Private Lee O'Malley
Easygoing Egoist
- Location
- Gensokyo
Oi don't mock, Darkness just so happens to be a nickname she uses because her actual name is super embarassing. It's totally justified mmkay.
The Need to Become Stronger
- Thread starter Sophronius
- Start date
Oi don't mock, Darkness just so happens to be a nickname she uses because her actual name is super embarassing. It's totally justified mmkay.
all fictions
I hate you! (it's not against the rules!)
- Location
- Mons Regius
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Okay, both of you, no. First, if you mean in canon, Naruto ninjas are stealthy, so I have no idea what you are on about @Hokonoso. To quote:
Second, if the two of you meant how ninjas act in Naruto, well...you would still be wrong.
Naruto's ninja have always been based on the ninja from Japanese folklore instead of the Western interpretation of the ninja, which mostly come from Hollywood and video games. Ninjas in Edo Period folklore and beyond look almost exactly like Narutoverse ninjas: using handsigns to shapeshift, split into multiple bodies, summon animals and control the five classical elements (void being replaced by lightning in Narutoverse).
Here's an example pretty much straight from a 19th century story, The Tale of the Gallant Jiraiya, published in 1839. See if this sounds familiar:
Here's the titular character dressed in bright colors fighting a giant snake:
City-wrecking showdowns between magical forces and ninjas as punch wizards are a long part of the ninja genre. They aren't much like the real ninja were, but they are exactly like the stories about ninja. Only western people complain about this, actual Japanese people already thought of ninja like that before Naruto existed.
Unless people are complaining about the lack of samurai taking on black ops missions for their lords, they know nothing about "real/actual" ninja, no matter how much they complain about it.
So whichever way I look at it, you seem to be both wrong on all accounts. So I have no idea what on earth you mean by "real ninjas".
But that's not what I want to complain about. I have been trying to read this story, and this detail just keep bugging me (among others):
I'm sorry, but why is Minato making such a leap in logic here? Minato has no reason whatsoever to think the enemy is a man long dead instead of a ninja who learned to do the same. Where is the use of Occam's Razor? Where is the deduction? Where is the chain of logic? Where is the rational?
It sounds too much like making Naruto discover who one of the final villains is way too early without any effort from him.
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- Location
- Netherlands
Okay, fair point, but I don't think that's what people are complaining about. It's more that Kakashi (and Sakura) lectures Naruto about how a real ninja is supposed to be sneaky and attack the other when their guard is down, but in practice all of their fights boil down to 1-on-1s where both fighters taunt each other and patiently explain the move they just used. It's not quite as bad as Bleach where characters will explain their abilities to their enemy in advance, but still. Those abilities you quote are still often intended for deception and infiltration, but in practice they're rarely used that way. Naruto's modus operandi is pretty much 'summon shadow clones and hit the enemy with a rasengan', and even though he does use cleverness at times it still feels like wasted potential to never have him learn interesting techniques or use them to their full potential.
I mean, no matter how you slice it, trying to sneak up on someone while wearing orange is still really stupid.
You're right, this is actually intended to be a (rare) mistake on Minato's part, and Naruto does call him out on it. Minato is basically making the base-rate fallacy here: He recognizes some of Madara's powers and methods, thinks "nobody else would be bold enough to attack the Leaf by themselves", and leaps to this conclusion. That does not mean he's actually right, it's just kind of hard to show him being wrong while writing from his POV. You have to remember that Minato has had no formal training in logic, and is just going off his own native intelligence, so I don't think such a mistake is really that unrealistic.
(note that this has no bearing on whether or not Madara really is the villain - he just remains one of many possible suspects. The story is supposed to work like a murder mystery, after all)
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Imrix
Periodically Malevolent QM
It's actually not, depending on what you mean by 'sneaking'. Trying not to be seen by somebody while wearing bright orange is pretty silly. Trying not to be suspected by somebody while wearing bright orange is actually pretty sensible, because 'everybody knows' that assassins skulk around in black clothes covering their faces, so who'd suspect that loud kid passing me in the street while wearing bright or- oh, he just stabbed me four times in the neck. Huh.
(The latter is actually what a lot of historical assassins did.)
- Location
- Netherlands
I actually anticipated that argument and addressed it in chapter 8 (Please don't take Kakashi's insults to apply to you 
):
):
Chapter 17
- Location
- Netherlands
Chapter 17
Zabuza's water clone arrived at the great stone bridge alone.
He had ordered Haku to stay behind just in case Kakashi had planned this meeting specifically to target the boy – Kakashi might well be able to slip away with his team if Zabuza's teleporting minion perished. Haku was however keeping a careful watch from several different angles using ice mirrors set up along the coast, and he had seen nothing to indicate a trap. Zabuza supposed Kakashi could have trapped the bridge itself, but he somehow doubted that the Leaf ninja would destroy the very object he had come here to protect, just to take out a single water clone when the White Fang himself still stood on it.
There really was no indication that this meeting was anything other than what it appeared to be.
Warily, ever so carefully, Zabuza approached the silhouette waiting for him at the very end of that unfinished bridge. The strands of mist that drifted around the structure was not of his own devising, and in the dark of the night he could see scant feet ahead of him, but that suited Zabuza just fine: He was a former Anbu of the Hidden Mist, and when it came to silent killing there was no greater master. If need be, he could kill by sound alone. It was just another thing that was to his advantage, and not Kakashi's.
"Ah, Momochi Zabuza-san," Hatake Kakashi said without so much as turning around.
Zabuza did not let his annoyance show. "Kakashi. What is this about?"
"I wanted to see whether I could come to an agreement with you." Kakashi calmly turned around, his hands in his pockets, looking entirely at ease. It was a bluff, of course, but it still managed to irritate Zabuza. "I have to admit I'm disappointed, Zabuza-san. I had hoped you were a better man than this." He took one hand from his pocket and gestured towards the burning village that enclosed the bay, where a tall plume of smoke now rose and from which a smell drifted that clung to a man's nostrils and followed him wherever he went.
"What, you're upset about a few dead peasants?" Zabuza scoffed loudly. "You can't possibly have been a jōnin for so long and still be this naïve, Kakashi. All the people in this dirt village combined are worth less than even one true ninja. Entire countries like the Land of Rain were reduced to rubble by you and your people during the Second War, just because it was a convenient battleground, or did you forget?"
"I did not forget," Kakashi said softly. "But that was war, and in times of war innocent people die, no matter how much you try to prevent it. These people died for no reason other than to satisfy your personal ambition."
Zabuza clutched his Great Beheading Blade more tightly. "…and just what do you think that ambition is, Kakashi? I'm fighting a war, too. The only difference is that you have a country to justify your actions, while the Eternal Tyrant still holds onto mine. Do you think that different rules apply to you, just because you have more men?"
"Perhaps." Kakashi shrugged. "When you have an entire people who support your leader and his commands, it does change certain things. Do you think that if anybody could declare themselves Kage and wage their own wars, the world would be a better place for it?"
Zabuza's patience for philosophy had run out. "I see Haku was right about you being a hypocrite. Tell me your offer, and quickly, before I cut off your head with this little knife of mine."
"Of course." Kakashi's hand went up to his forehead protector and tapped the armoured cloth where it obscured his left eye. "It's my Sharingan you're after, isn't it? Then I offer it to you willingly, in exchange for my students' safe return to Konoha."
Zabuza could not help but smile. The proposal was exactly what he had expected: A desperate move by a desperate man. "And why should I accept your offer, when I can simply kill you and take the eye from your still-warm corpse?"
"Well, that's because-" in a blur of motion Kakashi raised his forehead protector with one hand and drew a kunai from his pocket with the other, pointing the tip of the knife directly at the centre of his crimson eye. "If you don't accept my offer, I will destroy the Sharingan right here and now!"
For a moment Zabuza was struck dumb by the sheer audacity of his opponent, but then he burst out laughing. "Very good, Kakashi. Very good! Congratulations, you managed to find a way for both of us to win. I accept your offer: Your eye in exchange for your students to live."
"I will also find a way to send all of my money to you once I return to Konoha," Kakashi said as he lowered the knife to his side. "It may take a little while, but if I call in a few favours I should be able to gather several times as much as the bounties on my head, to compensate you for the risk you're taking."
"Good, good. I see you have thought of everything. Now carve out your eye and give it to me."
The White Fang let out a short, sad sigh. "…you're not going to let my team leave, are you?"
"Hmmm… no."
"Why?" The man sounded almost curious. "I really am being sincere: If you let me go, you will have both my eye and my money. I can give you more assurances if need be."
"Nah, I believe you. I just don't care." It was probably smarter to leave Kakashi in the dark, Zabuza reflected, but it was just too much fun to watch the infamous ninja squirm. "The ability to see the future, read minds, even bend space and time… I don't know if that eye has any of those abilities, or if it's all just rumours and myth. It could be a coloured marble for all I care; the only thing that matters is that everyone believes it can do those things." He pointed at Kakashi's Sharingan. "That crimson eye shall be my banner, and once I transplant it all who see it will know: There walks Momochi Zabuza, the man who killed the White Fang. My enemies will run in fear of me, armies will flock to me, and with the full power of the Mist behind me I shall pull the throne out from underneath Yagura's bloody corpse!"
"In other words, you intend to become exactly what you hate," Kakashi said dryly.
"No… there is one difference. Yagura never trusted anyone, not even his own followers – the ones who should have been his closest allies." A foul taste surfaced in Zabuza's mouth, but he forced it down. "He turned his own people against each other and against himself because of his rampant paranoia, and tore my country apart as a result. I will not make the same mistake: Haku is only the first, but when I reign I shall have thousands of followers, every one of them completely loyal to me and me alone."
"That sounds like a nice dream to have," Kakashi said as he leisurely drew his white sword from his back. "But unfortunately none of that is going to happen, because I'm going to kill you right here and now."
Zabuza could not help but bark an incredulous laugh as he hefted his Executioner's Blade with both hands. "Brave words, but how do you intend to back them up? Show me, Kakashi!"
He charged directly at the White Fang, who charged right back at him. When he swung his much larger weapon Kakashi did not try to parry but ducked underneath it and sprang up in a roll, slashing at Zabuza while running past him. In response Zabuza slammed the tip of his blade into the surface of the bridge and used his momentum to swing around by the handle, turning a full one-eighty degrees before leaping after Kakashi. He pulled his sword up behind him and swung it directly at his enemy, and this time he briefly felt the tip of the blade connect. Kakashi sprang backwards and the two were separated once more, but the damage had been done: There was a gash across Kakashi's armoured jacket, from which a steady stream of blood now seeped.
He smiled at the confirmation of what he had already suspected. "Shadow clones don't bleed, Kakashi."
"Neither do water clones," Kakashi calmly replied, as he pointed at Zabuza's right leg.
Zabuza looked down, certain he would find nothing there, only to recoil at the sight of his own blood trickling down from a cut across his thigh. No, that's not possible! My real body is still hiding in the water of the bay, I'm sure of it! He had no time to consider the issue any further, as Kakashi took advantage of his distraction to cast a new technique, and Zabuza watched in shock as the legendary ninja flicked through all forty-four hand-seals for a full-powered Water Dragon Technique in a matter of seconds. I have to use the same technique to counter it or I'm dead!
Gigantic pillars of water rose up from the ocean on either side of the bridge in response to their efforts, but Kakashi finished first and his column transformed into a massive water Dragon, taking flight and roaring its defiance with a veritable monsoon of water droplets spraying from its open jaws. Zabuza's technique completed a second after, and his own dragon burst into life, taking flight and striking towards Kakashi's dragon, which immediately flew out of the way. The two circled one another in mid-air, their serpentine bodies forming a double helix as each sought to outmanoeuvre the other in their flight to the skies. What's going on? Why can't I make contact?
"Master Zabuza! Master Zabuza, what are you doing?"
Haku's voice was coming from one of his portals, and it was enough to snap Zabuza out of it. Genjutsu! He flared his chakra, and Kakashi's water dragon vanished entirely, only his own dragon remaining as it flew ever further up into the air by itself. He looked down, and saw that the cut on his leg had vanished as well. When did that bastard find the time to cast genjutsu? He slashed his right hand at his enemy, and in reply the massive Water Dragon descended upon Kakashi, roaring with rage along with its master.
Kakashi formed a single hand seal in reply and body-flickered to the coastal end of the bridge, and it was only then that Zabuza noticed Kakashi's Sharingan spinning inside its socket. That eye! That cursed bloody eye can cast genjutsu! But before he could do anything else Kakashi formed another hand sign, and the great stone bridge detonated with the sound of a hundred buried explosive tags, taking Zabuza's clone and his Dragon out with it.
I have to keep Haku and my real body away from this monster, was the last thing Zabuza remembered thinking, and then he was gone.
Zabuza's water clone arrived at the great stone bridge alone.
He had ordered Haku to stay behind just in case Kakashi had planned this meeting specifically to target the boy – Kakashi might well be able to slip away with his team if Zabuza's teleporting minion perished. Haku was however keeping a careful watch from several different angles using ice mirrors set up along the coast, and he had seen nothing to indicate a trap. Zabuza supposed Kakashi could have trapped the bridge itself, but he somehow doubted that the Leaf ninja would destroy the very object he had come here to protect, just to take out a single water clone when the White Fang himself still stood on it.
There really was no indication that this meeting was anything other than what it appeared to be.
Warily, ever so carefully, Zabuza approached the silhouette waiting for him at the very end of that unfinished bridge. The strands of mist that drifted around the structure was not of his own devising, and in the dark of the night he could see scant feet ahead of him, but that suited Zabuza just fine: He was a former Anbu of the Hidden Mist, and when it came to silent killing there was no greater master. If need be, he could kill by sound alone. It was just another thing that was to his advantage, and not Kakashi's.
"Ah, Momochi Zabuza-san," Hatake Kakashi said without so much as turning around.
Zabuza did not let his annoyance show. "Kakashi. What is this about?"
"I wanted to see whether I could come to an agreement with you." Kakashi calmly turned around, his hands in his pockets, looking entirely at ease. It was a bluff, of course, but it still managed to irritate Zabuza. "I have to admit I'm disappointed, Zabuza-san. I had hoped you were a better man than this." He took one hand from his pocket and gestured towards the burning village that enclosed the bay, where a tall plume of smoke now rose and from which a smell drifted that clung to a man's nostrils and followed him wherever he went.
"What, you're upset about a few dead peasants?" Zabuza scoffed loudly. "You can't possibly have been a jōnin for so long and still be this naïve, Kakashi. All the people in this dirt village combined are worth less than even one true ninja. Entire countries like the Land of Rain were reduced to rubble by you and your people during the Second War, just because it was a convenient battleground, or did you forget?"
"I did not forget," Kakashi said softly. "But that was war, and in times of war innocent people die, no matter how much you try to prevent it. These people died for no reason other than to satisfy your personal ambition."
Zabuza clutched his Great Beheading Blade more tightly. "…and just what do you think that ambition is, Kakashi? I'm fighting a war, too. The only difference is that you have a country to justify your actions, while the Eternal Tyrant still holds onto mine. Do you think that different rules apply to you, just because you have more men?"
