footsteps answered an unasked question. His enemies clearly didn't see him as much of a risk to fight since they only sent one person into the inn. Their allies would be keeping watch outside to stop him as he fled, possibly even with whatever seal or technique allowed them to track his underground travel. They didn't treat him like a threat to their lives. They should have.

"Shadow Clone Technique."

Rust appeared a few inches away from Prime and immediately formed hand seals.

"Pangolin Clan Technique: Ghost Scales, Pangolin Clan Technique: Pantokrator's Hammer."

At the same time, Prime allowed the Iron Nerve to contort his throat into a practiced configuration as he yelled out, "Help! Help! He's here!" It didn't matter if they believed the ruse or not, they would be coming up here anyway when they heard the techniques being called. With the bait laid, Prime moved to set the trap.

Seconds later, the door was cut in half as the Cloud ANBU came charging through, her weapon sheathed in rippling waves of grey-blue electricity. She held her sword out in front of her in a parrying stance, its length not allowing a more conventional guard as she entered in a blur of motion. Her eyes instantly flicked to Prime, and she started towards him before she looked at the ceiling, noticing Rust overhead. She dodged out of the way as he fell and spun on the wall, raising her weapon with a strike from above, poised to slice him in half. Rust was fast, but she was faster.

The inn did not comply. As she swung, the sword got caught momentarily in the beams of the rafters overhead. Rust did not hesitate to take the opportunity once offered, and he immediately leaped towards her and grappled her around the midsection as he pulled back roughly on her shoulder to control her sword arm. She desperately searched the room for a substitution target but before she could get a lock on anything, Rust got a leg under her and swung, slamming her back-first into the ground and momentarily disorienting her.

The substitution failed, and she was pinned, her lightning-quick movements constrained. She turned to Prime, rage surely behind her mask as she realized her true vulnerability. Both Hazous felt a tickle of killing intent. Cute. They had underestimated Hazou, and now that mistake would cost a battle-hardened jounin her life. She trashed as if expecting Prime to try to lay her throat open with a shuriken. Instead, he just smiled and waved as he reached up and activated the relay seal.

An Earth Dome instantly appeared on the ceiling like a water droplet suspended on underside of a drainage pipe. The beam that the ANBU had nearly cut in half cracked and started to fall, bringing the Earth Dome with it to bear down with several tons of force. As a chakra construct it would dissipate once broken, but it would take several seconds to do so, during which the ANBU would be reduced to paste.

As the woman saw this and dropped her weapon, looking for any handhold with which to evade, Prime fired a directional explosive downwards through the floor. The wide angle blast cut through the support beams and caused both Rust and the ANBU to start to fall. Accelerating downwards with the dome overhead, the ANBU's struggles grew frantic, but she wasn't strong enough to break free now that Rust had solidified his grip.

They made contact on the bottom floor, but only briefly. The ceiling support beam that the dome was placed on was sturdy enough to survive a one-story fall, and the dome was several tons of solid granite. It crushed through Rust in an instant, dissolving him in a puff of clone smoke, and pinned the ANBU to the wooden planks with the sound of breaking ribs as it crashed through the bottom story of the inn to the basement.

Hazou fell with her and prepared to dive into the earth as he landed. He got a glimpse of her as the dome hit the ground, barely slowed by her flesh and bone. Her left torso was flattened, her heart surely bursting like a grape as the dome cracked against the ground, granite tearing apart from the eight meter fall. It was a small mercy for her that one of the pieces seemed to be heading for her head.

Underneath the surface of the ground, Hazou swam towards the safehouse.



Hazou checked over the various seals on his body. The so-called "exhaustive combat loadout" was not quite complete, as the accursed Haru had insisted they not leave skywalkers unattended in the safehouse. Stupid OPSEC. Still, with blast rings, explosives, goo bombs, rocket boots, and more, Hazou felt considerably more comfortable. He had managed to resurface almost exactly within the safehouse, the basement of an abandoned tailor's house, so if the past pattern held, he had roughly ten minutes here before they caught up to him.

