Subject: [FFML] [Naruto][Fanfic] Genin, Chapter 14
From: "Zac Wendler" <flashfyre5@msn.com>
Date: 6/28/2004, 7:19 PM
To: "FFML" <ffml@anifics.com>

Disclaimer:  Naruto does not belong to me.  Nor do Sakura, Sasuke, or any of the other characters mentioned or described herein.  I haven't even bothered to get permission from their great and august creator.  Feel free to sue me if you wish, but you won't get anywhere.  Not only do I have no money, but as a college student, I have LESS than no money.  That's right.  A negative net worth.  Have fun, Mr(s). Lawyer!  Also, I will be using adult language in this fic.  If you're not supposed to read such language, GO BACK TO SCHOOL!

 

 

Genin

By: Flashfyre5

Chapter Fourteen: Reaper in Red

 

            Naruto ducked, allowing Masako's staff to whiz by over his head.  He stepped to the side, a kunai in hand, but his barely-begin counterattack was cut short when Masako deftly jabbed the butt end of her bamboo staff at him.  Naruto had to step back to keep it from crushing his nose.  Again, he tried to duck and come in low for a strike against Masako, but the staff was there again, missing him by centimeters.  In the midst of the whirling dance of brown bamboo, Masako smiled serenely and handled the weapon with a level of utter precision that Naruto had never seen before.

            Naruto took a step backwards, avoiding the staff again.  Masako took a step forward, denying him the ability to retake the ground he'd lost.  Again, Masako attacked, and Naruto fell back.  He cursed under his breath, finding that she'd taken control of the fight.  He was being driven, step by step, towards a particularly large boulder about ten meters away.  Every time Naruto attempted to move the procession left or right, Masako's damnable staff was there, striking him solidly and forcing the orange-clad teenager back on to the course that she had chosen.

            "Disappointing," Masako said flatly after about a half minute of combat.  Naruto had already lost a good five meters of ground.  He growled, and rushed forward, his kunai extended.  Masako's eyebrows rose slightly in surprise, but she caught his hand between her left arm and the staff.  She twisted viciously, and Naruto launched himself into a horizontal spin to keep her from breaking his arm.  Nevertheless, Naruto lost his kunai, and tumbled to the ground.

            As quickly as he could, Naruto was on his feet again, but Masako was already there.  Again she herded him, but towards a different boulder.  It took a moment for Naruto to draw a spare kunai, and a trio of red welts marked his carelessness.  This time, he couldn't mount any kind of effective counterattack before she had him backed against the rock.  Out of maneuvering room, Naruto was forced to endure the repeated punishment of the blue-haired woman's staff.  Slowly, Naruto's eyes grew red, and his pupils slitted.

            "Get. away from me!" Naruto roared suddenly, grabbing a little ledge of rock above his head.  He pulled his body up a bit and bunched his legs, then twisted and kicked out with both of them.  Masako, surprised, took the blow and skittered away, then came to a stop in a defensive stance.  Naruto pulled himself up and stood on top of the boulder that he'd been pressured against.  His eyes faintly glowed with hate as he stared at Masako.  Hers watched him with a level of guarded respect.

            Slowly, Naruto's jacket parted.  It had been cut cleanly, from his left shoulder do the right side of his stomach.  Beneath it, his black undershirt had also been sliced, and a long red line of blood traced the slice down his torso.  Masako watched Naruto, showing no sign of satisfaction at the strike that she'd landed.  With a grimace of pain, Naruto tore off his jacket and allowed the halves of his favorite item of clothing to fall to the ground.

            "Nice try.  Didn't even see you," Naruto complimented Masako.  As he did, the blond-haired boy slid his hitai-ite from its place around his neck and re-cinched it around his forehead.  Then, with deliberate slowness, he reached down and slid a finger along where Masako had cut him.  The blood smeared away, revealing whole, healthy skin.  Beneath his undershirt and the blood on his chest, the wound had already healed.  "But it's gonna take more than that to bring me down," Naruto grinned, falling back into a fighting posture.