"Perhaps." Kakashi shrugged. "When you have an entire people who support your leader and his commands, it does change certain things. Do you think that if anybody could declare themselves Kage and wage their own wars, the world would be a better place for it?"
Zabuza's patience for philosophy had run out. "I see Haku was right about you being a hypocrite. Tell me your offer, and quickly, before I cut off your head with this little knife of mine."
"Of course." Kakashi's hand went up to his forehead protector and tapped the armoured cloth where it obscured his left eye. "It's my Sharingan you're after, isn't it? Then I offer it to you willingly, in exchange for my students' safe return to Konoha."
Zabuza could not help but smile. The proposal was exactly what he had expected: A desperate move by a desperate man. "And why should I accept your offer, when I can simply kill you and take the eye from your still-warm corpse?"
"Well, that's because-" in a blur of motion Kakashi raised his forehead protector with one hand and drew a kunai from his pocket with the other, pointing the tip of the knife directly at the centre of his crimson eye. "If you don't accept my offer, I will destroy the Sharingan right here and now!"
For a moment Zabuza was struck dumb by the sheer audacity of his opponent, but then he burst out laughing. "Very good, Kakashi. Very good! Congratulations, you managed to find a way for both of us to win. I accept your offer: Your eye in exchange for your students to live."
"I will also find a way to send all of my money to you once I return to Konoha," Kakashi said as he lowered the knife to his side. "It may take a little while, but if I call in a few favours I should be able to gather several times as much as the bounties on my head, to compensate you for the risk you're taking."
"Good, good. I see you have thought of everything. Now carve out your eye and give it to me."
The White Fang let out a short, sad sigh. "…you're not going to let my team leave, are you?"
"Hmmm… no."
"Why?" The man sounded almost curious. "I really am being sincere: If you let me go, you will have both my eye and my money. I can give you more assurances if need be."
"Nah, I believe you. I just don't care." It was probably smarter to leave Kakashi in the dark, Zabuza reflected, but it was just too much fun to watch the infamous ninja squirm. "The ability to see the future, read minds, even bend space and time… I don't know if that eye has any of those abilities, or if it's all just rumours and myth. It could be a coloured marble for all I care; the only thing that matters is that everyone believes it can do those things." He pointed at Kakashi's Sharingan. "That crimson eye shall be my banner, and once I transplant it all who see it will know: There walks Momochi Zabuza, the man who killed the White Fang. My enemies will run in fear of me, armies will flock to me, and with the full power of the Mist behind me I shall pull the throne out from underneath Yagura's bloody corpse!"
"In other words, you intend to become exactly what you hate," Kakashi said dryly.
"No… there is one difference. Yagura never trusted anyone, not even his own followers – the ones who should have been his closest allies." A foul taste surfaced in Zabuza's mouth, but he forced it down. "He turned his own people against each other and against himself because of his rampant paranoia, and tore my country apart as a result. I will not make the same mistake: Haku is only the first, but when I reign I shall have thousands of followers, every one of them completely loyal to me and me alone."
"That sounds like a nice dream to have," Kakashi said as he leisurely drew his white sword from his back. "But unfortunately none of that is going to happen, because I'm going to kill you right here and now."
Zabuza could not help but bark an incredulous laugh as he hefted his Executioner's Blade with both hands. "Brave words, but how do you intend to back them up? Show me, Kakashi!"
He charged directly at the White Fang, who charged right back at him. When he swung his much larger weapon Kakashi did not try to parry but ducked underneath it and sprang up in a roll, slashing at Zabuza while running past him. In response Zabuza slammed the tip of his blade into the surface of the bridge and used his momentum to swing around by the handle, turning a full one-eighty degrees before leaping after Kakashi. He pulled his sword up behind him and swung it directly at his enemy, and this time he briefly felt the tip of the blade connect. Kakashi sprang backwards and the two were separated once more, but the damage had been done: There was a gash across Kakashi's armoured jacket, from which a steady stream of blood now seeped.
He smiled at the confirmation of what he had already suspected. "Shadow clones don't bleed, Kakashi."
"Neither do water clones," Kakashi calmly replied, as he pointed at Zabuza's right leg.
Zabuza looked down, certain he would find nothing there, only to recoil at the sight of his own blood trickling down from a cut across his thigh. No, that's not possible! My real body is still hiding in the water of the bay, I'm sure of it! He had no time to consider the issue any further, as Kakashi took advantage of his distraction to cast a new technique, and Zabuza watched in shock as the legendary ninja flicked through all forty-four hand-seals for a full-powered Water Dragon Technique in a matter of seconds. I have to use the same technique to counter it or I'm dead!
Gigantic pillars of water rose up from the ocean on either side of the bridge in response to their efforts, but Kakashi finished first and his column transformed into a massive water Dragon, taking flight and roaring its defiance with a veritable monsoon of water droplets spraying from its open jaws. Zabuza's technique completed a second after, and his own dragon burst into life, taking flight and striking towards Kakashi's dragon, which immediately flew out of the way. The two circled one another in mid-air, their serpentine bodies forming a double helix as each sought to outmanoeuvre the other in their flight to the skies. What's going on? Why can't I make contact?
"Master Zabuza! Master Zabuza, what are you doing?"
Haku's voice was coming from one of his portals, and it was enough to snap Zabuza out of it. Genjutsu! He flared his chakra, and Kakashi's water dragon vanished entirely, only his own dragon remaining as it flew ever further up into the air by itself. He looked down, and saw that the cut on his leg had vanished as well. When did that bastard find the time to cast genjutsu? He slashed his right hand at his enemy, and in reply the massive Water Dragon descended upon Kakashi, roaring with rage along with its master.
Kakashi formed a single hand seal in reply and body-flickered to the coastal end of the bridge, and it was only then that Zabuza noticed Kakashi's Sharingan spinning inside its socket. That eye! That cursed bloody eye can cast genjutsu! But before he could do anything else Kakashi formed another hand sign, and the great stone bridge detonated with the sound of a hundred buried explosive tags, taking Zabuza's clone and his Dragon out with it.
I have to keep Haku and my real body away from this monster, was the last thing Zabuza remembered thinking, and then he was gone.
-o-
A gulp of water entered Zabuza's lungs as the wave of memories hit him, and his real body emerged from the water of the bay coughing and spluttering. He slowly recovered his bearings as he made his way across the water to the bay's coast, where one of Haku's frozen mirrors was hidden inside a hollow tree.
"Master Zabuza," the boy called in a concerned voice. "Is that you? Are you all right?"
"I'm fine, Haku. Kakashi just caught me off guard, that's all. He made me waste chakra on a Water Dragon, but no more." He leaned against the tree for support, somehow feeling as though he had missed something, but he could not think of anything else Kakashi had accomplished with his trickery except escape from him. "It seems the Sharingan can cast genjutsu just by looking you in the eye," he added.
"Should I come over to you, master?"
"No," Zabuza said immediately. "I want you to go after that damned bridge builder and those ninja brats. They should be easy prey now that we know where Kakashi is, and if nothing else it will force him to go back and defend them again."
"…yes, master."
He could hear the boy exit through another portal, leaving Zabuza alone with his thoughts. The events at that bridge kept gnawing at him. There was more to the legends about the Sharingan than he had assumed, he was certain of that now, but he still could not tell which stories to believe and which to dismiss.
The Cursed Eyes of Misery, which can see the future, read and control minds, and bend space and time...
He was starting to reconsider sending Haku away – the boy had a knack for figuring out mysteries like these – when he heard something coming up from behind him. It was the familiar pitter-patter of padded paws upon the moist soil, slowly drawing closer, approaching through the darkness at a leisurely pace. When he drew his Executioner's Blade and turned around, he found a small pug with a dark nose and floppy ears walking up to him, the same one that had managed to find his clone earlier.
That's not possible, I was hiding underwater! He pulled out a knife and threw it at the dog with an angry gesture, but the pug vanished into thin air before it was struck. Without delaying another second, he ran off in a random direction, dashing through the forest in a desperate attempt to lose his pursuer. He knew I was hiding in the water. How? His mind raced through the possibilities, trying to find anything he could have said or done to give it away. He nearly tripped over a root when the realization came to him. The Sharingan can read minds! When he first cast his genjutsu, I recalled my true hiding place. He planned all of this from the start. But if he went through all that trouble, that means he must only be able to read surface thoughts, so if I can just shake him off he won't be able to find my real body again.
He paused and turned around. Perhaps I should head back to the lake…
The sound of dogs howling in the distance disrupted his thoughts, and Zabuza cursed silently. He ran off in another direction, though every path looked the same in the blackness underneath the forest canopy, which the waning moon could not hope to pierce. But robbed as he was of sight he could still hear the baying of the hounds as they circled him, drawing ever closer. They're all around me, hunting me…
His thoughts went back to the other times he had been hunted, running for his life, chased by ninjas with white masks that hid their faces. The fear he had amassed and suppressed over all those years finally struck him all at once: He was back in the Mizukage's inner sanctum, right after his assassination attempt had been discovered, running through those cold stone corridors with shadows chasing him from every direction. He was fleeing his own country, a mere handful of chūnin accompanying him, all the others having bowed to Yagura the moment his plan turned sour. At last he was alone, hiding in some forgotten backwater, afraid to carry his weapons openly for fear of being discovered as a rogue ninja. Afraid to even look civilians in the eye, until at last he had turned to Gato out of sheer desperation.
The childlike figure of Yagura appeared before him then, lounging on his throne the way Zabuza had imagined it so many times before. The Eternal Mizukage was sitting there with his white robes and conical hat, laughing at his pitiful struggles, mocking his pathetic existence. All around Zabuza there were hunter-ninjas wearing white masks, and as they closed on him they drew their swords, silent as death.
Zabuza ground to a halt, gripping his Executioner's Sword and dismissing the image with a burst of chakra. "You think you can frighten me that easily, Kakashi? I know you're almost out of chakra… I'm not scared of your petty psychological tricks." He glared at the faint silhouette that appeared in the darkness before him with murderous intent, though he took care not to look anywhere near where he thought the eyes would be. "I'll have you know that my Haku is chasing down your precious little students even as we speak. In some ways, that boy is even stronger than I am. Your brats won't stand a chance unless you go back to help them."
"Oh, I know." The silhouette was drawing closer now, and Zabuza could see that it was somehow larger than it was supposed to be, and the sound it made was that of claws dragging along the ground. A glowing crimson orb hovered in the darkness above it, casting an eerie red light. "I meant for you to do that, Zabuza-kun. I made you do it, in fact, using this eye of mine."
Zabuza forced himself to bark out an incredulous laugh. "Even if you had that ability, do you expect me to believe that a soft Konoha ninja like you would sacrifice his students like that? What a pathetic bluff." He pushed his chakra even further, flaring it until no genjutsu in the world could have held him, but still that eye kept glowing crimson, and still the dogs kept howling, drawing ever closer as they circled him.
"It really is amazing, how stupid people are," the voice replied. "When I was thirteen, I murdered my own comrades to get this left eye of mine, and I was called friend-killer for it. I spent my life hunting down traitors like you just for fun, and earned the name 'cold hearted Kakashi' for my ruthlessness. I'm feared across all the nations of the world as the dreaded White Fang, but all I have to do is put on a casual air and people ignore the facts and believe whatever they please." The figure strode out of the darkness, and Zabuza saw that it was a massive wolfhound, snarling and slavering as it bared its fangs at him with a visceral hunger. On top of that monstrous creature sat the White Fang, his bone-white chakra blade in hand, while his Sharingan illuminated his masked face with an unearthly crimson glow. Raw killing intent wafted from him like a physical wall. "Zabuza-kun, please allow me to show you… what kind of ninja I truly am."
Zabuza wavered for just one moment, and then he was running without any conscious decision ever having been made, the ravenous wolfhound following so close behind him he could almost feel its warm breath upon his neck. Distance! If I can just put some distance between us, I could fight him… His hands formed the seals for the water clone technique of their own accord, and three copies of him appeared and scattered in every direction. He felt the wolfhound move further away from him, and for a moment he allowed himself to hope. Then he stumbled as fresh memories struck him, one of his water clones having been torn in half by the monstrous creature. His second body was torn asunder by a whole pack of vicious dogs, leaping from out of the darkness in their multitude and tearing him apart. The third was run down by the rider itself, a glowing white chakra blade bursting through his chest as he ran.
How can he be this strong? He should be nearly out of chakra! But even as Zabuza's mind told him that he should turn around and fight, his body remembered the pain of dying, remembered falling to the White Fang so many times before, and refused to stop running. "Haku!" he cried in desperation, vainly looking for an ice mirror to save him. "Haku, where are you? I need your help! Haku!"
A feral creature burst out of the darkness, growling and snarling, and Zabuza thrust out his blade in panicked reflex. A small dog nearly impaled itself upon the tip before vanishing as it reached his sword, only its blue coat wrapping itself around his sword, the explosive tags lining the inside already sizzling. Zabuza threw his sword away, but even so the edge of the shockwave caught him and he was thrown across the forest floor by the blast. Five more dogs came out of the shadows and fell upon him, tearing into his limbs with bloody savagery as he struggled vainly to hold them off, until finally the White Fang himself appeared before him. Still seated on his monstrous hound, he looked down at Zabuza with one merciless crimson eye, not even bothering to finish him off himself.
No… I refuse to die like this!
With a mighty shout he flared his chakra and threw the dogs away from him, but a second later they were upon him again, biting and rending his flesh. In blinding agony and sensing death approach, his mind recalled the first time he had been surrounded by worthless braying animals, during the final academy graduation exam. He had been ordered to kill his one and only friend back then, and he had done so out of fear for disobeying, but something in him had snapped. I will show you how good I am at killing, he remembered thinking, as he flared his chakra far beyond what was considered safe or even possible, and killed everybody.
Zabuza flared his chakra again, one last time.
-o-
Hatake Kakashi was watching cautiously from on top of his loyal steed as Zabuza finally fell beneath his pack, when suddenly there was a surge of chakra and raw killing intent emanating from the man that sent him reeling in shock. He looked on in dismay as Zabuza picked up one of his dogs by the scruff of its neck and smashed it upon the ground, and then the man found his Executioner's Blade once more and whirled it around him in deadly arcs as though it weighed nothing. Kakashi hastily ordered his hounds to fall back, but the damage had been done: All around Zabuza the ground was littered with wounded and dying dogs, and they vanished back to the place of their summoning, one by one.
"Do you think you're the only one with secret techniques, Kakashi? Now you see why I'm called the Daemon of the Bloody Mist!" Chakra was swirling around Zabuza like a purple mist, wreathing his wounded body, cloaking him like a daemon's shroud. Kakashi's eyes widened as he realized just what he was looking at: He's using the eight gates!
The eight-gate technique let the user flare one's chakra far beyond what was normally possible, while tearing their own body apart in the process. If he's using the Eight Gates, I can't outrun him. Kakashi looked around desperately as he searched through his options. I have no more chakra for ninjutsu, genjutsu won't affect him like this… He went through his pouch and found only a handful of caltrops, which he scattered around him in the hope of using his superior vision to his advantage. I have no choice but to open the First Gate myself, and together with the Sharingan, hope that it's enough to defeat him.