He mulled over the possibilities. There was one jounin with Earth Element, who was certainly the one doing the tracking. They had a number of different utility techniques, including anti-flight and anti-sealmaster measures. It stood to reason that the other jounin who Hazou had met at the inn was the main firepower. This was some sort of tracking or assassination squad, with the auxilliary social-spec who had held him and Noburi in place long enough for the enemy team to set up. Hazou felt a bit of disappointment that the ninjutsu-spec jounin hadn't been the one to enter the inn looking for him, since he was almost certainly the one following Hazou's underground movement.

Now out of the frying pan, he had choices about which fire to jump onto. He had plenty of seals - he could try to fortify this location and force things to a standoff and initiate a fight on advantageous turf. He could try to return to the inn or to the site of initial contact in the hope that his teammates had heard the noise and were on their way. If they hadn't heard anything, he could go directly to their tavern and gather them, since subtlety had long since ceased to be an option. The Cloud ninja had underestimated Hazou in the inn, and let him set up a favorable situation. They wouldn't make that mistake twice.


On balance, Hazou had to prioritize grouping up with Akane. The enemy ninja would pose no threat to her. With the enemy following the trail he left underground, Hazou expected more safety from above-ground travel as well. He briefly considered the idea of laying false trails with Hiding Like a Mole, before shaking his head at the thought. He didn't understand their detection mechanism, and after casting Shadow Clone, his chakra needed to be rationed. Worst come to worst, Hazou might end up cornered, far from allies and dead out of chakra.

No, the choice was clear. He would travel by rooftop and keep an eye out for his allies while dodging the Cloud ANBU by virtue of speed. Once rejoined, Clan Gouketsu would destroy the remaining enemies and send to Noburi that he could return safely.

Hazou prepared to leave.



Hazou crept up the side of the building with his hands alone, careful not to leave muddy traces of his rooftop escape. The seal-paper hidden in harnesses beneath his civilian clothing crinkled gently as he crested the edge of the rooftop and took a quick look around to get his bearings. A moment later, he leaped.

Jump by jump, Hazou left the safehouse behind. However they were tracking his technique, Hazou's escape on foot should mean that they were now targeting the wrong location. With luck, chasing that false lead would keep them occupied long enough for the Gouketsu reunion.

Hazou surveyed the streets as he moved, looking down upon clustered houses and tight alleyways. No wonder some ninja acted so superior to civilians, he mused, when even their regular modes of travel involved looking down on others. This part of town wasn't the kindest. Even Hazou's experience from Hidden Mist sufficed for him to see the hints of crime and vice. Few people roamed the streets at night here, instead choosing to congregate in the occasional crowded building with colored lights and muffled music, but it didn't seem like many were going in or out. Occasional buildings were marked by signs that Hazou recognized as Yakuza – those were gambling dens where people would go to be relieved of what little money they had. Even beggars seemed hesitant to sleep in some of the alleyways.

Hazou slowed momentarily as he passed by a town square to tally the people he saw about. One drunkard, passed out against the wall of a cooper's shop. A middle-aged woman, dumping a bucket of slop over a pair of small bipedal creatures. A muscled and tattooed man and scantily dressed woman, walking arm-in-arm down a side street. A teenager in the alleyway, palming an explosive tag.

The world almost paused as Hazou drew upon his chakra and reduced his enemy's movements to slow motion. Hazou needed to break line-of-sight. He dove to the opposite side of the building, knowing that even though the flimsy walls wouldn't stop the explosive, he would get a moment's respite while the enemy ninja decided how to respond to being noticed and evaded. Hazou knew his objective immediately: eliminate the threat quickly and escape before the battle could draw attention.

Hazou landed, forcing himself to remain calm through the tension that preluded a fight. Some primal instinct screamed at Hazou to run, but Hazou ignored it as he scanned the path ahead, then turned back to the corner of the alleyway where he had just jumped down. Barely visible in the shadows at the end of the street was an ivory-white mask. Beneath it, the blur of a long chain of hand seals reaching completion.

"Earth Release: Demon's Cradle."