            "I expected no less," Masako replied coolly, adjusting her stance.  Suddenly, her eyes flashed red, a shade that Naruto was all too familiar with.

            "Sharingan," he noted aloud, and Masako nodded.

            "You're drawing on his power," she noted in return, a clear emphasis on the word 'his.'  Naruto nodded slowly, and Masako continued.  "Kyuubi has been a mixed blessing for you, hasn't he?  Despite the fact that he's a demon, his strength has saved your life quite a few times."

            "Shut up," Naruto growled, his face darkening.  "You have no idea what it's like to live with this thing," he elaborated, spitting out the last word.  "I'd do anything to get rid of it."

            "I'm quite certain," Masako smiled condescendingly.  Naruto's eyes flashed open, and he threw himself towards the Akatsuki woman.  The blond-haired shinobi descended upon Masako in a fury of teeth and claws, his eyes wild.  Masako met him with her staff, and twisted him away.  Naruto spun and landed lightly, then launched himself towards the blue-haired woman.

            Without missing a beat, Masako drew the end section of her bamboo staff out from the rest.  With it came a long, thin blade.  Using the sheath as a distraction, Masako dodged away from Naruto's strike, then stabbed at his left kidney.  Naruto roared in pain and skittered away.  The wound, which would have been fatal on anyone else, sealed itself shut quickly.

            Meters away, Sakura tried to think of something, anything, that she might be able to do.  The two were moving around almost faster than her eyes could follow, even though she'd activated her Sharingan almost as soon as the fight had begun.  Now, as she watched red chakra pour off of Naruto like water, she began to feel a sinking feeling in her gut.  Somewhere in her mind, an obscure fact that she'd read in an ancient scroll clicked.

            To demons, death is mostly an inconvenience, the text had read, as she'd sat in the archives late one night.  Anxiety over a test the next day had brought the young girl to this section of the archives, which had lain largely undisturbed for a little over a decade.  Being creatures of chakra incarnate, a demon simply must summon the will to re-materialize his form.  Thus, the only truly effective way to stop a demon is to seal it.  Often, this can be achieved with any item, though some exceptional cases require relics of faith.  In a few cases, and these involve only the most potent of the demon hierarchies, there is only one vessel that can properly contain a demon for an extended period of time.

            "A human infant," Sakura breathed, her jaw trembling.  Slowly, she fell to her knees as her mind unwillingly traced the years back to the most catastrophic event in the village's recent history.  "And the Fourth Hokage was able to end the creature's reign of terror by sacrificing his own life.  At midnight, on October the tenth, the Nine Tails Demon Fox was defeated forever, allowing the people of his village to enter a new day with hope.  This is why we now celebrate Thanksgiving on the eleventh," Sakura recited, remembering the childhood lesson that she had heard dozens of times in her youth.

            Naruto shook his head a bit as he circled Masako.  Her blade was extended towards him, and the four-foot reach advantage it gave her was considerable, even in his state.  Bloodlust pounded in his head, deafening the blue-eyed chuunin from anything but his opponent.  The ragged slashes of fur on his cheeks showed that Naruto was drawing on Kyuubi as much as he dared; the demon's chakra thundered through his veins like fire, and Naruto could almost hear Kyuubi's chuckle of enjoyment at the battle.

            Without warning, Masako attacked him, and Naruto was forced to dodge the surprisingly quick long sword that Masako was fighting with.  Even with all the speed that Kyuubi could grant him, Masako struck him again and again.  As she had been before, Masako was utterly precise and just a bit quicker than he was.

            /Do it,/ Kyuubi whispered in his mind, the seductive tone odd for such a thunderously powerful demon.  /The seal prevents me from giving you any more power.  Tap the gates from your side, and we'll end this wench together./  Naruto shook his head, and Masako took the opportunity to slice him deeply across his right arm.  The wound was slow to heal, muscle taking longer to knit than fat and skin.