But the attack never came. No sooner had Zabuza rid himself of the dogs, or he turned tail and fled towards the water of the bay. He did not stop there, but kept on running across the water at an incredible pace, his shrinking figure swiftly fading into the distance. Kakashi slowly lowered his white chakra sword as he realized how very close to death he had just come. His wolf hound whined softly.
I broke my own rule and executed a fourth-level plan; if even one part of my scheme had gone wrong, I would have died for it. He pictured Minato-sensei chastising him from the afterlife for taking such risks. But no, Kakashi had not left it all up to chance: He had used the Sharingan to plant suggestions into Zabuza's head to force him to make mistakes, and of course he had made certain necessary sacrifices…
He ordered his dog into a trod, moving back towards the village, but he already knew that even if he arrived in time he would not have the chakra to make a difference. Obito, Rin, forgive me. I betrayed your trust in me once again.
-o-
Hidden amongst the fire and the smoke, sitting in the very centre of the ruined village within a circle of corpses and ruined barricades, Naruto finally found what he had been looking for.
"Tazuna-san," he called, as he gingerly approached.
After Sakura and Sasuke left, Naruto had been forced to spread his clones across the village to fight, and he had not noticed right away when all his clones in one area had been taken out at once. By the time he realized what was happening, it had been too late: His clones soon managed to drive the bandits off, but there was precious little left to save. The few villagers that remained ran off to the rower's house, which was now being used as a shelter. Sakura had elected to stay there to tend to Sasuke and the villagers, but Naruto had gone back to look for the only civilian left whose name he still knew.
"Tazuna-san," he tried again. "You mustn't stay here. It's not safe."
"Where else would I go?" The old man did not look up, but kept staring quietly at the woman and child that lay at his feet. All three of them were covered in a layer of black soot, and the pool of liquid on the ground had blackened as well, making their forms hard to distinguish from the shadows cast by the flames all around them. "Those savages destroyed my house. And my village, and my daughter, and my grandson as well… and as for that great explosion earlier, I think that might have been my bridge."
Naruto grasped for something to say that was encouraging yet not a complete lie, but could think of precious little. "There are still people who look up to you as their leader," he tried vainly. "You can't let them down when they need you most."
The former bridge builder looked up at Naruto, but there was no life to be found in those bespectacled grey eyes. "No… your teacher was right: Everything that's happened here is because of me. Because I was stubborn and could not admit defeat, I lied and tricked you Leaf ninja into fighting our battle for us, and made this conflict into what it is. It's only fitting that I burn here, with the others."
Perhaps there were was something that Naruto could have said that would have made everything better, but if such words existed he had never learned them, and so he merely said what he truly felt as he always did. "I don't want you to die, Tazuna-san," he whispered. "Please come with me."
Whatever the old man would have said next, he did not get the chance to say it, for in that moment a chill passed over them both. It was a sudden coldness that cut straight to the bone, which reached them in the middle of that blazing inferno and caused their spines to shiver. Naruto looked up to the sky in bewilderment, and found cold white flakes drifting gently downwards, melting only slowly as they landed on his face.
It had started to snow.
Chapter 18
- Location
- Netherlands
A/N: Hey all. It turns out my grandmother doesn't have a tumor after all, but only a bloodclot in the brain from which she's mostly recovered. I guess sometimes things do turn out randomly positive, after all. It's a huge relief, either way.
Anyway, ninjas.
Chapter 18
"Snow?" Tazuna said confusedly. "In this time of year?"
Naruto grabbed him by the arm. "C'mon Tazuna-san, we gotta run!"
But before he could take another step the snow coalesced into a rectangular sheet of ice that blocked his path, which transformed into an icy mirror, and the mirror became a portal that reflected a frozen image which spoke to him in a soft whisper.
"Naruto-kun. Please step away from the bridge builder."
Naruto stared back at the image, noticing for the first time what he had been blinded from seeing before. The thin eye slits in the white metal mask revealed no face, and the long black hair had been bound with metal cuffs rather than hanging loose, but even so… even if the pink kimono had been replaced with a grey uniform and green haori, there could be no mistaking that sad and wistful tone of voice.
"Hello, Haku," he said. "Are you a boy or a girl?"
The figure flinched as though struck. "I, I truly am sorry, Naruto-kun."
"What are you sorry about?" In that moment Naruto thought he could understand Tazuna's strange empty expression, because he did not feel any of the anger he had expected, himself. "Making a fool out of me, just like everybody else always does? Or burning down a village full of innocent people?"
It was quiet for a moment, and Naruto wished that he could see Haku's face. Instead he found himself watching the snowflakes glide down gently and mingle with the ashes, a beautiful blend of black and white that all turned to sludge by the time it reached the ground.
"It was never my desire to be a shinobi," Haku said at last. "It is… painful to me. But my dream is my master's dream, and I shall do whatever it takes to make it a reality. Please do not stand in my way."
It is only when you have something precious to protect that you are able to become truly strong… that was what Haku had told him back in that training field, and it was only now that Naruto realized just who the 'cruel person' was that had forced them out of their home. "Do we really have to be enemies, just because we've got different dreams? Does everything really have to burn, just for that?" He remembered arguing with Kakashi about who he thought the real enemy was, but convincing anyone of that seemed like such a distant prospect now.
The masked ninja nodded. "As humans, we can't help but care for those close to us over mere strangers. It's for the same reason that you're trying to protect the bridge builder now, rather than any of the other villagers whose names you do not know. When such values clash the result is conflict, and to refuse to fight in that conflict is not compassion, but a betrayal of those who depend on you."
"But it doesn't have to be that way," Naruto tried. "We could just choose not to fight."
"Yes," Haku agreed sadly. "You could just walk away and let me kill the bridge builder."
"Why are you still trying to kill Tazuna-san, anyway?" He gestured towards the bridge builder behind him, who was watching the exchange mutely. "I thought that was all just part of your plan to trick us?"
"It was. But after engaging Kakashi-san, master Zabuza ordered me to attack you, to force your sensei to go back to protect you and to satisfy the terms of Gato's contract." The white mask sank ever so slightly. "I have tried to keep watch on master Zabuza with my mirrors ever since, in case he changed his mind, but I can no longer find him anywhere. It is possible that the White Fang managed to find him first."
"Oh. I'm sorry to hear that." Naruto did not even know if that was a lie. "I'm not gonna let you kill Tazuna-san, though."
"You cannot protect him," Haku said, a long needle sliding from his sleeve into his hand. "We both know you are only a shadow clone, so all I need do is–" Haku stopped as Naruto pulled out a kunai and used it to draw a drop of blood from this thumb. A slight pained sound escaped from behind the mask. "I do not want to hurt you, Naruto-kun, but if you force me to I will complete my path as a shinobi and kill the kindness in my heart, just as my master always desired for me to do. For the sake of my master's dream, if need be I will pierce straight through your body to reach the bridge builder and end his life."
"I've got a lot of bodies," Naruto retorted as he summoned half a dozen clones between him and his enemy. Diving straight towards Tazuna, he pulled the stunned bridge builder onto his feet and dragged him away from the fire and in the direction of the last of the unburned houses. "C'mon! We gotta run!"
The safe house, Naruto thought fervently as he ran. If I can just get him to the rower's house, Sakura and Sasuke can help...
"We won't make it," Tazuna wheezed, his breath coming out in ragged gasps as he vainly struggled to keep up with Naruto's ninja speed. "He's, too fast, and I'm… too old." Even as Naruto struggled to deny the fact, he knew that it was true: Already the memories of his dead clones were catching up to him, every last one of their bodies pierced by merciless needles. Seconds later, a portal of ice opened up scant steps ahead of him, and the frozen image of a masked figure silently blocked the way before them.
That's not fair, he thought helplessly.
"Just, leave me be." The fear on Tazuna's face slowly gave way to acceptance as they stumbled to a halt. "It's okay… it's not your fault."
"I don't wanna hear it," said Naruto, as he summoned more clones to delay the enemy while pulling the bridge builder down a side street. As he ran through the snow as fast as his feet could carry him, an odd sense of familiarity came over him, and he paused as the memory of their first day of travel came back to him. And he remembered Mizuki's speech, all that time ago, about making certain necessary sacrifices…
"Get on my back," he said. "I'll carry you!" The bridge builder's eyes widened, but this time he did not refuse. With chakra-enhanced strength, his wiry old body seemed surprisingly light on Naruto's back.
I'm not gonna let you die, Tazuna-san. Even if everything else burns down and there is nothing left but ash, I'll save at least one person. I can do at least that much…
Through the falling snow and ash they went, faster than before.
Anyway, ninjas.
Chapter 18
"Snow?" Tazuna said confusedly. "In this time of year?"
Naruto grabbed him by the arm. "C'mon Tazuna-san, we gotta run!"
But before he could take another step the snow coalesced into a rectangular sheet of ice that blocked his path, which transformed into an icy mirror, and the mirror became a portal that reflected a frozen image which spoke to him in a soft whisper.
"Naruto-kun. Please step away from the bridge builder."
Naruto stared back at the image, noticing for the first time what he had been blinded from seeing before. The thin eye slits in the white metal mask revealed no face, and the long black hair had been bound with metal cuffs rather than hanging loose, but even so… even if the pink kimono had been replaced with a grey uniform and green haori, there could be no mistaking that sad and wistful tone of voice.
"Hello, Haku," he said. "Are you a boy or a girl?"
The figure flinched as though struck. "I, I truly am sorry, Naruto-kun."
"What are you sorry about?" In that moment Naruto thought he could understand Tazuna's strange empty expression, because he did not feel any of the anger he had expected, himself. "Making a fool out of me, just like everybody else always does? Or burning down a village full of innocent people?"
It was quiet for a moment, and Naruto wished that he could see Haku's face. Instead he found himself watching the snowflakes glide down gently and mingle with the ashes, a beautiful blend of black and white that all turned to sludge by the time it reached the ground.
"It was never my desire to be a shinobi," Haku said at last. "It is… painful to me. But my dream is my master's dream, and I shall do whatever it takes to make it a reality. Please do not stand in my way."
It is only when you have something precious to protect that you are able to become truly strong… that was what Haku had told him back in that training field, and it was only now that Naruto realized just who the 'cruel person' was that had forced them out of their home. "Do we really have to be enemies, just because we've got different dreams? Does everything really have to burn, just for that?" He remembered arguing with Kakashi about who he thought the real enemy was, but convincing anyone of that seemed like such a distant prospect now.
The masked ninja nodded. "As humans, we can't help but care for those close to us over mere strangers. It's for the same reason that you're trying to protect the bridge builder now, rather than any of the other villagers whose names you do not know. When such values clash the result is conflict, and to refuse to fight in that conflict is not compassion, but a betrayal of those who depend on you."
"But it doesn't have to be that way," Naruto tried. "We could just choose not to fight."
"Yes," Haku agreed sadly. "You could just walk away and let me kill the bridge builder."
"Why are you still trying to kill Tazuna-san, anyway?" He gestured towards the bridge builder behind him, who was watching the exchange mutely. "I thought that was all just part of your plan to trick us?"
"It was. But after engaging Kakashi-san, master Zabuza ordered me to attack you, to force your sensei to go back to protect you and to satisfy the terms of Gato's contract." The white mask sank ever so slightly. "I have tried to keep watch on master Zabuza with my mirrors ever since, in case he changed his mind, but I can no longer find him anywhere. It is possible that the White Fang managed to find him first."
"Oh. I'm sorry to hear that." Naruto did not even know if that was a lie. "I'm not gonna let you kill Tazuna-san, though."
"You cannot protect him," Haku said, a long needle sliding from his sleeve into his hand. "We both know you are only a shadow clone, so all I need do is–" Haku stopped as Naruto pulled out a kunai and used it to draw a drop of blood from this thumb. A slight pained sound escaped from behind the mask. "I do not want to hurt you, Naruto-kun, but if you force me to I will complete my path as a shinobi and kill the kindness in my heart, just as my master always desired for me to do. For the sake of my master's dream, if need be I will pierce straight through your body to reach the bridge builder and end his life."
"I've got a lot of bodies," Naruto retorted as he summoned half a dozen clones between him and his enemy. Diving straight towards Tazuna, he pulled the stunned bridge builder onto his feet and dragged him away from the fire and in the direction of the last of the unburned houses. "C'mon! We gotta run!"
The safe house, Naruto thought fervently as he ran. If I can just get him to the rower's house, Sakura and Sasuke can help...
"We won't make it," Tazuna wheezed, his breath coming out in ragged gasps as he vainly struggled to keep up with Naruto's ninja speed. "He's, too fast, and I'm… too old." Even as Naruto struggled to deny the fact, he knew that it was true: Already the memories of his dead clones were catching up to him, every last one of their bodies pierced by merciless needles. Seconds later, a portal of ice opened up scant steps ahead of him, and the frozen image of a masked figure silently blocked the way before them.
That's not fair, he thought helplessly.
"Just, leave me be." The fear on Tazuna's face slowly gave way to acceptance as they stumbled to a halt. "It's okay… it's not your fault."
"I don't wanna hear it," said Naruto, as he summoned more clones to delay the enemy while pulling the bridge builder down a side street. As he ran through the snow as fast as his feet could carry him, an odd sense of familiarity came over him, and he paused as the memory of their first day of travel came back to him. And he remembered Mizuki's speech, all that time ago, about making certain necessary sacrifices…
"Get on my back," he said. "I'll carry you!" The bridge builder's eyes widened, but this time he did not refuse. With chakra-enhanced strength, his wiry old body seemed surprisingly light on Naruto's back.
I'm not gonna let you die, Tazuna-san. Even if everything else burns down and there is nothing left but ash, I'll save at least one person. I can do at least that much…
Through the falling snow and ash they went, faster than before.
-o-
In the house of the rower, now deceased, Sakura was tending to the injured civilians. She knew, on an intellectual level, that she could not help them all. Reason and logic told her that she could save more people by fighting to protect them than by healing those already injured, a fact that was made evident by the increasing press of wailing bodies all around her. And yet, despite that fact, she found she could not bring herself to leave.
I'm making a mistake. I know I'm making a mistake, but somehow I'm still here making it, she thought to herself in puzzlement.
She was in the middle of attempting vainly to heal a man with a ruptured spleen when one of Naruto's clones burst into the building. A cold wind blew inside the room and carpeted the floor with ash and snow, and she almost yelled at him to close the door, but the expression on his face stopped her.
"Haku's after us," Naruto said, pausing only to catch his breath with ragged gasps. "I'm trying to bring Tazuna here but he keeps teleporting after us, and I don't think we're gonna make it!"
Sakura instantly stopped trying to heal the dying man before her, the news bringing her out of her stupor like a splash of ice-cold water to the brain. They're here. Kakashi-sensei failed, he's dead and now we're all going to die too. For a moment her heart pumped acid through her veins as images of their deaths flashed through her mind, but then the reality of Naruto's words sank in.