Hazou started to move even before the technique began, as the walls and floors of the alleyway started to erupt in Earth Walls positioned to box him in on all sides. The walls grew slowly to Hazou's chakra enhanced senses, the gaps in the wall closing too slugglishly to prevent his escape, he just had to go a little farther and –

The stone box surrounding him erupted in spikes. Every surface of the walls and floor and ceiling became hostile, earthen spears cutting off movement. Hazou might yet escape through the gap if he were willing to tear off chunks of his flesh to do so, otherwise those spikes would catch him and hold him here like meat on a skewer for the enemies to finish him off.

That couldn't be allowed to happen. Hazou drew chakra out of his coils until his body felt like it was made of screaming lightning, turning midair to one of the few unmarred patches of stone around him, gravity temporarily forgotten within his cage. Even that patch started to expand with stone spikes as Hazou pushed like an uncoiled spring towards the last opening into the alleyway beyond. It wasn't enough. Every action he had ever done was laid out before him through the Iron Nerve and still none of them would let him escape the improvised killbox unmarred.

Fine. Time to make one. With an elbow strike, Hazou crushed through the two largest spikes, planted his feet on their flat bases and leaped off of them, steeling himself against the tiny cuts starting to break through his clothes. He activated the rocket seals at his feet for a little extra speed, but the last exit in the corner of the killbox was tiny and half-obscured obscured to still-growing spikes. Even if Hazou were right there, he might not even fit through the gap. No tools left in the toolkit. Time to die.

There! A pair of small crates lay just outside the opening. Desperate, Hazou used the Substitution Technique.

As he landed, he stumbled a little, feeling warm blood running down the back of his leg from where a spike had made a deep cut along his hamstring. A couple inches deeper and he would have been crippled. If I make it out of this alive, I'll never complain about Mari insisting I practice my substitution.

The ANBU kneeled on the wall just above the killbox with his head cocked to the side as if curious that Hazou survived. Hazou spun and rushed him down. The close-quarters specialist was dead, Hazou thought, so let's see how this bastard likes a fist through the skull. Hazou's leg wound would slow him down over the course of the fight – he had to end the ANBU now before his ranged backup could force Hazou away and into another corner killbox.

The enemy scrambled backwards before jumping off the wall to the opposite side of the alleyway, his opinion on hand-to-hand combat made clear by his body language. Hazou closed in as he wrapped himself in the strength of the Pangolin Clan.

The ANBU didn't turn away from him. A true professional, he knew he couldn't stop Hazou from closing the range. Hazou would make that experience his downfall.

Hazou planted his forward foot and raised the other to imply a floating front kick, but the ANBU was already ducking to escape around him. Damn, if the man wasn't fast. Hazou turned on his foot, revealing a feint as he turned the planted foot into a sweep, dropping awkwardly on his hands as gravity pulled him sideways. The ANBU pulled off a jump somehow above Hazou's already blurring attack, flipping to land on the floor of the alleyway. Hazou smiled internally. Nowhere to dodge when you're in the air. He pulled himself to his feet in an awkward motion he could not have replicated but for the Iron Nerve and pulled back his left shoulder millimetrically, cocking his head. The ANBU, to his credit, twisted midair and guarded his flank, correctly judging that Hazou's injured side would be easier to handle.

Hazou activated the wide-angle blast ring and the night tore open with the sounds of force and fire. The spacing was off – instead of being inches away from the man and ready to blast him to chunks, the explosion instead battered him, lifting him up slightly and corralling his trajectory into Hazou's attack path. Hazou dropped from the side of the alleyway as he reached out with his leading arm and grabbed the ANBU by the throat. He dove, driving the man directly into the ground by the neck, feeling something give way slightly in his windpipe. His back hand formed a spearhand strike, piercing through the man's ribs -

No, he had shattered a metal bucket. The ANBU had substituted back into the main street, putting the improved killbox at Hazou's back, clearly holding back a cough against his injured throat. Hazou growled and started towards him, forming the handseals for Pantokrator's Hammer again as the ranged specialist cleared the rooftop of the building that Hazou had been on moments ago and threw a kunai that flickered with foxfire as it flew.