            /This is why I hate using the damn fox,/ Naruto thought to himself, concentrating again on dodging Masako's attacks.  /Every time I do this, he's there, trying to get me to do more./  Only once before, when he'd fought Gaara, had he demanded more from the demon.  He had opened the floodgates, accepted the second rush of chakra.  It had terrified him profoundly, and Naruto had suspected that, had he not used the chakra immediately, that the demon would have taken up residence in his mind.  He'd never spoken of it to anyone, even Jiraiya.

            "Still disappointing," Masako said at length, carefully controlling what she would allow Naruto to do.  Any hand seal or movement to either side was met with a recriminating stab, disrupting whatever the demon-enhanced chuunin had in mind.  "But mildly entertaining, at least.  I suppose that it's true what they say about you, despite Kyuubi's best efforts."

            "What?" Naruto growled, freezing.  Masako was so surprised by his sudden lack of movement that she failed to take advantage of it.

            "Dropout.  Dunce.  'Dead last,' even," Masako explained, shrugging her shoulders a bit.  Naruto's face screwed up in an expression of rage like none she'd ever seen before.

            "That's it," Naruto growled, gritting his teeth.  Engulfed in a rage fed quietly by the demon inside of him, and pulled.  Deep inside the blond-haired boy, something gave, and chakra poured outward in great waves.  "Now there's no way I'm gonna go easy on you!"

            Masako took a few steps backwards as the dark red corona that surrounded Naruto suddenly exploded in size and intensity.  Instead of flowing around him, as would normal chakra, this chakra burned around him, like fire.  Pure rage settled in the boy's eyes as he regarded Masako.

            With a burst of speed and torn earth, Naruto broke to his right.  To his amazement, Masako was there as well, keeping pace.  Her emotionless mask was gone, replaced by an expression of intense interest.  Naruto struck at her, but the woman managed to dodge the blow.  She twisted and struck at him lightly, but Naruto barely had time to wince in pain as the blade slipped in and out of his ribs.  Kyuubi's chakra wrapped the wound and healed it almost instantaneously.  The two traded glancing blows for a few moments, then broke away from one another.

            Naruto could feel Kyuubi's mind pressing in on his.  With his chakra enshrouding the body that was supposed to keep it sealed, Kyuubi pressed inwards, trying to impose himself on the boy that bore him.

            /Go to hell, fox shit,/ Naruto growled, forming hand seals rapidly.

            "Honshitsu Bunshin no Jutsu!" Naruto shouted, and nine clones of himself appeared in a circle surrounding Masako.  Each bore his expression of concentrated rage, and each quickly moved to form a set of new hand seals.  Masako, to her credit, attempted to dispel the genjutsu that she thought was tricking her Sharingan eyes.

            "This is my best move, damn it!  You're going down!" the ten enraged chuunin shouted as one, each moving their hands to form a familiar and well-known seal.  "Kage Bunshin revised: Hitori Sangun no Jutsu!"  As they finished, the world around Naruto, Masako, and Sakura was obscured with a massive explosion of ninja smoke.  Slowly, it billowed away.

            Sakura brought her hands to her mouth as she looked around in amazement.  She could barely move without bumping into a Naruto clone.  Masako's reaction was similar, in one sense.

            "My word," she murmured aloud, looking around an ocean comprised entirely of identical faces.  Thousands upon thousands of completely identical shadow clones covered the shattered lands in bodies, each with Naruto's wild red eyes and jagged whisker-marks.  They stretched as far as the eye could see in every direction, standing or hanging off of every boulder in the considerably cluttered plains.

            "Ten thousand clones apiece," Naruto alone shouted, the pressure in his mind seceding a bit.  "My absolute max.  Think you can land that many deathblows?"

            "We sure as hell don't!" a hundred thousand voices rang in unison.  Unnoticed by Masako, a single clone, near Sakura, grabbed her by the shoulder.

            "Run," it told her, a worried expression on the clone's face.  "If this doesn't work, I've got nothing left."  Sakura's eyes widened; she'd never heard Naruto speak like that before.  A corridor opened up in the ocean of bodies behind her.  With a final glance, the pink-haired girl turned and ran.