"Wait, just Haku? Momochi Zabuza is not with him?"
Naruto furtively shook his head, still panting as he shut the door behind him, and Sakura felt her heart rate slow with a small measure of relief. "Okay," she said. "We can deal with this. Just use your shadow clones to lure Haku away from here. Have them carry Tazuna-san as far away as possible, hide him somewhere if you can, but don't feel too bad if he gets caught." She stood up and gathered the contents of the medical kit her sensei had provided her, ignoring the pleas of the wounded villagers lying all around her. "While your clones distract him, we'll make a run for it and get out of the village."
"I don't think I can," Naruto said, and the wretched expression on his face caused her breath to catch. "Because I'm, I mean, the real me is carrying Tazuna-san right now, and I think Haku would notice if I tried to switch."
"You–"Her speech stalled, and she had to repeat the words in her head to make sure that she understood them correctly. "You used your real body to look for Tazuna?" He nodded mutely, and Sakura could feel her blood rising to her forehead in frustrated disbelief. "You stupid, foolish… what in the Sage's name would possess you to do such a thing?"
"Because!" Naruto spluttered indignantly. "Because, I mean, you said so! You said my clones wouldn't fight unless I fought with them and that it wasn't fair for you to be in danger if I wasn't too. I only ever did what you told me to!"
"I never meant that you should put yourself at risk! I only said–" What had she said? "–I only meant that you should be willing to fight yourself, not that you should actually do it! How could you possibly think that's what I meant?" Sakura was about ready to tear her hair out in frustration with the oblivious boy, but she forcibly composed herself. "Oh, forget it: Just get your real body out of there while you still can!"
"I can't," Naruto protested weakly. "The only reason Haku hasn't killed Tazuna-san yet is because I'm carrying him and he doesn't wanna hurt me, too! If I leave now, he'll kill him for sure!"
Sakura's hands went to her face, but she forced them down and composed herself once more. "Okay, fine, just tell your real body to stay alive. We're coming to help you." She got up and turned her head, needing only a second to find what she sought. While the rest of the house was filled with wounded and dying villagers, there was one dark space in the corner that remained empty but for a shadowy figure resting silently against the wall. "Naruto is in danger, Sasuke-kun. He needs our help."
But the solitary figure remained there, and stared at his lap, and said nothing.
Naruto's clone walked up beside her, a frown on his face. "What's wrong with him?"
"I don't know!" she cried. "I think he must have hit his head or… or something. I mean, I healed his wounds and everything and he should be okay, but he's just sitting there." She called his name again, but received not so much as a glare in reply, and her stomach sank further still. I don't know what I'm supposed to do… Kakashi-sensei, please come back soon.
"Forget about him; I don't think he's gonna be any help." Naruto had a stubborn look on his face as he spoke the words. His eyes suddenly widened, and his hand jerked towards his shoulder as though something had bit him. "Ah! Haku just got another one of me."
She half-raised her hands to his shoulder as though to heal him, but of course there was no injury to be seen. She could do nothing but watch as Naruto teetered on his feet, struggling to hold onto his Shadow Clone technique despite the repeated shocks to his system.
"You've gotta help me, Sakura-chan," he whispered. "I don't think I can keep this up much longer."
"What do you want me to do?" She lowered her hands again, uselessly. What could I possibly do?
-o-
A portal opened up in front of Naruto, and he skidded to a halt on the streets that were slowly growing wet with sludge, Haku's image becoming harder to make out as the curtain of snow grew ever thicker. He threw a kunai at his foe, but it was deflected just as easily as all the others he had thrown before. In response, a storm of needles burst out of the mirror and impaled several more clones, which were becoming increasingly difficult to summon as Naruto's chakra reserves dwindled.
"This is pointless," the figure called out. "You cannot evade me, Naruto-kun."
This is hopeless, Naruto thought to himself as he carried Tazuna into another side-street, still no closer to his destination than when he started. I can't get away from Haku, and if I try to fight him he can always just teleport away and attack from a distance. On his back, Tazuna-san was no longer speaking, but the man's weight and his persistent shivering reminded Naruto that he was there. The air was growing colder by the second, and one by one the fires that had gripped the village were starting to go out.
"Naruto, you have to stop running away from Haku; it's only working to his advantage!"
Naruto nearly tripped as the memory caught up with him: Sakura was giving his clone advice back at the safe house, and then his clone distributed this knowledge to his other bodies by creating a second copy and dispelling himself. Naruto felt warm hope kindle inside of him at the realization that he was not fighting all alone. He was just about to create a clone to ask Sakura what he was supposed to do, when one of his existing clones dispelled itself, making it unnecessary. I don't even need to do anything other than carry Tazuna-san, Naruto realized. My clones and Sakura will take care of everything else.
"It's just like Kakashi-sensei taught us", came the memory of Sakura in reply. "The enemy has the initiative, so you need to either wear him down or force him to make a mistake. Take Tazuna-san somewhere Haku can't get to easily, then set up a trap and ambush him when he steps out of his portal."
Naruto silently nodded to himself. Right… only I think that sounded a lot easier back in that nice warm house than it does over here.
He reached into his pouch and threw down a handful of smoke bombs, blocking the enemy's vision with a cloud of grey smoke. At the same time half of his clones jumped on the other half's backs and used the transformation technique to mimic the appearance of Tazuna, pairing up and bursting out of the smoke in three different directions. The real Naruto and Tazuna hid and waited a moment longer before heading off. That should buy me enough time to hide Tazuna-san somewhere and set up an ambush.
But before he had even run twenty meters, Naruto stumbled with the sharp pain of a needle piercing his thigh, and it took him a second to realize it was only the phantom memory of one of his decoys being taken out. Ten more meters, and the second diversionary team was taken out as well, even though he had moved them away and out of sight of the first.
What? How?
The image of a round face framed by pink hair appeared in his memories. "Naruto, Haku has some kind of sensory technique! It has to be the same as what they used to find us back in the forest. You've got to stop him from using it somehow, or this'll never work!"
A sensory technique? Naruto did not think it likely that a teenager without shadow clones or a clan could have mastered a forgotten bloodline power and learned how to sense chakra at the same time. In that moment one of his clones dispelled itself, and in the memory he saw that the left part of Haku's mask was now covered by a hemisphere of tiny frozen mirrors, like an insect's compound eye.
"He's using miniature portals to spot you," Sakura said in the same moment, which meant she must have realized it before him. "He must have them set up in the sky, so he can watch everywhere at once!"
…that can't be right, Naruto thought in reply. Chakra can only affect something if it's in physical contact with it. If he's creating those portals by expelling chakra he must have limited range, unless… Naruto looked up at the sky as he ran, snowflakes drifting down in ever greater numbers and covering the world in a thin sheet in ice. Unless he's got a way to spread his chakra out over a wide area, in which case he can teleport anywhere he wants, whenever he wants.
This time he did create and dispel a clone to inform Sakura of what he had just realized. Without waiting for a reply, he darted into one of the still-smouldering buildings and barred the scorched door behind him, before continuing through the blackened corridor. The smoke burned his eyes and choked his lungs, and the heat from the lingering flames was almost unbearable, but he bore it all the same.
"What… what're you doing?" Tazuna's wheezing voice startled Naruto, his presence almost forgotten.
"I had to find a place… his ice can't reach." Naruto coughed as he lowered Tazuna from his back, the sudden loss of weight a stark relief, and it was only then that he felt the full exhaustion of everything he had done up until this point. Slowly, painfully, he found his way towards the building's basement – the kind made of solid stone that could double as a storm cellar if necessary. He ushered the bridge builder inside and locked the thick wooden door behind him. "Please stay there… and hide…"
He pulled a scroll from his pouch and – taking care not to let the smouldering floor and walls of the building scorch them – withdrew one of his last packets of explosive tags. All of that preparation, all that effort to get funding from Sasuke and dad and being called paranoid, and it still almost isn't enough. One by one, he placed the tags in key locations around the building, carefully memorizing their locations.
Sakura's worried face appeared in his mind's eye once more. "Naruto, your clone is almost out of chakra; he can't create any more copies for me to send messages through. Whatever it is you're doing, you'd better make it count, because if that masked boy teleports away again he won't give you another chance." There was a slight pause in Naruto's memory, as Sakura seemed to hesitate before speaking again. "And Naruto? Please try not to do anything that I would be unable to forgive."
"…you too," he mumbled, as he placed the last of his tags in a smoke-filled room. Unfurling another scroll, he drew forth everything he thought he could use and placed them in his pouch where they would be easily accessible: Knives and bombs and tags of every variety, and anything else he might need.
Somewhere else in the village, the last of his decoy clones were taken out with thrown needles, and Naruto used the chakra that returned to him to summon two final clones, which took up positions elsewhere in the house to cover every entrance. Then he drew his own sword, found his own hiding place in the blackened rafters, and waited for the enemy to come.
-o-
No sooner had Sakura spoken those last words, than Naruto's clone staggered on his feet and collapsed. Sakura reached out to catch him, but her outstretched arms clasped only empty air. Naruto was gone.
She clutched her arms, bit her lip, and furrowed her brow, but at last she had to admit that there was nothing else she could do from here. Once more she turned her hopes to the silent figure of Sasuke, who was still sitting by himself in the dark and empty corner of the room. She wanted nothing more than to grasp him by the shoulders and shake him awake, but something in his posture made approaching him unthinkable.
"Sasuke-kun," she said hesitantly. "Naruto… he's fighting Haku all by himself. We need to go save him."
When no reply was forthcoming, she swallowed, and tried again. "He's your teammate too, Sasuke-kun. We were all in the same class together – you grew up with him, same as me. And he'll never admit it, but I think in a way he looks up to you, like an older brother. You even had that silly sibling rivalry going for a while, do you remember?" She tried to smile, but faltered. "Does he… really mean this little to you?"
But Sasuke continued staring at his lap as though he had heard nothing. She was about to give it one more try, when at last he whispered his reply. "Why don't you do it yourself, if it's so important to you?"
"Me?" She stared at him in bafflement. "Sasuke-kun, I'm a support ninja. All I know is medical ninjutsu and genjutsu, and we're facing an enemy with a bloodline ability that lets him use ice techniques and teleport. You're the one with the close-combat ability and fire-style ninjutsu, and you have the Sharingan to see through his secret techniques: You're the only one who can do it!" When he gave no reaction, her hopes fell further still, and she spoke more softly and intently. "Sasuke-kun, he's going to die…"
Something twisted on Sasuke's face, but he shook his head almost imperceptibly. "I can't. There is something I need to do, before I die." The air seemed to become thicker and heavier around him, and the shadows on the wall grew darker as he spoke. "There was a time when I still believed in illusions. Back then, as I lay crying, I made a promise to a certain man. I cannot afford to take any more risks."
She stared at him uncomprehendingly, feeling strangely vexed by his refusal to look at her. "So that's it, then? You're just going to sit there for the rest of your life? You think that's going to make you any stronger, Sasuke?" She gritted her teeth. "You can say what you want about Naruto: That he's childish, obnoxious, stubborn, and unbearably naïve – but at least he's no coward!"
There was a stirring then, and at last his dead eyes rose to meet hers. "At least I have a purpose."
She flinched, but even as she struggled to find a riposte she realized that the effect of his gaze was nothing like it had been before. There was no naked contempt in his eyes this time, no merciless strength; only emptiness, pain and fear. She blinked, and when she looked again, the Sasuke she knew was no more. In his place there sat a boy, talented and brilliant and terribly handsome and strong, with raven hair and smooth skin and such beautiful piercing eyes, yet a boy he was and nothing more.
Slowly the tension that had been building inside her began to recede, and she was left with an odd sense of resigned strength. "I think I understand," she said at last. "All this time, I've been acting as though you're invulnerable, and it's just not fair of me to expect that from you. You're clearly still hurt, and I shouldn't have thought that I could heal you so easily. So you just wait there, and focus on getting better, Sasuke-kun. I'll take care of things myself."
She turned around and drew her sword, moving towards the door through the momentum of her words alone, but with every step she took a portion of her courage was taken from her and replaced with double its weight in doubt. The enemy is stronger than I am, more experienced by far and with a bloodline-limit that lets him teleport away from any trap I might set up. I'll have to sneak up on him and take him out in a single hit: That's my one and only chance. Maybe I can use genjutsu to trick him into making a mistake. Just as her hand brushed upon the door, a voice calling from behind held her back.
"Wait, Sakura."
Sasuke was standing up, rising gingerly at first and then more steadily. "I'll go." Sakura's heart rose as she saw the faintest light in his eyes: There was resignation there, but also a hint of determination… and perhaps it was just wishful thinking, but she thought there was something else in there as well.
"After all," he said, "it's a shinobi rule… that the medic should always be the last of the team to die."
-o-
The enemy's presence announced itself as an icy wind that entered the building, crawling through the gaps and cracks in the blackened walls. Tendrils of frozen air grasped around the edges of the front door and began to smother the smouldering embers in the room. The icy mist gathered in the entryway and coalesced into a tiny, rectangular shape right in front of the door, and through this open wound in the world poured more of the same frozen air, which in turn–
Oh.
They were almost imperceptible, but by focusing chakra to his eyes Naruto could see them: A sequence of miniature sheets of ice opening up in a chain, starting from the door and spreading through the rooms and corridors of the building like a swarm of frozen eyes. There was a delay of several seconds between the creation of each portal – the time it took Haku to cast the technique – but their march was inexorable, and slowly the flames that still licked the building's wooden walls started to go out.
Suspended from the roof's support beams by the chakra on his feet, his skin and clothes coloured black through the illusion woven by his transformation technique, Naruto was passed by unnoticed.
This isn't fair... If he only uses portals and never shows himself, how the heck am I supposed to beat him?
But even as he thought that, a voice in the back of his mind replied: I wonder if the Fourth Hokage complained about life not being fair, when he had to sacrifice his life to seal the Nine-tailed Fox and save the Village? Or whether Kakashi-sensei ever thought of giving up, when he had to protect us and at the same time fight one of the Mist's Seven Swordsmen with almost no chakra left?
The last of the rectangular ice-sheets opened up in front of the basement door, but for once the frozen chakra seemed to have some difficulty in manoeuvring through the thick iron-bound door. After a moment's pause, the portal started to drift towards the key hole. As the ice entered the hole, Naruto heard a small muted sound of bending wood and metal, as if the lock was being forced apart from the inside, while a mound of snow and ice pressed up ever thicker against the base of the door. Sheer necessity burned in Naruto's veins then, the overwhelming need to figure out Haku's technique then and there leaving no room for doubt or hesitation.
That technique must have limitations or Zabuza would be Mizukage already – Haku didn't even try to kill Kakashi like this which means it is either dangerous or unwieldy, and I guess the portals do move slowly but he's still using them effectively despite that, which means there has to be a risk involved that someone like Kakashi could exploit…
A snapping sound came from the door, and with a low groan the timber was forced apart, ice crusting over and shattering the wooden frame into pieces. The iron lock fell to the ground and tumbled down the stone stairs with an ominous, clanging sound. As Tazuna's form was revealed in the darkness of the basement, the rectangle of ice grew to the size of a window, and then a needle went flying through. Naruto leaped down from his hiding spot to parry the projectile and sent it clattering onto the blackened floorboards. He swung and struck out at the figure in the mirror, but his sword reflected from the surface as though it were striking solid ice and nothing more.