Thoughts flicked through Hazou's head. The explosion would engulf the entire alleyway, and Hazou's injured leg would render him unable to make it out of the radius. He had to take cover. He discharged the Hammer to give his tired legs speed as he raced towards the kunai, jumping and arcing over the killbox. With some sense that he did not yet understand, Hazou felt the tag about to explode. He had to go faster. Desperately, he reached into his coils and scraped them dry to pull together one final Substitution Technique to swap himself with the other crate, finally behind the stone walls.

Hazou gasped in pain and exhaustion as he collapsed to a knee, flames rolling over the edges of the box. He had toed the line of chakra exhaustion with that final substitution and now he was completely dry. Without chakra giving him speed and power, his injured leg throbbed from the abuse it suffered, leaking blood with every precious heartbeat. He didn't even have the reserves left to cast Hiding Like a Mole and escape.

Hazou flicked through solution after solution, none viable. Trapped and outnumbered, out of seals and techniques, and no aid in sight.

Hazou had taken too long, and the enemy ANBU had caught his breath. As Hazou struggled to his feet, the sides of the box itself began to grow more of the Earth Walls as the alleyway once again contorted to trap him within.

As the side of the alleyway extended with a sheet of granite overhead, Hazou savored the irony that he would be the one crushed by a falling Earth Wall in the end. He lurched for the opposite side of the alleyway, struggling to get clear, but the emerging wall from the building collapsed the weak mortar and threatened to trap him under the weight of the chakra construct. No escape would be found in the skies even if he were willing to take his risks against the kunai-user. Hazou flipped midair and pushed off the alley wall with full force, lunging for the open space on the far end of the alley.

He didn't have any hope that he would make it.

Moments ago, this trap had been a novel and unexpected attack and it had cost him a dangerously slowing wound to the back of his thigh. Now, injured and dry of chakra, he understood the trap and how to dodge clear of it, yet he could not. The collapsing wall resembled nothing less than the maw of a megalodon, hungry for the prey that escaped it once before.

The cage closed around him. Hazou tried – he couldn't afford to give up – but there was no way out. Growing out of the wall overhead and the alley and the ground, lances of compressed stone sought to impale him on all sides like shredded meat. He made one last burst of motion, his legs knotted with howling eddies of pain, at the one opening in the spikes. Not enough. As he leaped, he saw the final spike. It was positioned perfectly, no amount of twisting or turning midair would stop the spike from going through his center of mass. It was over. He grimaced, closed his eyes, and made his peace.

Noburi… We somehow became the inheritors of the great Jiraiya, someone so tremendous that the two of us could never fill his shoes. And yet, you tried your hardest even while loving and supporting the rest of your family, something even Jiraiya struggled with. May you become the man you dream of being.

Mari… I'm thankful for being your student. You've done so well to save us, bringing us from missing-nin hiding from the most ruthless village to people with power and position and safety. You've given me so much more than I deserved.

Haru… You've shown me both how the world conceals such wide gaps, and how one man can go so far as to cross them nonetheless. Thank you for the kindness you showed me, kindness that once seemed impossible.

Keiko… I'm sorry for being distant. You somehow were always the one who sacrificed the most, always willing to give up everything for your friends, your family, and your village, even when these were found rather than by birth. I hope you find what you're seeking.

Kagome… You always said that sealing would eat my face some day; looks like I finally proved you wrong on something. You protected me from so much for so long and taught me so much; I'm sorry that I could not protect myself this time.

Akane… … I'm sorry. I thought there would be more time. I thought there would always be another month, another mission, some time when we would finally be stable and it would make sense to try us. I'm sorry that I didn't heed Mari's advice to take the chance now, because we never know when we will have a future to come back to. I'm sorry for our future. Please, find your future.



Weeks later...

Humans were rather absurd things. Meat on bones which stood upright by the meat carefully manipulating other meat to stay balanced. Why would six of the silly things group up and watch a rock? The way that they were balanced was different too, finding different ways to stay mostly upright even with approximately the same configuration of joints and components.