 

*   *   *   *   *   *

 

            With a growl of excitement, Sasuke charged toward his brother.  Malice and fury were etched across his face, turning the once-handsome boy into a vision of horror.  Sasuke's expression had darkened as the fight with his brother had progressed; he had yet to successfully land an attack on his brother.  Itachi was living up to his reputation as the brilliant prodigy of the Uchiha clan; whenever Sasuke attacked, he was either simply not there or ready with a devastating counterattack.  As of yet, despite the expression if of slightly-insane rapture on the elder Uchiha's face, he had yet to offer a direct attack of his own.

            Sasuke ducked, as if to come up with the kunai he gripped in either hand, but then quickly faded to the right and launched himself into the air.  As he rotated, Sasuke extended his right leg, hoping to catch his brother on the side.

            It was not to be.  Just as Sasuke's leg was about to connect, Itachi grabbed his ankle.  Despite the momentum of his leap and spin, Sasuke was simply stopped cold by his brother's grab.  Desperately, Sasuke twisted, bringing his other leg into striking position.  As a defense, Itachi simply ducked his head down, and the leg soared harmlessly through the space where his head had been.  Sasuke realized too late the position that this would leave him in, and tried desperately to stop his rotation.  However, he was too far into the kick, and Itachi's grip was absolute iron.  With an audible 'pop,' and a scream of pain, Sasuke's right hip was dislocated.

            "That was reckless and stupid," Itachi snorted in disgust.  He hauled on Sasuke's leg, eliciting another scream of pain from his brother, then threw the young man across the market to crash into a storefront.  Some of the wood broke, but most held, and Sasuke had a moment to catch his breath as he sat with his back against the storefront.

            "I'm disappointed.  You've done nothing of note in the past four years, it seems," Itachi said with a sigh, and the rabid grin slowly faded from his face.  Sasuke, with a gasp of pain, wrenched his injured leg back into its proper alignment, then screamed in agony.  From personal experience, he knew that almost nothing hurt more than a dislocated limb, including broken bones.  The pain from a broken bone, at least, was not intensified so greatly by every movement as was a broken limb.

            "Shut up and die," Sasuke growled, pulling himself to his feet.  After a moment, Sasuke found a measure of balance, using only his left leg to support himself.

            "No," Itachi stated flatly, a mask of indifference now firmly in place.  A glance towards Sasuke's injured leg confirmed his assessment.  "It's time for you to die, I suppose," the elder Uchiha decided with the barest hint of a sigh.

            "Not yet," Sasuke said, glaring.  With a grimace of pain, he settled his weight on both legs, then fished a small, cream colored scroll from his pocket.  "I've still got one move left."

            "Shijuukaigan?" Itachi wondered aloud, his eyebrows rising.  Sasuke ignored him, instead performing the complicated hand seals necessary to empower the technique.  "It's no wonder you're so reckless, then."

            "Oh?" Sasuke looked up, hands still flowing together smoothly.

            "Yes.  It took me years to control the madness after I first used it," Itachi elaborated, his tone still flat.  "Utter emotionlessness is the only way to stop the killing urges.  Masako-sama helped greatly.  After all, she provided me with the model scroll."

            "What?" Sasuke's eyes widened, and he fumbled the final hand seal.  His scroll tumbled to the ground, unnoticed.

            "Did you really think that our family would keep such a dangerous technique?" Itachi asked, a note of honest curiosity in his voice.  "Our clan eradicated every record of that technique generations ago.  Only one scroll survived, locked away in the Hyuuga family archives, which Masako-sama retrieved on her own initiative."  Sasuke simply stared at his brother in shock, several bone-chilling realizations coming swiftly to mind.  "Her original intention was to use the technique herself, but discovered after a little research that she would never be capable of performing the maneuver."

            "Thus, she came to the Leaf, and waited for a few years," Itachi continued, his flat, unemotional voice a chilling contrast to what he was saying.  "When I came of age, she transformed herself and entered the ninja academy with me.  In order to pass the genin tests early, as our father desired, she provided me with the Shijuukaigan scroll.  I used the technique again to pass the chuunin examination.  I didn't know the truth about her until I was your age."