Why? Why can his needle pass through but not my sword?
The image reflected in the mirror regarded him, a cold and merciless expression offered by the thin slits in the mask and the one eye which was covered by a hemisphere of ice. "You wasted your one and only chance to stop me, Naruto-kun." Haku formed an unfamiliar hand seal, and a cold waft of snow and frozen chakra washed over Naruto, brushing past him and down the stairs to where the bridge builder was hiding.
He's just gonna ignore me and kill Tazuna, like I'm not even here…
At last something akin to anger started bubbling up in Naruto's stomach, and the waking fire burned away the last of his fear and doubts. It came to him then, the critical memory of Sakura's voice, which had never left him even if their means of communication was gone: "There's no point in testing it if it's been done a million times before. We already know the substitution technique requires the user to coat an item with their chakra before it can be transported. It doesn't matter if it's called a space-time technique or not, the only thing that counts is how it behaves – that is what is meant by the word 'law'."
Naruto grabbed the bundle of kunai from his pouch – the ones with flash tags wrapped around their handles – and tossed them in the air. Dozens of frozen eyes watched them from every direction as they fell, and when Naruto set them off the world was basked in a brilliant blinding light. There was a scream then, a shriek of pure agony coming from all around him, and in the largest frozen mirror Naruto could see Haku bending over and tearing at the eye of compound portals that let him see everything at once.
I can see him which means light travels through-
Naruto lunged forward and kicked out at the needle that Haku had dropped there, latching it to his sole like the bark of a tree, and hurled the needle straight into the open portal before him. Another scream echoed all around him, and Haku staggered backwards with a thin shaft of iron protruding from his ribs.
Items coated in Haku's chakra travel through-
Naruto grabbed the storage scroll from his pouch and unsealed the last of his explosive tags, ones that had never even touched Naruto's chakra before. He packed them together with some of Haku's snow that had gathered on the floor and shoved the entire bundle through the open portal even as he activated the tags. Then he dodged to the side as the explosives went off and something large hurled past him through the open portal – muffled explosions rocked the ground and air as ice shattered all around him, crystals raining down all around Naruto and someone else-
Haku jumped through the portal to escape the blast, I'm not gonna get another chance-
Naruto's right hand found his sword and he leaped at his enemy who drew his own blade, ninjatō and tantō clashing in a shower of sparks even as Haku weaved seals with one hand and a storm of wind and ice danced all around him. As Naruto staggered backwards the last of his clones burst into the corridor from where they had hid and charged at Haku, but through the wind and the snow the tantō flashed out twice, and the clones fell in quick succession.
Naruto spread his meter-long scroll onto the ground and kneeled down on top of it. Haku whirled around and sent needles flying at him, but Naruto was faster and a hollow cover of thick steel appeared around him like a turtle's shell, blocking the needles with faint thuds. That was when Naruto set off the explosive tags that he had planted all around the house.
This time the explosion was like nothing he had felt before: Within the darkness of his metal shell, the thunderous roar of splintering wood and blasting fire reverberated hollowly inside his ears. When the roof came crashing down on top of him the steel rang like a bell, and the sound that split through his ears was so deafening that he felt certain it was the last thing he would ever hear. Finally the cacophony subsided, and Naruto saw that a thick beam of broken wood had carved a hole along the side of his shell and nearly impaled him.
Pushing out with both legs, Naruto kicked the heavy cover onto its side and crawled out. There in the open air beneath the pale starlight he found his enemy, crouching amongst the burned and shattered pile of rubble that had been someone's house. All around Haku lay shattered fragments of ice, and Naruto knew then that his enemy had done the same as him – forming a thick dome of ice to shield against the blast. Haku had lost his mask along with the frozen eye, and Naruto could see his lips moving, but through the ringing in his ears he could not make out a word of what was said.
It doesn't matter. He shook his head to clear the cobwebs. I'm still not gonna let you kill Tazuna-san, no matter what you say. To his faint relief, he saw that the solid stone basement was still intact, only the entrance having been covered with loose rubble.
Struggling to his feet, Haku started forming a sequence of seals once more, and Naruto had no choice but to throw himself at his foe as well. The distance between them closed slowly, far too slowly, and even before it happened he could see Haku's seals finishing first. Naruto watched as his ninjatō stopped moving, halting just barely in front of his opponent's face, its reach just a little too short. Looking down, he saw that the shards of ice had risen up at Haku's command and impaled his body from every angle.
Oh.
Haku's lips moved again, and though Naruto could not hear the words, the look on his face said it all.
Yeah… I'm sorry too.
The world blackened as he fell, leaving him blissfully free of pain. Haku had been merciful, after all.
RazorSmile
ROB Used To Be A Knife Missile
Hmm. Kakashi's fourth-level plan, from where I am sitting, wasn't really a fourth-level plan. It was a one-level plan with style. Everything hinged on him using really subtle genjutsu to stir up Zabuza's traumas and insecurities (as background noise behind the actual genjutsu of the fake blood on the water clone's leg and the layer that caused Kakashi and his dogs to seem more scary than they should have been.) It still almost backfired but fortunately Zabuza's issues ran even deeper than Kakashi had guessed or Zabuza himself knew. Nice work.
However. One issue. Water clones can transfer memories back to the original? I thought that was exclusively a Shadow Clone thing.
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This is an excellent Naruto fic. I didn't like it at first but it just kept growing on me and now it's one of my favorites.
However. One issue. Water clones can transfer memories back to the original? I thought that was exclusively a Shadow Clone thing.
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This is an excellent Naruto fic. I didn't like it at first but it just kept growing on me and now it's one of my favorites.
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- Netherlands
Nice analysis.
True, the attack itself is first level, but the way Kakashi orchestrated the entire event before that was not. Think of it this way:
1st level: Haku tries to kill the Bridge builder in his sleep.
2nd level: Kakashi anticipates this, and uses genjutsu to fool Haku into thinking he killed the bridge builder so he can kill Haku instead.
3rd level: Haku anticipates this, and instead pretends to execute the first level plan so Kakashi will defend Tazuna which will exhaust Kakashi so they can kill him.
4th level: Kakashi realizes their strategy at the last second, and instead pretends to fall for their trap by going to the Bridge alone and thereby giving Zabuza the perfect ambush position, so his students can protect the villagers while he uses Genjutsu to fool Zabuza into attacking and wasting his chakra while also uncovering the location of Zabuza's real body.
2nd level: Kakashi anticipates this, and uses genjutsu to fool Haku into thinking he killed the bridge builder so he can kill Haku instead.
3rd level: Haku anticipates this, and instead pretends to execute the first level plan so Kakashi will defend Tazuna which will exhaust Kakashi so they can kill him.
4th level: Kakashi realizes their strategy at the last second, and instead pretends to fall for their trap by going to the Bridge alone and thereby giving Zabuza the perfect ambush position, so his students can protect the villagers while he uses Genjutsu to fool Zabuza into attacking and wasting his chakra while also uncovering the location of Zabuza's real body.
Kishi is in general pretty inconsistent with how the various clones work, so I took the easiest and most obvious interpretation which is that all clones essentially follow the same underlying principles, except that they use a different elemental 'base' which can have subtle effects on how the clone functions and to which it is reduced if destroyed.
(Also, if water clones didn't transfer memories I don't think Zabuza's clone would have been quite so casual in discussing matters with Kakashi in canon, as that copy of Zabuza's consciousness would have essentially died permanently the moment the clone was destroyed.)
I'm glad you kept reading then! So, what was it that you didn't like in the first place? Or was it more of a general bad first impression?
RazorSmile
ROB Used To Be A Knife Missile
Personal thing, not a reflection of quality. I was annoyed at Naruto kind of being a dumbass and whipping boy for Sakura and Sasuke. As the fic progressed, he's gotten better.
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I thought you might say that. You might call it personal preference but it's the #1 criticism of this fic, that the main character is not awesome enough. I guess I kinda forgot that a big chunk of the appeal of Shonen lies in wish fulfilment. :s
By the way, I'm getting a bit worried by the lack of activity in this thread. I mean, when I posted the first chapter it got 13 likes and plenty of comments - now I'm down to 6 likes and 1 comment. Is that a normal thing for fics to happen here or is it actually the case that I lost most of the readership and only 6+ people are still reading? : o
By the way, I'm getting a bit worried by the lack of activity in this thread. I mean, when I posted the first chapter it got 13 likes and plenty of comments - now I'm down to 6 likes and 1 comment. Is that a normal thing for fics to happen here or is it actually the case that I lost most of the readership and only 6+ people are still reading? : o
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8th pirate king
People scream weird when you stab them.
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- ny
I think that's probrably because of the fact that this SV you should post this on SB.
- Location
- Netherlands
I tried that here: I got 2 likes and literally zero replies.
I don't get it. I mean sure, Team Anko got a lot of flame on Spacebattles for being rationalist, but at least it got replies/attention. Heck, Eliezer got an entire website dedicated to hating his story. An entire website! What do I gotta do to get that kind of attention? All I get around here is a few snarky comments from some bored mods about spelling 'darkness' with a capital 'D'. That's like the alcohol-free Budlight equivalent of hate.
Man, shit's just not fair.
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8th pirate king
People scream weird when you stab them.
- Location
- ny
Well you obviosly get the views(i checked)but i personally think that the tone of your story doesn't make me want to comment.Not to say it's a bad story but it's not something i really comment on.I just watch the progress and like the chapter if it's particularly good.IDK that's just me.I tried that here: I got 2 likes and literally zero replies.
I don't get it. I mean sure, Team Anko got a lot of flame on Spacebattles for being rationalist, but at least it got replies/attention. Heck, Eliezer got an entire website dedicated to hating his story. An entire website! What do I gotta do to get that kind of attention? All I get around here is a few snarky comments from some bored mods about spelling 'darkness' with a capital 'D'. That's like the alcohol-free Budlight equivalent of hate.
Man, shit's just not fair.
redzonejoe
Vaguely Pastafarian
- Location
- Canada
*gurgles in lurker*
Enjoying the story tho
Enjoying the story tho
- Location
- United States
Don't feel bad dude the story's great. Also maybe from your intro about being inspired by HPMoR turned people off, and at first I thought that this would be really canon compliant but with a slight twist, I can see now that it's building up to say fuck you to the rails, but it hasn't gotten there yet.
RazorSmile
ROB Used To Be A Knife Missile
Hahaha I know but not in my case. I don't have a beef with his power level (it's perfect) I have a beef -- well, I had a beef with him being a social Whipping Boy rather than a physical one.
But it's fine, he mostly deserved it
Chapter 19
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- Netherlands
Thanks for all the nice comments guys.
New chapter! I'm getting better at this whole 'update every sunday no exceptions' thing.
Chapter 19
"…wake up!"
Naruto stirred feebly. He had been dreaming, but he could not recall what it had been about. All he remembered was a world buried in snow and ice, and it had been cold, so very cold… but now it seemed someone had lit a fire in his room, for which he was grateful. He sought to edge closer to the flames, but something barred his way.
"Wake up!"
-Minutes earlier-
The shattered remnants of his ice-dome barrier rained down around Haku, as the remainder of the house collapsed in a pile of timber and stone. Even with both hands pressed against the inside of the barrier and focusing chakra into the ice to strengthen it, the explosions had almost been too much – but in the end he had managed. Before him, the summoned metal shell finally stopped ringing with that awful hollow sound, and as it tumbled over his opponent was revealed beneath.
Haku looked at the figure uncertainly: He thought he could see blood, but his vision was still blurred from the flash of light that had blinded him, as well as from the final blast that destroyed his barrier and brought him to his knees.
He coughed. "Are you… the real one?"
Naruto shook his head, and as Haku formed the seals for his next technique, the boy charged with sword in hand. It was not until after Naruto had impaled himself onto a dozen shards of ice that Haku realized his mistake. He was only trying to clear his head…
"Wait," he said. "I didn't mean to…"
The boy coughed up blood, then slumped over, falling onto the ground with frozen shards still jutting out of him. The ice did not melt until the technique ended, and when it did the melt water pooled together with the blood and ash, forming a puddle of foul sludge on the scorched and blackened ground.
"I'm sorry…"
Haku stared at the fallen boy for a while longer, but finally he tore his gaze away and forced himself to focus on the present. He felt around his chest for the needle that had pierced his ribs, pulled it out and let it clatter onto the ground. He then formed another ice mirror – this one large enough for him to step through and disappear in an instant if need be – though it took much of his remaining chakra to do so. He skimmed the surrounding area through each of the miniature portals that he had set up all around the village and the forest, searching for any sign of his master. Zabuza was still nowhere to be found.
In the corner of Haku's vision, the bridge builder was slowly edging his way up the stone stairs and out of the basement – as though a civilian could ever hope to escape a ninja like that. Haku half-considered letting him go in honour of Naruto's death, but he realized that was foolish – If killing Tazuna had been worth killing Naruto over, then surely it would be inconsistent to let the bridge-builder live now?
Right in that moment Haku sensed a presence behind him, and he spun around with his tantō drawn. There was a figure standing in the snow scant meters away from him, though in the starlit darkness he appeared as little more than a silhouette outlined against the fires that still gripped the village outskirts.
Haku hastily stepped backwards, fumbling behind him with his fingers until he felt the frozen edge of his portal. He did not relax until the translucent barrier of ice could be seen in front of him and the scenery in his peripherals transformed to that of a quiet forest glade. Only when he felt certain he was safe did he examine the figure more carefully, his vision still painfully blurry from the flash tags of before.
"Your name is Sasuke, isn't it?" he asked. "Are you here to avenge your fallen comrade?"
The newcomer looked at the prone form of his fallen teammate for a long moment. "No," he said at last. "He's… not my comrade. In truth, I think he hated me: I did something to hurt him a long time ago, and I don't believe he ever forgave me for it. Even now, seeing him lie there, I don't feel a single thing."
Somehow, the way he said it, Haku found it easy to believe. "Then I see no reason for us to fight."
The younger boy exchanged a look with the bridge builder, who grimaced before replying. "It's all right lad, don't worry about me. You don't have to get yourself killed on my account. Just…" He seemed to hesitate. "I know you owe me less than nothing, but…"
Sasuke walked directly towards the open shelter, and Haku tensed in alarm, but all the boy did was to put an arm on the old man's shoulder. "I understand," he said. He turned back to Haku, his expression neutral. "I would like to take the fallen with me. In Konoha as in the Land of Waves, we bury our dead."
Haku could not find it in himself to refuse him. "Do as you wish."
"Thank you." The boy walked up to Naruto's body and kneeled on one leg, yet paused in reaching out to him. "Just one question, before I leave. That man you serve, Zabuza. Does he… matter, to you?"
Haku nodded mutely.