Noburi stood tall and confident, though his eyes and balled up fists betrayed his thoughts. Mari's face and bearing seemed blank and devoid of emotion, almost to the point of being invisible. Haru was in the relaxed stance of a killer, prepared to strike out yet unsure of what to do with that violent energy. Keiko's expression was blank as well, but her posture was tense and hunched up, all pointed inwards. Kagome stared absently into the middle distance, physical body all but forgotten. And Akane, she was making no efforts to hide her feelings, even now a storm of emotion and movement as she sobbed.

Through the tears, they read:


No.

No, he would not die here.

No, he would not disappear, and leave a jagged-edged hole in a world already so broken.

Hazou refused to die. No imaginations of peace, no mourning family and gravestones. As long as he could still sacrifice, he would dance on the edge of the reaper's blade to have a chance to win back the future he deserved.

Flying through the air, each fractional moment of life increasingly precious, Hazou closed his eyes, and visualized his body, the muscles and bone that made his physical presence, and the chakra coils that underlaid it all, rooted at the base of his spine.

He split himself open from the inside out. The chakra poured out of his vital systems, no longer contained, and he hastily gathered it up and poured it into his greedy muscles to give him speed. Hazou no longer danced with death so much as held it arm-in-arm, and if he survived the next fifteen seconds, there would be hell to pay. First step – survive the next fifteen seconds.

Hazou's blood burned, somehow freezing cold even as it threatened to immolate him. He spun, grabbing the spike an inch away from his chest and letting it push him through the air. Hundreds of cuts appeared on his skin as the spike drove him into the opposite wall and he narrowly avoided skewering his feet. As the spike grew and threatened to punch through him, he looked to the other crate left behind in the box, punctured through by spikes no longer growing. He contorted himself and substituted.

The alleyway suddenly went quiet as lightning-quick movements came to a stop. A moment later, the panicked screams of the civilian inhabitants of the adjacent houses filled the night, reacting only now to the sounds of the combat. The Cloud ANBU signaled to his ally to wait as he watched the cradle. Trapped within, injured as he was, the man should be cut to slivers, dead or soon to be, yet the ANBU's battle instinct told him to wait just to make sure that the deed had been done. The sensing technique was still active and he felt no movement underground. Was it over?

Almost unaware of his own motions, the ANBU flinched and jumped away from the box as he heard the sounds of muffled speaking within. A technique call.

Hazou erupted out of the killbox they had put him in, glowing faintly from the aura of the Pantokrator's Hammer and spraying granite over the floor of the alleyway. Every motion he made was perfection, barely seeming to touch the rubble as he glided towards the ANBU jounin, elbows tucked close at his sides in an predatory stance. The jounin tried to whirl backwards, but as he turned, Hazou was suddenly cutting him off, his momentum unbroken as he attacked.

He touched off the wall as he turned in a crushing roundhouse meant to cave through the man's chest. The ANBU ducked underneath, pressing his body almost flat to the ground to avoid Hazou's downward motion as he pushed to flip backwards and out of melee. Hazou followed through with stomp that would have broken the man's wrist, but the ANBU snatched his wrist out of the way, aborting the flip into a sideways roll.

Layers on layers of feints. Hazou leaned forward, turning the stomp into a falling knee that caught the man's shoulder. The ANBU moved to twist out of the way, but Hazou caught his motion with a hand around the man's neck. They had been here before, but the enemy would not survive it again. The ANBU turned, as if looking for substitution targets. Hazou pointed his hand behind him and set off the wide-angle explosive at the man's lower body, turning everything below the ribcage to red mist.

Hazou heard the sounds of leather on slate above and jumped, careful not to slip on his liquefied former enemy as he moved to the rooftop, his body filled with boiling steam ready to explode. He made eye contact with the other enemy, who wore no mask to guise his fear. Hazou stepped forwards and faltered.