            "You left me alive." Sasuke trailed off, his jaw shivering slightly.

            "Because Masako-sama demanded it," Itachi finished.  "She knew that if she left the scroll in your possession, fresh with the memory of my betrayal, you would eventually use it of your own volition."

            "And our parents?" Sasuke asked, the red clouds of his insanity receding enough for a sliver of himself to slip through.

            "Again, because Masako-sama demanded it," Itachi answered.  "She knew that she'd never be able to take me if my parents still lived.  She also knew that they would discover the secret behind my genius eventually.  Finally, if the two of them were dead, she could have you as well."

            "And you feel no guilt whatsoever?" Sasuke half-asked, already knowing the answer that Itachi would give.  His remorseless, emotionless face told all, it seemed.  However, as the words left Sasuke's lips, Itachi's face seemed to sag, just a bit.

            "You cannot imagine the guilt I feel," Itachi said with a slow, deliberate shake of his head.  "I dance like a puppet for Masako-sama's whims," he continued, looking up again.  When their eyes met, to Sasuke's utter shock, the slowly whirling red depths of Itachi's irises slowed something that Sasuke had never seen.

            Sadness.

            "I watched helplessly as I slaughtered them, Sasuke.  I died that day, along with our parents," Itachi said, his emotionless tone at odds with the sadness etched in deep lines across his face.  Slowly, he closed his eyes and drew in a deep breath.  When he let it out and reopened his eyes, the sadness was gone, and his mask was fully in place once more.

            "My only hope was that, despite Masako-sama's designs, you would grow strong enough to kill me.  I. cannot harm myself, or allow harm to come to myself," Itachi explained helplessly.  "Masako-sama has forbidden it."

            Sasuke's head sagged on his shoulders as the foundation that he had built his whole world on crumbled.  The violent haze of madness still swirled in his mind, but could find no hold to latch on to, as the psyche that it had come into being in shattered around it.

            "And now?" Sasuke asked, doing his best not to sniffle.  When he looked up, he looked at his brother with the unsure, worried eyes that he'd had when he was seven.  Itachi's jaw tightened visibly when he saw this, but he made no other outward move.

            "She told me to kill you," Itachi answered, speaking of Masako for the first time without using her full name.

            "Well," Sasuke said slowly, thinking.  Then, with a pained half-chuckle, he reached down and grasped the scroll.  "The end of the Uchiha clan.  Let's make it something to remember."  Itachi stared at him for a minute before he replied.

            "Yes," he said, with a wan half-smile.  The killing urge welled up inside of him at the display of emotion, but Itachi fought it back down with practiced ease.  "Let's."  Sasuke's hands flew through the seals that he needed to make, an eager grin plastered across his face.

            "Shijuukaigan!" he shouted, completing the technique.  The world around him flew again into vibrant shades of color, representative of the unique chakra that each thing, living or unliving, bore.  Unlike before, however, the red mist of insanity did not rear up to again consume his mind.  Instead, Sasuke's mind closed in on itself, focusing on Itachi.  Stray thoughts vanished like morning dew, and there was only logic.

            /I can't beat him,/ Sasuke concluded after a few moments of thought.  He could feel chakra coursing through his veins, and his muscles flexed with newfound ease.  His brother, however, was still better.  Sasuke glanced down at his leg.  /And I can't run./  Again, he looked up.  His mind closed in on itself, tightening up its operations like a powerful computer booting up for the first time.  /My best odds lie in fighting him, and to hope for assistance./

            Sasuke bunched his good leg underneath him, and observed the way his brother's body tensed in response to his movement.  He used that to guess at his best course of attack, and was about to execute it when an ethereal shockwave washed over him, the signature of a massive surge of chakra.  Sasuke froze, and looked to his right.  His brother, having felt the wave as well, looked in the same direction.