Sasuke completed his movement and carefully picked Naruto up, draping the dead boy over his arms. "You must realize that you don't matter to him," he said. "You are only a tool to him, to be used and discarded. Why would you care for someone like that?"
"Reason has nothing to do with it," said Haku. "For all that we rationalize our actions, it is our emotions that make us what we are, and we can't choose the ones we love."
"I used to believe that." Sasuke slowly stood up, half turning his back to Haku as he rose with his burden. "From a young age, my parents taught me that family is all that matters. Right or wrong, through good times or bad, the clan must stick together. The person who exhibited this quality most of all was my brother, a prodigy who sacrificed everything for the good of the clan and the Village, and I wished to grow up to be just like him." When he turned to face Haku, there was a glimmer in his black eyes. "But I was wrong: It turned out that the person I admired was only an illusion. So you see; it is possible to be mistaken about who you are, and how you feel."
Haku stared back at him, a strange sense of apprehension coming over him as he regarded the boy. Still, with both arms full and his guard lowered, his opponent could hardly be in a worse position to fight him.
"I grew up in a snowy village in the Land of Water," he replied at length. "My mother had a special bloodline, but after years of suffering the horror of civil war, the people of my land had come to hate and fear anyone who carried a bloodline power. So when she discovered that I had inherited the same ability, she sought to hide it from the others." He gestured towards the snow falling all around them, covering the ground in a white sheen in those areas where the fires could not reach. "When my father found out, he and the others lashed out and killed her, and I was forced to flee. I was… alone, forced to fend for myself in a world that despised me. When master Zabuza found me, I was fighting off stray dogs for the privilege of raiding a trash bin for scraps of food. He saved me from that fate. He gave me a reason to exist, and for that I owe him everything. So you see: It is more than just a feeling."
"I see. So you're saying that what matters is not who a person is, but it's their actions that count. Even if you love someone they can be deserving of hate, and although reason is a slave to emotion, feelings are still ultimately to be dictated by facts." Sasuke nodded slowly. "…I suppose I can accept that. Thank you." He half turned again and made to leave, but then he twisted around and his eyes were crimson and spinning inside their sockets-
Sharingan!
Haku staggered in shock as the world vanished around him, and that one moment nearly cost him his life as he flared his chakra and dodged to one side only for the tip of a blade to come scraping against his left shoulder and tearing blood from his arm. He ducked and rolled away from his attacker, and he only then realized that he had never stepped through the portal at all; it had all been an illusion.
He dashed towards the open sheet of ice just scant meters ahead of him, but several kunai attached to wire strings flew from the side and wrapped around the frozen mirror, and he had to shield himself as the blast from the explosive tags attached to the handles showered him with broken ice. Then Sasuke was upon him, his sword raining sparks against Haku's own. A flurry of rapid blows forced Haku back as his mind finally caught up with what was happening.
He's trying to prevent me from forming seals, but…
Even as Haku parried a powerful sword strike with one hand, his other formed the necessary seal: His enemy's eyes widened in surprise as Haku slammed his foot down and deadly water needles rose from the sludge to strike his target from every direction. His foe leaped upwards, a burst of chakra from his feet carrying him to safety, but Haku had gained the breathing space he needed: Another hand sign sent more water needles chasing after Sasuke, while his right hand threw a volley of regular needles as well, and though his enemy parried nearly all of them his body was still pierced in several places.
You missed your chance to kill me; from this point onward, all you can do is run.
But even as he thought that, his foe planted his sword into the ground and flicked through a series of hand seals at an incredible rate. All around them the fires of the burning buildings rose up into the air and gathered into a firestorm that lit up the sky, bearing down on Haku and roaring with the smouldering fury of a fully-powered Fire Dragon technique.
Impossible!
With no time to think, Haku dashed back towards the only area that offered shelter, which was the same storm cellar that the bridge builder had gone back to hiding in. Haku ducked and rolled down the stairs, barely managing to close the entrance behind him with a wall of ice as the dragon's roar reached its fiery crescendo.
There's no reason to fight – I'll just kill my target and teleport out of here.
The bridge builder had just enough time to look surprised before Haku slashed his throat open, and the old man fell upon the ground gurgling blood, the sound of his dying matched by the sizzling of an explosive tag placed on his back right where Sasuke had put an arm on his shoulder.
-What-
The explosion threw Haku backwards, pain lancing through his wounded shoulder as his back collided with a wall. Through his blurred vision he saw chunks of blood and rock and shards of ice rain down all around him, and he realized he must have raised another wall of ice in time to save his life. For just one moment there was a ray of light pouring down from the shattered entrance, but then a shadow stepped in its path, and pure darkness roiled into the room-
(Haku's senses were overwhelmed by pure killing intent, a sense of pain and hate and so much more)
-and at the same time a wave of scorching heat appeared from out of nowhere, and it was all Haku could do to stamp his foot and raise yet another wall of ice to block the attack. The barrier of frozen water appeared just in time to block the vengeful fire, the tongues of flame licking thirstily at its melting surface before receding once more. In the pitch-black silence that followed, Haku could hear droplets of water fall upon the stone floor in tandem with the frantic beating of his own heart.
Twin orbs of red light appeared in the dark, turning and twisting; crimson eyes each with one pupil in the centre but with yet more in the shape of commas all around them. As Haku frantically lowered his gaze, he realized that the boy must be an Uchiha, one that had somehow survived his clan's massacre, but there was no time to consider the issue. Before him the darkness parted ever so slightly, just enough to show him a sword lit up with white-hot fire.
"Why?" he choked out. "I would have let you leave. There is no longer any reason for us to fight!" Even as he spoke, he shaped the hand seals for the ice-mirror technique behind his back, yet the portals refused to form – as though the oppressive darkness pushing down on him prevented his chakra from spreading. The burning blade began to carve its way into the ice with relentless strokes, and it was all he could do to pour his chakra into the wall to keep it standing.
"Because… it's possible to be mistaken, about how you feel," the voice replied in fits and starts, and Haku realized with a start that his enemy was crying as he fought. He did not understand why that knowledge frightened him so much. Right then the blazing-hot sword stabbed through the ice and scorched Haku's clothes and flesh – the agonizing heat stopping just barely short of his heart – only for it to be pulled back out again for another thrust. He collapsed to his knees, the smell of his own burning flesh filling his nostrils, but he could only watch as the searing blade came at him once more.
No. I can't die here… master Zabuza still has use of me!
With a desperate effort Haku drew on his dwindling reserves of chakra, forming seals and stamping his foot once more. A dozen spears of ice burst from the ground and stabbed at the darkness, each of them splitting and bifurcating into ever more frozen spikes, filling the entire space with the same technique that had destroyed Hatake Kakashi's shadow clone. He could feel the walls of the cellar crumble and a section of the roof collapse under the strain, until finally the oppressive darkness retreated. At the top of the stairs, the silhouette of Uchiha Sasuke stood amidst a forest of frozen stalagmites where the entrance to the shelter had been, his slight form outlined against the waning orange light.
"I will take those eyes from you, Uchiha Sasuke," Haku breathed as he drew himself up to fight once more. "Even if master Zabuza could not kill the White Fang, we both shall still have the Sharingan. We will defeat the Eternal Tyrant if we must kill every last one of his followers by ourselves!"
In response, the darkness formed and gathered around his enemy once more. "No, you won't," said the voice of Uchiha Sasuke, sounding strangely warped and distorted. "You're going to die." The blackness around him twisted then, stretching and forming into limbs and tendrils of pure darkness that coiled around him, his body reshaping itself and turning into something wrong.
More genjutsu? But I didn't look into his eyes!
Haku flared his chakra, but though the darkness receded it never vanished entirely, and the moment he let up it came back stronger than before. The world shifted painfully, space itself seeming to bend around his enemy as the creature that was once Uchiha Sasuke sprouted yet more black tentacles. All around him the darkness spread like a plague, taking on countless monstrous shapes and forms, every one of them covered with baleful crimson eyes that looked down on Haku. "Mistaken", said the dread voice, which no longer resembled anything human, and it was echoed by countless thin whispers coming from all around him. "You are so… mistaken."
No! Stay away!
Haku scrambled backwards, but his back was against the wall. Blood pounded in his head as his fingers blindly struggled to form the hand seals for the ice-mirror technique, but at last his chakra took hold. A portal opened up beneath his feet, and as he began to fall the black tentacles reached for him. I'm not falling fast enough, not fast enough, they're going to get me-
With a sudden clap Haku struck the forest floor, and he rushed to close the ice portal shut behind him. Made it I made it I made it I made it…
A brief panic rose up in Haku when the world turned dark once more, but it was only unconsciousness that took hold of him.
Sakura leaped through a window of the building she had used as a vantage point, and hit the ground at a run. The original plan had been for Sasuke to body-flicker into sword-range of Haku while using that strange darkness technique of his, but that plan had been discarded when they saw Naruto fall with Haku's portal already open. After that Sasuke had improvised, and it had taken several carefully timed genjutsu techniques on Sakura's part to rescue the situation. Even so it had almost gone wrong, and Haku had escaped regardless…
She nearly tripped over Naruto's body as she ran. He still lay in front of the shelter where they had fought, mercifully unmarred by the explosions that had ravaged the nearby area. Even so his body had been pierced in a dozen places, ghastly wounds from which so much blood had spread that his clothes were brown with it. She knelt down next to him, and her own heart skipped a beat as she felt for a pulse.
A familiar voice came to her, sounding strangely small and distant. "Is he..?"
She looked up and saw Sasuke standing in front of her. The darkness and the fire had all faded, but even so he was little more than a shadow, covered in soot and standing against the backdrop of waning orange light.
"He's still alive," she whispered, her voice sounding strange to her own ears. There was the faintest possible pulse running between her fingers where she touched Naruto's wrist. "It'd take a miracle, but… I just might be able to save him, if I get started right away."
"That's good," Sasuke said weakly. "I'm glad." Then he collapsed onto the ground in a heap.
"Sasuke-kun!" She scrambled over to his side, running faster than she knew she could, and as she crouched over him she witnessed for the first time the full extent of his injuries. Several iron needles punctured his chest and stomach, but that was the least of it. All along his body he was covered in piercing wounds from where spears of ice had been cruelly driven into him from every angle. Blood seeped out of him from every point. How did he manage to even stand like this, let alone fight?
"Naruto…" Sasuke whispered, blood trickling from his mouth. "He's… innocent. You must… save him."
She half-turned to look at the prone form of her other childhood friend, and for a moment she was torn with indecision. "The time may come when you have to choose between the lives of your friends," her teacher had told her once, and it was only then that she realized what those two bells truly represented. It had all seemed so distant and abstract, back then, but now the choice was painfully real.
Do I save the person who's been my friend since childhood, or my crush?
And then, without any conscious decision ever having been made, she began healing the body of the person who was most precious to her. A warm green glow emanated from her hands and passed over his chest, the light slowly closing his wounds as they went.
"…why?" Sasuke's dark eyes were filled with incomprehension.
"Don't ask me," she whispered, her tears falling onto his body as she worked. "It's not like I understand it, either."
As Hatake Kakashi rode through the village on his wolfhound, his apprehension grew with each passing second. On either side of him, the fires that had gripped the village were finally going out. The blackened skeletons that had once been houses were all that still stood upright, except where those too had collapsed in upon themselves, turning into ever more ash and dust upon the ground until the streets were thick with it.
Am I too late? Obito, Rin, please don't let me be too late again!
At last he arrived before the only part of the village that still stood tall, close to the massacre where the villagers had made their stand. There, at last, he found what remained of his genin team. He dispelled his summoned mount and walked up to his student.
"Kakashi-sensei!" Sakura ran up to him, frantically sobbing, and grabbed him tightly. "You've got to help! I stabilized Sasuke, but I couldn't help Naruto in time, and now he's, he's…" She pulled him towards the others as she gave a jumbled account of what had happened, sobbing and heaving all the while.
Sasuke was lying unconscious on the ground, looking terribly injured yet breathing faintly, but Naruto…
On the ground, covered in a layer of soot and clotted blood, the body of Uzumaki Naruto was spread out onto a meter-long sealing scroll, his body covered in wounds from which blood had long since stopped flowing.
"I tried to seal him so we could bring him back to the hospital in Konoha," Sakura explained, "but I couldn't figure out how! I never learned to use scrolls, and his body still has chakra and I don't know how to drain it so I can't seal him for preservation, and now he's gone and… it's is all my fault!"
"Sakura?" He made his voice as reassuring as he could manage, given the circumstances. "Don't worry, you did a great job. Now let me just take a quick look at him, okay?" He gently disentangled himself from her and strode towards Naruto's still form, where a quick analysis confirmed that the boy's heart was no longer beating. By his count, Minato's son had breathed his last some three minutes ago.
"I'm so sorry. I never meant to let him die, only Sasuke was dying too, and I had to make a choice, and-"
"Sakura, why don't you go take care of Sasuke while I handle this?" Without waiting for a reply, Kakashi lifted Naruto's jacket with one hand and exposed the boy's bare midriff underneath. He sent chakra to each of his five fingers in preparation for the five-element unlocking seal, and drove his hand into Naruto's stomach before sharply turning it counter-clockwise.
At first nothing seemed to happen. Then, the sprawling lines of the Dead Daemon Seal manifested on the boy's stomach, and Naruto burst into life: The boy twisted, flailed and moaned in agony as daemonic red chakra spread to cover his entire body. Where the baleful chakra touched him, his skin burned and bubbled with a terrible stench, yet at the same time the flesh around the holes in his body reknit itself. As Kakashi watched, the wounds vanished into nothingness, until only a hale and healthy lad remained. He gave the seal a clockwise turn to close it, and Naruto gasped one more time before falling into blissful unconsciousness, drawing short and ragged breaths as he slept.
"See, he's perfectly all right," Kakashi said, hiding his burned and smoking fingers behind his back. He could not help but smile a little at Sakura's horrified expression. "It's just a matter of carefully applied medical-ninjutsu. It's the same principle as healing that trout, really: As long as the patient is none too bright to begin with, no real lasting damage is done."
"But, that… he…" Sakura's mouth was slowly opening and closing, much like the fish Kakashi had been referring to. "But he was, he – that's not possible."
"Now, now," he chided, smiling. "What did I say about doubting your brilliant and handsome sensei?"
After making Sakura promise not to tell anybody about his 'amazing secret medical technique', Kakashi proceeded to examine Sasuke, and attended to his injuries as well. He watched over his charges until the sun rose on the horizon and basked the area in a new orange light. When he was done he surveyed his handiwork with satisfaction. The mission had failed, the client was dead and the village had burned, but Team Seven had survived without any casualties. In the end, that was all that truly mattered.
All things considered, everything had turned out quite all right.
New chapter! I'm getting better at this whole 'update every sunday no exceptions' thing.
Chapter 19
"…wake up!"
Naruto stirred feebly. He had been dreaming, but he could not recall what it had been about. All he remembered was a world buried in snow and ice, and it had been cold, so very cold… but now it seemed someone had lit a fire in his room, for which he was grateful. He sought to edge closer to the flames, but something barred his way.
"Wake up!"