For a moment, he panicked. He felt his chakra system draining out at the bottom as the thrumming energy within his bones began to soften. His hands and feet were starting to grow numb as the price of maiming his spirit made itself clear. The enemy had a moment to recover his senses, and had backed away from Hazou while he collapsed. Hazou hastily pulled himself to his feet, relying far too much on his good leg as the enemy threw a kunai, but the man's aim was absurdly wide. The kunai hit a house behind him and exploded (collateral damage, need to finish this soon) as Hazou closed the distance, step by lumbering step.

The fire that had been filling his veins a moment earlier now seemed to turn to molten hot lead, searing him from the inside even as it weighed him down. He forced his fingers into their positions, feeling ripples of pain circling every joint as he made hand seal after hand seal. The pain the seals cost him was a mere fraction of the pain he felt within as he drew out yet more of his body's chakra, and he screamed, before twisting his ragged throat to use the breath to invoke the Pantokrator's Hammer.

Suddenly, the light filled him once more. The agony was still there, yet the pain no longer hindered his movements. He surged forwards.

Hazou's vision was swimming as he approached, and he couldn't pin down where the enemy was. Instead, he spun, throwing out his injured leg like a mere bludgeoning tool. The enemy treated it like an academy move, ducking under it as Hazou spun through, ignoring the feeling of the bones in his leg splintering as he delivered a backfist to the ninja's shoulder. A glancing blow, but enough to knock the ninja off balance. The ninja took the fall, landing on his stomach with the intent to roll away, but Hazou grabbed his arm and wrist in an arm-bar, forcing the ninja face-first back into the ground and twisting, ready to tear his arm off – if the ninja hadn't substituted with a damn water barrel.

The strength of the technique left him, and Hazou collapsed to his hands and knees, then face-first into the barrel as his damaged hamstring proved inadequate to the task. Hazou's vision went white and he screamed, as the pain spiked. Even as his throat worked itself raw, he pushed with one arm, turning his body to keep vision on the opponent.

His arms and legs were completely numb now and he relied on his kinesthetic sense to control them. He barely managed to flop to the side and see a shape thirty feet away through hazy vision. One arm hung limply at his side but the ratfucking bastard was ambidextrous, because he still grabbed a shuriken from a pouch behind his back as he threw at Hazou's throat.

Hazou was lying on his side, no limbs on the ground to dodge even if he had the energy and willpower to. Though his hands were numb to his touch, they still had the ability to complain as Hazou pushed a pulse of chakra through them to fire the wide-angle blast ring in one hand directly downwards, blasting apart the roof of the house that he was on. A moment later, he fired a rocket seal directly upwards, propelling himself down through the fallingrubble and slamming him into the packed earth floor of the civilian abode.

Hazou screamed again, the intensity of his yell cutting off as something in his throat gave way, reducing the noise to a harsh gurgling. He felt like he was filled with glass needles, every inch of skin perforated by the sudden slam into the ground.

His senses were dimming, barely staying conscious as the inhabitants of this house made panicked escapes. Had to keep on going. He commanded the Iron Nerve, allowing his body to become an instrument of torture against himself as his treacherous bloodline forced his stiff and numb fingers into the shapes of familiar handseals. He drew on his chakra again, the pain indescribable as he mutilated himself from the inside out to form the technique that would grant him life-saving speed.

Hazou's heart stopped.

He had drawn too much, and the numbness that had been spreading inwards had reached his heart. He was going to be dead in ten seconds or less.

Take that asshole down with me. Just like Jiraiya did.

He whispered for the strength of the Pangolin Clan, and it filled him once more. Where once Hazou had been a fine-tuned killing machine ready to receive the power, now he was a broken, imperfect vessel. The light leaked from him as he struggled to his feet in crude movements and jumped through the hole in the ceiling. Outside, the enemy had backed away, but Hazou crossed the distance in a flicker, each step driving a spike of pain through Hazou's broken mind.

Kill him.