            Two towering columns of red chakra, bending and fusing into one as they reached towards the ground, erupted from the shattered lands.  A hundred feet in the air, they twisted and fused together again, spreading out from there to form a much larger shape.  Slowly, an angular front end formed, and another pair of columns stretched down to meet the ground.  Itachi gasped in amazement, and Sasuke's jaw dropped a moment later as the shape took on its final form.

            Springing fully-formed out of history books and legends, Kyuubi towered over Konoha again, his tails swirling and his head extended in a cackle of glee.

 

*   *   *   *   *   *

 

            "My word," Masako repeated, looking around.  An expression of excitement had settled across her face, and a genuine smile of enjoyment rested on her lips.  "How very interesting.  I've never seen anything like this."

            "Good," a few dozen clones nearest to Masako grinned.  Some of them drew kunai, while others extended hands to ready the lethal Rasengan.  Masako let out a half chuckle at the response and fell into a defensive position, her blade at the ready.  Her stance spoke of bemused readiness.  The assembled Naruto clones decided simultaneously that they would have no more of her condescension.

            "Get her!" about a hundred of them cried, and a tide of bodies flowed towards Masako.  Many clones leapt into the air, Rasengan or kunai at the ready, to make room for more of their brethren below.  Masako flexed her arm once, then was buried underneath the wave of attacks.

            About a hundred meters away, Sakura collapsed to the ground with a scream completely inaudible above the massed war cry from Naruto's army of clones.  She clutched her head as her Sharingan grew to its final level, a third Sharingan pupil entering orbit around the primary pupil in each eye.  The pain subsided more quickly than it had before, and Sakura managed to rise in time to see Masako's counterattack.

            "Karitori Enjin!" Masako shouted, and the mass of bodies pressing in around her vanished in an explosion of ninja smoke.  Sakura, with her Sharingan enhanced eyes, saw Masako spinning and twisting as she worked her blade in every conceivable direction.  She used chakra to fuel her spin, in much the same way that Neji used chakra to spin his Kaiten.  This spin, however, was offensive.  When the smoke cleared, Masako stood with a single hand upraised.  Her sword was spinning through the air above her, and there were no clones within a hundred feet of her.

            "Nice try," Masako complimented him honestly, her hand coming down.  It met her other hand quickly, and the two formed a little circle.  "Maru no Suimin no Jutsu," she said simply, pouring chakra into the powerful technique.  All around her, the tide of bodies slowed, then stopped.  One by one, each and every shadow clone within fifty meters of the woman fell to the ground, then exploded into nothingness.  A few moments later, those farther out simply vanished.  Slowly, the smoke cleared, and Masako caught her weapon as it fell.

            "But," Masako continued, looking around.  "If the user of Kage Bunshin falls asleep, he can't maintain the mental control necessary to keep his clones in place.  The same is true of all variants thereof."  As the smoke cleared more fully, only Naruto and Masako remained inside the glowing circle of sleep that Masako had created.  The blond-haired boy was facedown in the dirt, and appeared to be twitching in his sleep.  Masako's Sharingan eyes detected red chakra still swirling uncertainly around the boy's slumbering form, as if it didn't quite comprehend the situation that it was in.  As Naruto twitched, a word or two occasionally escaped his lips.

            "Now adorable," Masako said dryly.  "He talks in his sleep."  She now stood over the prone boy and regarded him dispassionately.  "You know, it really is a shame that the Kyuubi couldn't be moved to a different body.  I really did want his power," she said, more to herself than to Naruto.  "On the other hand, you did save me quite a bit of trouble and embarrassment by eluding Itachi.  It took me years to discover exactly why infants had to be used in sealing ceremonies."  Slowly, Masako rose her blade.

            "Now, though, you die," she said simply, and brought the weapon down with enough force to sever Naruto's head from his body.  The blade struck, and blade spattered onto Masako's cheek.

            "What?" she exclaimed in shock.  Naruto's arm had interposed itself between her blade and his neck.  The weapon had struck his arm bone and lodged there.  Slowly, deliberately, Naruto looked up at his opponent.