This time the voice was loud enough to reach Naruto, and some of its urgency carried over. His eyes opened languidly, and as he looked at his surroundings he blinked. He was lying in a pool of colourless liquid, and between him and the fire there was a titanic gate, iron bars reaching up towards a ceiling so high that it made him feel as though he were falling. At last the memory of what had happened came back to him, and he looked to investigate his body. Some of his wounds were so large that he could have stuck half a hand through, and the foul black liquid that seeped out slowly added to the pool of water and tainted it.
"Hurry, child. Your time is running short. Undo the seal on your stomach, and let my restorative chakra flow freely with yours. I may still be able to heal your wounds, but we must act swiftly."
Naruto looked up at the being of living fire, the flames seeming to dance and flicker before his eyes. It looked smaller than he remembered, and weaker – appearing almost frail in spite of its vast power. "Kyūbi? How… how come you're talking to me? I thought Jiraiya had to undo the seal for that to happen."
"All techniques require chakra to function, and this one draws upon your own. As your power fades, so does the seal's – but there's no time to consider. If you lose consciousness again, I do not think I could still restore you. Hurry and suppress the chakra flowing through your stomach, before it is too late."
Naruto's body half moved to do as he was told, finding it strangely easy to control what little chakra remained, but then stopped. "I can't," he said, realizing the truth of it even as he spoke. "I promised… I promised my dad I wouldn't set you free."
A single crimson eye appeared in the centre of the flames, and it stared at him, uncomprehending.
"A promise? You do not understand, child. You are dying, and even if you were willing to accept that, the seal would be undone regardless. Though my chakra might be scattered to the winds, I would still be made anew within a few years' time. You have no reason whatsoever not to call upon my power."
He shook his head. "I can't. Made decision before, was smarter then. No reason to change mind." It was difficult to explain himself properly – his tongue was too thick, his thoughts were too slow, and he was tired; so very, very tired. He wanted nothing more than to go back to sleep, and dream a dream more pleasant than the one he had before. Though even dreaming of nothing at all did not seem so terrible to him, now. It was becoming harder to remember, why that prospect had once made him so afraid.
The fire lashed out like a claw, dragging its molten talons along the bars with a terrible screeching sound that jolted Naruto awake. "I do not know what manner of tales you grew up with, child, but there is no blissful afterlife waiting for you upon your death. Did they fill your head with dreams of eternal sunshine? There is no such thing! No rebirth, no torment, no fire or judgment… only darkness!"
"I know." The fire was starting to go out, and Naruto clutched himself tightly, and shivered. "But I made a promise to my dad."
"Your father is dead." Naruto looked up. "Is that what moves you? Do you imagine yourself to be a hero like him? The Fourth sacrificed everything and died for nothing – they raised him up to be a martyr and trod on his dreams not even ten minutes after he fell. My mind touched upon his own as he sealed me, so I know: Losing his team and winning the war, becoming Hokage and losing his wife… he would have taken it all back if he only could. In the end, all he wanted was for you to be safe."
"…it doesn't matter." Naruto looked away, for the fire had grown brighter, and the heat was stinging his eyes. "That doesn't change anything at all…" He still had a father left, and that one had never asked him to stay safe. "I already know," Jiraiya had told him back then. There had been no doubt in his voice at all.
There was a long moment of silence, and Naruto almost fell asleep again, but then the voice spoke once more, sounding strangely subdued. "I did not tell you the whole truth before. If you die and my chakra is scattered, I will be reborn eventually, yes… but in what form? I once had a family, ever so long ago… one of my brothers was called Ibosu, the Three-tailed Leviathan of the Sea. After his host died, I waited long years for him to return, but when he did I could not recognize him. His memories and everything that defined him was simply… gone. One by one, I watched the same happen to all the others, watched as my brothers and sisters were reduced to mere shadows of their former selves, knowing the same would one day happen to me and there was nothing I could do to stop it. I am the last one left."
Naruto closed his eyes, and found it too difficult to open them again. "I'm sorry."
"Are you waiting for me to beg? Do you wish to see the last and greatest of the Nine plead for mercy? Is that it? Then you may discard that thought right now. I refuse! Even having come this far, I shall not sacrifice my pride. Your kind may have taken everything else from us, but this you will never have."
"Then… there's something you value more than freedom, after all." He's afraid of the dark, same as me…
"There has to be. There must always be at least one thing that you will never sacrifice for any goal – something that is worth defending purely for its own sake. Otherwise, what is the point?"
The fire crackled softly as Naruto rested, and the bars cast long shadows across his face. He could not see the Kyūbi anymore, but he felt the warmth of the fire on his skin, and he could not help but smile.
"Do you find this funny? Does this situation amuse you, boy?"
"No… I'm sorry. It's just…" He slowly opened his eyes, and closed them again. "My dad told me that, one day, people would… understand each other. And if, if even we can come to talk like this… maybe, maybe it's not so hopeless… after all…"
As Naruto slipped into oblivion, the last he heard was a roar of fire as the Kyūbi clawed at the gates with all his might, rattling the iron bars with a deafening sound and screaming his defiance at the darkness. As the flames flickered and waned, the slightest, smallest amount of heat poured through.
"Hurry, child. Your time is running short. Undo the seal on your stomach, and let my restorative chakra flow freely with yours. I may still be able to heal your wounds, but we must act swiftly."
Naruto looked up at the being of living fire, the flames seeming to dance and flicker before his eyes. It looked smaller than he remembered, and weaker – appearing almost frail in spite of its vast power. "Kyūbi? How… how come you're talking to me? I thought Jiraiya had to undo the seal for that to happen."
"All techniques require chakra to function, and this one draws upon your own. As your power fades, so does the seal's – but there's no time to consider. If you lose consciousness again, I do not think I could still restore you. Hurry and suppress the chakra flowing through your stomach, before it is too late."
Naruto's body half moved to do as he was told, finding it strangely easy to control what little chakra remained, but then stopped. "I can't," he said, realizing the truth of it even as he spoke. "I promised… I promised my dad I wouldn't set you free."
A single crimson eye appeared in the centre of the flames, and it stared at him, uncomprehending.
"A promise? You do not understand, child. You are dying, and even if you were willing to accept that, the seal would be undone regardless. Though my chakra might be scattered to the winds, I would still be made anew within a few years' time. You have no reason whatsoever not to call upon my power."
He shook his head. "I can't. Made decision before, was smarter then. No reason to change mind." It was difficult to explain himself properly – his tongue was too thick, his thoughts were too slow, and he was tired; so very, very tired. He wanted nothing more than to go back to sleep, and dream a dream more pleasant than the one he had before. Though even dreaming of nothing at all did not seem so terrible to him, now. It was becoming harder to remember, why that prospect had once made him so afraid.
The fire lashed out like a claw, dragging its molten talons along the bars with a terrible screeching sound that jolted Naruto awake. "I do not know what manner of tales you grew up with, child, but there is no blissful afterlife waiting for you upon your death. Did they fill your head with dreams of eternal sunshine? There is no such thing! No rebirth, no torment, no fire or judgment… only darkness!"
"I know." The fire was starting to go out, and Naruto clutched himself tightly, and shivered. "But I made a promise to my dad."
"Your father is dead." Naruto looked up. "Is that what moves you? Do you imagine yourself to be a hero like him? The Fourth sacrificed everything and died for nothing – they raised him up to be a martyr and trod on his dreams not even ten minutes after he fell. My mind touched upon his own as he sealed me, so I know: Losing his team and winning the war, becoming Hokage and losing his wife… he would have taken it all back if he only could. In the end, all he wanted was for you to be safe."
"…it doesn't matter." Naruto looked away, for the fire had grown brighter, and the heat was stinging his eyes. "That doesn't change anything at all…" He still had a father left, and that one had never asked him to stay safe. "I already know," Jiraiya had told him back then. There had been no doubt in his voice at all.
There was a long moment of silence, and Naruto almost fell asleep again, but then the voice spoke once more, sounding strangely subdued. "I did not tell you the whole truth before. If you die and my chakra is scattered, I will be reborn eventually, yes… but in what form? I once had a family, ever so long ago… one of my brothers was called Ibosu, the Three-tailed Leviathan of the Sea. After his host died, I waited long years for him to return, but when he did I could not recognize him. His memories and everything that defined him was simply… gone. One by one, I watched the same happen to all the others, watched as my brothers and sisters were reduced to mere shadows of their former selves, knowing the same would one day happen to me and there was nothing I could do to stop it. I am the last one left."
Naruto closed his eyes, and found it too difficult to open them again. "I'm sorry."
"Are you waiting for me to beg? Do you wish to see the last and greatest of the Nine plead for mercy? Is that it? Then you may discard that thought right now. I refuse! Even having come this far, I shall not sacrifice my pride. Your kind may have taken everything else from us, but this you will never have."
"Then… there's something you value more than freedom, after all." He's afraid of the dark, same as me…
"There has to be. There must always be at least one thing that you will never sacrifice for any goal – something that is worth defending purely for its own sake. Otherwise, what is the point?"
The fire crackled softly as Naruto rested, and the bars cast long shadows across his face. He could not see the Kyūbi anymore, but he felt the warmth of the fire on his skin, and he could not help but smile.
"Do you find this funny? Does this situation amuse you, boy?"
"No… I'm sorry. It's just…" He slowly opened his eyes, and closed them again. "My dad told me that, one day, people would… understand each other. And if, if even we can come to talk like this… maybe, maybe it's not so hopeless… after all…"
As Naruto slipped into oblivion, the last he heard was a roar of fire as the Kyūbi clawed at the gates with all his might, rattling the iron bars with a deafening sound and screaming his defiance at the darkness. As the flames flickered and waned, the slightest, smallest amount of heat poured through.
-o-
-Minutes earlier-
The shattered remnants of his ice-dome barrier rained down around Haku, as the remainder of the house collapsed in a pile of timber and stone. Even with both hands pressed against the inside of the barrier and focusing chakra into the ice to strengthen it, the explosions had almost been too much – but in the end he had managed. Before him, the summoned metal shell finally stopped ringing with that awful hollow sound, and as it tumbled over his opponent was revealed beneath.
Haku looked at the figure uncertainly: He thought he could see blood, but his vision was still blurred from the flash of light that had blinded him, as well as from the final blast that destroyed his barrier and brought him to his knees.
He coughed. "Are you… the real one?"
Naruto shook his head, and as Haku formed the seals for his next technique, the boy charged with sword in hand. It was not until after Naruto had impaled himself onto a dozen shards of ice that Haku realized his mistake. He was only trying to clear his head…
"Wait," he said. "I didn't mean to…"
The boy coughed up blood, then slumped over, falling onto the ground with frozen shards still jutting out of him. The ice did not melt until the technique ended, and when it did the melt water pooled together with the blood and ash, forming a puddle of foul sludge on the scorched and blackened ground.
"I'm sorry…"
Haku stared at the fallen boy for a while longer, but finally he tore his gaze away and forced himself to focus on the present. He felt around his chest for the needle that had pierced his ribs, pulled it out and let it clatter onto the ground. He then formed another ice mirror – this one large enough for him to step through and disappear in an instant if need be – though it took much of his remaining chakra to do so. He skimmed the surrounding area through each of the miniature portals that he had set up all around the village and the forest, searching for any sign of his master. Zabuza was still nowhere to be found.
In the corner of Haku's vision, the bridge builder was slowly edging his way up the stone stairs and out of the basement – as though a civilian could ever hope to escape a ninja like that. Haku half-considered letting him go in honour of Naruto's death, but he realized that was foolish – If killing Tazuna had been worth killing Naruto over, then surely it would be inconsistent to let the bridge-builder live now?
Right in that moment Haku sensed a presence behind him, and he spun around with his tantō drawn. There was a figure standing in the snow scant meters away from him, though in the starlit darkness he appeared as little more than a silhouette outlined against the fires that still gripped the village outskirts.
Haku hastily stepped backwards, fumbling behind him with his fingers until he felt the frozen edge of his portal. He did not relax until the translucent barrier of ice could be seen in front of him and the scenery in his peripherals transformed to that of a quiet forest glade. Only when he felt certain he was safe did he examine the figure more carefully, his vision still painfully blurry from the flash tags of before.
"Your name is Sasuke, isn't it?" he asked. "Are you here to avenge your fallen comrade?"
The newcomer looked at the prone form of his fallen teammate for a long moment. "No," he said at last. "He's… not my comrade. In truth, I think he hated me: I did something to hurt him a long time ago, and I don't believe he ever forgave me for it. Even now, seeing him lie there, I don't feel a single thing."
Somehow, the way he said it, Haku found it easy to believe. "Then I see no reason for us to fight."
The younger boy exchanged a look with the bridge builder, who grimaced before replying. "It's all right lad, don't worry about me. You don't have to get yourself killed on my account. Just…" He seemed to hesitate. "I know you owe me less than nothing, but…"
Sasuke walked directly towards the open shelter, and Haku tensed in alarm, but all the boy did was to put an arm on the old man's shoulder. "I understand," he said. He turned back to Haku, his expression neutral. "I would like to take the fallen with me. In Konoha as in the Land of Waves, we bury our dead."
Haku could not find it in himself to refuse him. "Do as you wish."
"Thank you." The boy walked up to Naruto's body and kneeled on one leg, yet paused in reaching out to him. "Just one question, before I leave. That man you serve, Zabuza. Does he… matter, to you?"
Haku nodded mutely.
Sasuke completed his movement and carefully picked Naruto up, draping the dead boy over his arms. "You must realize that you don't matter to him," he said. "You are only a tool to him, to be used and discarded. Why would you care for someone like that?"
"Reason has nothing to do with it," said Haku. "For all that we rationalize our actions, it is our emotions that make us what we are, and we can't choose the ones we love."
"I used to believe that." Sasuke slowly stood up, half turning his back to Haku as he rose with his burden. "From a young age, my parents taught me that family is all that matters. Right or wrong, through good times or bad, the clan must stick together. The person who exhibited this quality most of all was my brother, a prodigy who sacrificed everything for the good of the clan and the Village, and I wished to grow up to be just like him." When he turned to face Haku, there was a glimmer in his black eyes. "But I was wrong: It turned out that the person I admired was only an illusion. So you see; it is possible to be mistaken about who you are, and how you feel."
Haku stared back at him, a strange sense of apprehension coming over him as he regarded the boy. Still, with both arms full and his guard lowered, his opponent could hardly be in a worse position to fight him.
"I grew up in a snowy village in the Land of Water," he replied at length. "My mother had a special bloodline, but after years of suffering the horror of civil war, the people of my land had come to hate and fear anyone who carried a bloodline power. So when she discovered that I had inherited the same ability, she sought to hide it from the others." He gestured towards the snow falling all around them, covering the ground in a white sheen in those areas where the fires could not reach. "When my father found out, he and the others lashed out and killed her, and I was forced to flee. I was… alone, forced to fend for myself in a world that despised me. When master Zabuza found me, I was fighting off stray dogs for the privilege of raiding a trash bin for scraps of food. He saved me from that fate. He gave me a reason to exist, and for that I owe him everything. So you see: It is more than just a feeling."