Hazou could feel the fibers of muscle in his legs cramping and tearing as he pushed them to engage the enemy. He surrendered himself to the pain as he let the motions in the Iron Nerve engage the enemy for him. No thought informed him as he twisted into a hook kick. No particular memory of training gave him the ability to lunge forwards into an uppercut feint. No intention gripped his mind as he grabbed the enemy's shoulder instead. No mind guided him as the enemy tried to cut his hand away with his kunai, and he instead pulled the enemy's hand into their own chest and yanked, reducing the pectoral muscle to hacked meat. When the ninja collapsed to the ground, he didn't decide to crush their throat with a heelstamp. It all just happened, power and speed and –

Hazou's foot crashed through a water barrel. The same fucking water barrel. The enemy had substituted away again, somehow still having the chakra to cast techniques freely. Hazou bent over double, gasping, as, concerningly, the pain fled. He could barely feel his body any more, barely felt like he had any control over it at all. Still, his heart didn't beat.

Was it over? The enemy had chakra to spare, but Hazou didn't. The enemy could still fight, but Hazou… No, Hazou was Lord Gouketsu, and he would protect his family now, or die trying.

As he pulled his head up to make eye contact with the enemy, he could imagine a part of himself in the enemy's eyes, a mirror to the pain, the physical damage, the suffering of the fight. At least, he thought it was eye contact. Hazou could no less make out the eyes of the enemy than could he feel the pain of straightening up. Hazou took a step. The ninja spoke, voice halfway between fear and awe, "Sage, how are you still standing?"

Hazou advanced.

Hazou could see the uncut fibers of the enemy's pectoral muscle struggling to compensate as he drew a kunai from the pouch behind his back and threw. Hazou couldn't dodge so he instead leaned to the side, not enough to tip over and fall down, but enough that the kunai hit one of his ribs. The rib broke as the kunai was lodged in him, but Hazou kept on walking forwards. The enemy's crippled arm twitched as he tried to do something, but to no avail, and he drew another kunai and threw it at Hazou's forehead. Hazou ducked as the kunai glanced off of his skull and he felt it shear off his skin and hair. Blood started dripping down around his ears and eyes, but Hazou kept on walking forwards. The enemy stumbled back, all the way to the edge of the roof. He didn't have the energy left to leap to a nearby rooftop, so he drew one more kunai, lashing out desperately at Hazou's throat. Hazou caught his arm as he swung, grabbing his wrist and twisting it upwards. As the man screamed, his chest muscles torn open, Hazou pulled on the man's arm.

They collapsed to the ground, Hazou barely managing to turn midair to land on top. The ninja dropped the kunai they were holding, forcing their other hand to catch it as he screamed. Hazou put his knee on the man's chest, grabbed the kunai lodged in his own ribcage, and thrust it at the enemy ninja's eye. It glanced off, tearing away a strip of skin on the outside of the man's skull and revealing the whiteness of his bone. Hazou pulled back, and sunk it through the man's eye and brain.

The screaming stopped. Hazou's heart still didn't beat.

Hazou pulled himself upright. He could feel it coming, the numbness and dizzyness and tingling like a solid blow to the head, coming to take him to an unconsciousness that he would never wake up from. He looked at the blood splattered on his clothes, matted in his hair, and covering his hands. Once, he would have thought this an inelegant ending, but in truth, this was the fight that someone like him deserved.

His heart twitched.

Hazou turned his focus inwards while mindful not to close his eyes. It was weaker than he had ever felt before, but as he released his grip on his chakra coils, his body slowly started to resume its essential functions. Somehow, he had toed the line of death by chakra exhaustion and made it out in one mangled piece.

He smiled, so faint not even a Kurosawa would notice it. He waited a few moments to confirm that his body would not cease to function. Then he slowly started to climb down the roof, continuing to ignore the pain of a body ruthlessly abused. The others would be waiting for him.



Hazou was alive.

He waited behind a small blind set up on the rooftop of a building near where Noburi had reverse summoned. He had been carried here at his teammates's insistence, after he arrived at the tavern looking like a walking corpse. Being alive was a mixed blessing, of course. On the one hand, all his hopes and dreams for the future wouldn't have to die with him, but on the other, the numbness was steadily retreating now that he had chakra again, and the area of his body filled with violent agony was slowly expanding in tandem.

Noburi was fine, thank the Sage. He had sent back chakra water and many instructions to destroy the enemy while he waited to safely emerge, and Akane and Haru had decided between themselves to divide the duties. Haru would babysit Hazou while Akane swept the area for hostiles and removed the Lightning Lad, Touma.

One of Akane's clones was entering the alleyway now. To someone less attuned to the cover of night, seeing Akane's figure, even in her colored civilian clothing, would be challenging. Hazou could read her lips and saw as she made a hand motion as she entered. Contact.

Touma dropped from a windowsill as he spoke. "You shouldn't be here, girl. Run along now," he said, before noticing that Akane's stance had dropped instinctively, her hands halfway up to a respectable guard. He took a couple steps back as he prepared for a fight, his posture still confident. "So, you're with Wakahisa, then? Or maybe Hazou, the one that ran?"

He paused for a moment, then realization seemed to hit him. "Wait a second... I know who you are, Amane" Touma said the name with disgust, his fingers clearly itching to start a technique. "You're that girl from the Chuunin Exams, the weakling washout. Your brother… boyfriend" Touma's face curled in disgust, "ran away rather than fight me. The ANBU pair have hunted him down and cut him to pieces. At least, you better hope he's dead, because if he isn't, he'll be receiving a warm welcome at the medical labs in Cloud."

"How many others are with you?" asked Akane.

She hadn't responded to his taunts at all, but it seemed that Touma had a passion for the monologue. "A battlepair of ANBU, skilled and seasoned jounin, as well as my blood brother hunt the city for your coward boyfriend now. I remain here to guard against Wakahisa and to mop up trash like you as they come.

"You may be brave, but I know how weak you really are. And I know that in the three years since we've seen each other, I've grown stronger than anyone else at that exam." He took his stance fully as he started to form handseals. "You could have stayed away and lived, fleeing like a dog," Haru suppressed a chuckle, "But now, your life comes to an end! Lightning Element: Lightning Aura, Overdrive!"

The resulting movement was too fast for Hazou's weakened eyes to catch, but a moment later, Touma was on the floor and Akane was spinning, the chakra in her veins no doubt pushing her to find additional targets. Wait, that was just most of Touma on the floor, his leg had been separated and lay a few feet away and his skull seemed to be spread over a square meter of wall. When no more danger presented itself, Akane disappeared to the Seventh Path.


Noburi popped into existence with a puff of smoke.

Akane appeared just afterwards and moved to support him on the side with the broken ankle. They navigated the dark streets to make their way to the rooftop that Hazou and Haru waited on.

Noburi climbed up the rooftop on his own power, his ankle apparently strong enough to support his weight. He opened his mouth as if to say something, but he paused and instead grabbed the Kraken Scroll from across his back, setting it down on the ground between him and Hazou.

For a moment, everyone was mesmerized by the artifact, even the two that already bore one.

Hazou stood up. His movements were mechanical and crude, compensating for his torn muscles and many bruises. Noburi started to admonish him, but Hazou ignored the Summoning Scroll and stepped over it, grabbing Noburi in a hug.

Unfortunately, that's where Hazou's strength gave out and he collapsed directly onto Noburi. Noburi yelped and started to lift up his broken ankle, wary not to stress it. As he did so, Hazou and Noburi started to tip over, now only supported by Noburi's good leg. Haru moved to support Noburi and stop the fall, getting an arm under his shoulder, right before Akane hit the three of them with a direct tackle-hug that bowled them all over, knocking the four Gouketsu to the ground.

Noburi was the first to speak. "I gotta admit, Hazou, I'm not a fan of the new haircut."

Hazou started to laugh first, but the noise came out of his throat as a wet wheezing. That seemed funny enough to make Noburi laugh, and then they all were. There was a moment of golden peace, where they just enjoyed the moment.

Somehow, everything had worked out. His family was alive, the objective fulfilled, the enemies dead. Against all odds, Hazou had got what he needed from the world. His voice was less a whisper than a scratch, but he spoke anyway.

"We made it."