"I see. So you're saying that what matters is not who a person is, but it's their actions that count. Even if you love someone they can be deserving of hate, and although reason is a slave to emotion, feelings are still ultimately to be dictated by facts." Sasuke nodded slowly. "…I suppose I can accept that. Thank you." He half turned again and made to leave, but then he twisted around and his eyes were crimson and spinning inside their sockets-
Sharingan!
Haku staggered in shock as the world vanished around him, and that one moment nearly cost him his life as he flared his chakra and dodged to one side only for the tip of a blade to come scraping against his left shoulder and tearing blood from his arm. He ducked and rolled away from his attacker, and he only then realized that he had never stepped through the portal at all; it had all been an illusion.
He dashed towards the open sheet of ice just scant meters ahead of him, but several kunai attached to wire strings flew from the side and wrapped around the frozen mirror, and he had to shield himself as the blast from the explosive tags attached to the handles showered him with broken ice. Then Sasuke was upon him, his sword raining sparks against Haku's own. A flurry of rapid blows forced Haku back as his mind finally caught up with what was happening.
He's trying to prevent me from forming seals, but…
Even as Haku parried a powerful sword strike with one hand, his other formed the necessary seal: His enemy's eyes widened in surprise as Haku slammed his foot down and deadly water needles rose from the sludge to strike his target from every direction. His foe leaped upwards, a burst of chakra from his feet carrying him to safety, but Haku had gained the breathing space he needed: Another hand sign sent more water needles chasing after Sasuke, while his right hand threw a volley of regular needles as well, and though his enemy parried nearly all of them his body was still pierced in several places.
You missed your chance to kill me; from this point onward, all you can do is run.
But even as he thought that, his foe planted his sword into the ground and flicked through a series of hand seals at an incredible rate. All around them the fires of the burning buildings rose up into the air and gathered into a firestorm that lit up the sky, bearing down on Haku and roaring with the smouldering fury of a fully-powered Fire Dragon technique.
Impossible!
With no time to think, Haku dashed back towards the only area that offered shelter, which was the same storm cellar that the bridge builder had gone back to hiding in. Haku ducked and rolled down the stairs, barely managing to close the entrance behind him with a wall of ice as the dragon's roar reached its fiery crescendo.
There's no reason to fight – I'll just kill my target and teleport out of here.
The bridge builder had just enough time to look surprised before Haku slashed his throat open, and the old man fell upon the ground gurgling blood, the sound of his dying matched by the sizzling of an explosive tag placed on his back right where Sasuke had put an arm on his shoulder.
-What-
The explosion threw Haku backwards, pain lancing through his wounded shoulder as his back collided with a wall. Through his blurred vision he saw chunks of blood and rock and shards of ice rain down all around him, and he realized he must have raised another wall of ice in time to save his life. For just one moment there was a ray of light pouring down from the shattered entrance, but then a shadow stepped in its path, and pure darkness roiled into the room-
(Haku's senses were overwhelmed by pure killing intent, a sense of pain and hate and so much more)
-and at the same time a wave of scorching heat appeared from out of nowhere, and it was all Haku could do to stamp his foot and raise yet another wall of ice to block the attack. The barrier of frozen water appeared just in time to block the vengeful fire, the tongues of flame licking thirstily at its melting surface before receding once more. In the pitch-black silence that followed, Haku could hear droplets of water fall upon the stone floor in tandem with the frantic beating of his own heart.
Twin orbs of red light appeared in the dark, turning and twisting; crimson eyes each with one pupil in the centre but with yet more in the shape of commas all around them. As Haku frantically lowered his gaze, he realized that the boy must be an Uchiha, one that had somehow survived his clan's massacre, but there was no time to consider the issue. Before him the darkness parted ever so slightly, just enough to show him a sword lit up with white-hot fire.
"Why?" he choked out. "I would have let you leave. There is no longer any reason for us to fight!" Even as he spoke, he shaped the hand seals for the ice-mirror technique behind his back, yet the portals refused to form – as though the oppressive darkness pushing down on him prevented his chakra from spreading. The burning blade began to carve its way into the ice with relentless strokes, and it was all he could do to pour his chakra into the wall to keep it standing.
"Because… it's possible to be mistaken, about how you feel," the voice replied in fits and starts, and Haku realized with a start that his enemy was crying as he fought. He did not understand why that knowledge frightened him so much. Right then the blazing-hot sword stabbed through the ice and scorched Haku's clothes and flesh – the agonizing heat stopping just barely short of his heart – only for it to be pulled back out again for another thrust. He collapsed to his knees, the smell of his own burning flesh filling his nostrils, but he could only watch as the searing blade came at him once more.
No. I can't die here… master Zabuza still has use of me!
With a desperate effort Haku drew on his dwindling reserves of chakra, forming seals and stamping his foot once more. A dozen spears of ice burst from the ground and stabbed at the darkness, each of them splitting and bifurcating into ever more frozen spikes, filling the entire space with the same technique that had destroyed Hatake Kakashi's shadow clone. He could feel the walls of the cellar crumble and a section of the roof collapse under the strain, until finally the oppressive darkness retreated. At the top of the stairs, the silhouette of Uchiha Sasuke stood amidst a forest of frozen stalagmites where the entrance to the shelter had been, his slight form outlined against the waning orange light.
"I will take those eyes from you, Uchiha Sasuke," Haku breathed as he drew himself up to fight once more. "Even if master Zabuza could not kill the White Fang, we both shall still have the Sharingan. We will defeat the Eternal Tyrant if we must kill every last one of his followers by ourselves!"
In response, the darkness formed and gathered around his enemy once more. "No, you won't," said the voice of Uchiha Sasuke, sounding strangely warped and distorted. "You're going to die." The blackness around him twisted then, stretching and forming into limbs and tendrils of pure darkness that coiled around him, his body reshaping itself and turning into something wrong.
More genjutsu? But I didn't look into his eyes!
Haku flared his chakra, but though the darkness receded it never vanished entirely, and the moment he let up it came back stronger than before. The world shifted painfully, space itself seeming to bend around his enemy as the creature that was once Uchiha Sasuke sprouted yet more black tentacles. All around him the darkness spread like a plague, taking on countless monstrous shapes and forms, every one of them covered with baleful crimson eyes that looked down on Haku. "Mistaken", said the dread voice, which no longer resembled anything human, and it was echoed by countless thin whispers coming from all around him. "You are so… mistaken."
No! Stay away!
Haku scrambled backwards, but his back was against the wall. Blood pounded in his head as his fingers blindly struggled to form the hand seals for the ice-mirror technique, but at last his chakra took hold. A portal opened up beneath his feet, and as he began to fall the black tentacles reached for him. I'm not falling fast enough, not fast enough, they're going to get me-
With a sudden clap Haku struck the forest floor, and he rushed to close the ice portal shut behind him. Made it I made it I made it I made it…
A brief panic rose up in Haku when the world turned dark once more, but it was only unconsciousness that took hold of him.
-o-
Sakura leaped through a window of the building she had used as a vantage point, and hit the ground at a run. The original plan had been for Sasuke to body-flicker into sword-range of Haku while using that strange darkness technique of his, but that plan had been discarded when they saw Naruto fall with Haku's portal already open. After that Sasuke had improvised, and it had taken several carefully timed genjutsu techniques on Sakura's part to rescue the situation. Even so it had almost gone wrong, and Haku had escaped regardless…
She nearly tripped over Naruto's body as she ran. He still lay in front of the shelter where they had fought, mercifully unmarred by the explosions that had ravaged the nearby area. Even so his body had been pierced in a dozen places, ghastly wounds from which so much blood had spread that his clothes were brown with it. She knelt down next to him, and her own heart skipped a beat as she felt for a pulse.
A familiar voice came to her, sounding strangely small and distant. "Is he..?"
She looked up and saw Sasuke standing in front of her. The darkness and the fire had all faded, but even so he was little more than a shadow, covered in soot and standing against the backdrop of waning orange light.
"He's still alive," she whispered, her voice sounding strange to her own ears. There was the faintest possible pulse running between her fingers where she touched Naruto's wrist. "It'd take a miracle, but… I just might be able to save him, if I get started right away."
"That's good," Sasuke said weakly. "I'm glad." Then he collapsed onto the ground in a heap.
"Sasuke-kun!" She scrambled over to his side, running faster than she knew she could, and as she crouched over him she witnessed for the first time the full extent of his injuries. Several iron needles punctured his chest and stomach, but that was the least of it. All along his body he was covered in piercing wounds from where spears of ice had been cruelly driven into him from every angle. Blood seeped out of him from every point. How did he manage to even stand like this, let alone fight?
"Naruto…" Sasuke whispered, blood trickling from his mouth. "He's… innocent. You must… save him."
She half-turned to look at the prone form of her other childhood friend, and for a moment she was torn with indecision. "The time may come when you have to choose between the lives of your friends," her teacher had told her once, and it was only then that she realized what those two bells truly represented. It had all seemed so distant and abstract, back then, but now the choice was painfully real.
Do I save the person who's been my friend since childhood, or my crush?
And then, without any conscious decision ever having been made, she began healing the body of the person who was most precious to her. A warm green glow emanated from her hands and passed over his chest, the light slowly closing his wounds as they went.
"…why?" Sasuke's dark eyes were filled with incomprehension.
"Don't ask me," she whispered, her tears falling onto his body as she worked. "It's not like I understand it, either."
-o-
As Hatake Kakashi rode through the village on his wolfhound, his apprehension grew with each passing second. On either side of him, the fires that had gripped the village were finally going out. The blackened skeletons that had once been houses were all that still stood upright, except where those too had collapsed in upon themselves, turning into ever more ash and dust upon the ground until the streets were thick with it.
Am I too late? Obito, Rin, please don't let me be too late again!
At last he arrived before the only part of the village that still stood tall, close to the massacre where the villagers had made their stand. There, at last, he found what remained of his genin team. He dispelled his summoned mount and walked up to his student.
"Kakashi-sensei!" Sakura ran up to him, frantically sobbing, and grabbed him tightly. "You've got to help! I stabilized Sasuke, but I couldn't help Naruto in time, and now he's, he's…" She pulled him towards the others as she gave a jumbled account of what had happened, sobbing and heaving all the while.
Sasuke was lying unconscious on the ground, looking terribly injured yet breathing faintly, but Naruto…
On the ground, covered in a layer of soot and clotted blood, the body of Uzumaki Naruto was spread out onto a meter-long sealing scroll, his body covered in wounds from which blood had long since stopped flowing.
"I tried to seal him so we could bring him back to the hospital in Konoha," Sakura explained, "but I couldn't figure out how! I never learned to use scrolls, and his body still has chakra and I don't know how to drain it so I can't seal him for preservation, and now he's gone and… it's is all my fault!"
"Sakura?" He made his voice as reassuring as he could manage, given the circumstances. "Don't worry, you did a great job. Now let me just take a quick look at him, okay?" He gently disentangled himself from her and strode towards Naruto's still form, where a quick analysis confirmed that the boy's heart was no longer beating. By his count, Minato's son had breathed his last some three minutes ago.
"I'm so sorry. I never meant to let him die, only Sasuke was dying too, and I had to make a choice, and-"
"Sakura, why don't you go take care of Sasuke while I handle this?" Without waiting for a reply, Kakashi lifted Naruto's jacket with one hand and exposed the boy's bare midriff underneath. He sent chakra to each of his five fingers in preparation for the five-element unlocking seal, and drove his hand into Naruto's stomach before sharply turning it counter-clockwise.
At first nothing seemed to happen. Then, the sprawling lines of the Dead Daemon Seal manifested on the boy's stomach, and Naruto burst into life: The boy twisted, flailed and moaned in agony as daemonic red chakra spread to cover his entire body. Where the baleful chakra touched him, his skin burned and bubbled with a terrible stench, yet at the same time the flesh around the holes in his body reknit itself. As Kakashi watched, the wounds vanished into nothingness, until only a hale and healthy lad remained. He gave the seal a clockwise turn to close it, and Naruto gasped one more time before falling into blissful unconsciousness, drawing short and ragged breaths as he slept.
"See, he's perfectly all right," Kakashi said, hiding his burned and smoking fingers behind his back. He could not help but smile a little at Sakura's horrified expression. "It's just a matter of carefully applied medical-ninjutsu. It's the same principle as healing that trout, really: As long as the patient is none too bright to begin with, no real lasting damage is done."
"But, that… he…" Sakura's mouth was slowly opening and closing, much like the fish Kakashi had been referring to. "But he was, he – that's not possible."
"Now, now," he chided, smiling. "What did I say about doubting your brilliant and handsome sensei?"
After making Sakura promise not to tell anybody about his 'amazing secret medical technique', Kakashi proceeded to examine Sasuke, and attended to his injuries as well. He watched over his charges until the sun rose on the horizon and basked the area in a new orange light. When he was done he surveyed his handiwork with satisfaction. The mission had failed, the client was dead and the village had burned, but Team Seven had survived without any casualties. In the end, that was all that truly mattered.
All things considered, everything had turned out quite all right.
redzonejoe
Vaguely Pastafarian
- Location
- Canada
Oh Kakashi, you rascal.
And Sasuke placing that explosive seal on the bridge builder was... Interesting.
And Sasuke placing that explosive seal on the bridge builder was... Interesting.
- Location
- Netherlands
Well, if you're fighting a teleporter, the logical thing to do is to find something you know they want and trap it. Sasuke's not a sociopath, really, he's just being practical!
Come to think of it, Kakashi did the same thing with Tazuna's Bridge, and Naruto blew up a house while he was still inside it. Clearly, Sakura is the strange one here. Silly Sakura, don't you know that blowing up the very thing that you're trying to protect is the best way to solve your problems?
Heheh. I wanted to show that Kakashi's mindset is... a little bit different from what Naruto's would be. That's true for pretty much everyone in this world, actually.
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RazorSmile
ROB Used To Be A Knife Missile
Badass ninja shit from Sasuke right here. Planting an explosive tag on Tazuna was ... inspired. Much practical, such shinobi, wow.
SakSak
Unbound
- Location
- The Cold Wastes of the North
I personally think it really rams home the point that no matter what their reputations, Konoha is still a ninja village just like Cloud or Water, with all that implies.
They just have a better PR.
I mean, think seriously what this mission is going to look like once Konoha has gone over the details: A group of genin practically straight from the academy, ambushed on a routine mission by bloodthirsty missing nin (Including the Demon of the Mist! ), fought to the end receiving lethal injuries, while going above and beyond the call of duty on a mission upgraded in rank, killing two dangerous missing nin while at it, when they could have just retreated.
Too bad the enemy's undisciplined use of large-scale techniques, including a rare suicide technique by a hidden bloodline user, was so destructive that after the battles the bridge was gone and the client dead despite Konoha's best attempts.
Much try, so sad, Konoha tried their best.
And hey, didja know there's now a 10% discount on C and B-rank missions - do you want responsible and friendly Konoha nin, or some of those sneaky bastards from Kumo, eh?
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Raviollius
...but what happens afterwards?
- Location
- .
What is Sasuke's darkness technique?