            "Delightful," the blond-haired boy growled viciously.  The red of his irises had spread out to encompass the entirety of his eyes.  His slitted pupils had elongated, and now nearly touched the wide-open eyelids that surrounded them.  Every tooth in the boy's mouth was razor sharp, and the whisker marks covered most of his cheeks.  "Pain is almost as delightful a sensation as pleasure when you've felt nothing for two decades," Naruto continued, pushing himself up with his free arm.  Masako's eyes widened in fear as chakra began to pour off of the boy in waves.  She tugged again at her weapon, but Naruto met her efforts with a snarl and twisted his arm.  The blade snapped cleanly, leaving Masako with only a hilt.  She dropped it and stepped back.

            "How can you be awake?" she wondered aloud.  "Nobody can resist my Maru no Suimin."

            "He didn't," Naruto growled, a toothy grin sliding across his face.  Idly, the boy tugged Masako's blade out of his arm and tossed it away.  The wound didn't even have time to bleed before it closed.

            "What do you mean?" Masako asked, grabbing the remainder of her staff.

            "You put Naruto to sleep, and he slumbers still," the blond-haired boy confirmed, stepping towards Masako.  "On the other paw, there are far worse things in this boy than he would have most people think."  Slowly, two columns of chakra extended upwards from the corona that surrounded Naruto's body.

            "Kyuubi," Masako realized, stepping away.  /I've got to scuff the circle and let the boy wake up,/ she realized.

            "Exactly," a deep, horrible voice said in her ear.  Hot breath washed over Masako's neck, and she didn't have to turn to know that Kyuubi was there.  She hadn't seen him move; she hadn't even see him tens up to move.

            "A technique that puts anything within its radius to sleep," Kyuubi continued, twisting Naruto's voice to produce a timbre and deepness of tone usually reserved for the otherworldly.  "Irresistible, and independent of its user," he continued, slowly circling around Masako.  "An impressive innovation, for meat," he grinned, mere inches from her face.  Masako tried to control herself, but the chakra that boiled off of Naruto's body was thick and demonic, untouched by human molding.  It was fear incarnate, and Masako stumbled away from the possessed boy, trying to stop the shivering in her knees and lower jaw.

            "No, you don't," Kyuubi snarled, behind her once again.  "I'll not let a whelp like you get away from me, not when I'm finally free."

            "If you kill me, the circle will vanish," Masako declared, summoning up as much of her legendary cool as she could.

            "And therein lies my dilemma," Kyuubi growled, his claws raking lightly along her stomach.  Masako didn't have to look up to see that Kyuubi's excess chakra had formed itself into a hundred foot tall avatar of himself, a feat which he was likely doing as an idle exercise, to keep his mind busy.  No human had enough chakra to even attempt such a thing.

            "If I let you go, you'll snuff the circle, and I'll be forced to retreat back inside the seal as the boy awakens," Kyuubi continued, confirming what Masako suspected.  /He can't escape,/ she thought to herself.  /The seal just can't lock him back inside because the boy brought too much of the demon out.  As soon as he wakes up, Kyuubi's mind'll be overridden by the kid's, and he'll be stuck again./

            "If I kill you, the circle fades naturally, and I must again return to my prison," the possessed boy grinned, his breath hot on her throat.  "Though I leave with a certain level of satisfaction."

            "Are you sure that you can kill me?" Masako bluffed, trying to gain some level of advantage.  Kyuubi chuckled for a moment, then broke out into a full belly laugh.

            "It took a hundred shinobi to bring me down last time," Kyuubi replied as his laughter wound down.  "Several of whom were more talented than you purport yourself to be.  I believe the question is, whelp, are you sure that you can kill me?"  Masako tried to maintain her composure and, after a few moments, failed.  She skittered away from Kyuubi desperately, fear in her eyes.

            "There is, of course, a third option," Kyuubi continued, taking visible pleasure in Masako's fear.  "One which interests me greatly.  I know only one jutsu, and I really would like to try it out on you."

            "A jutsu?" Masako asked, edging even further away.

            "Yes. the only one that I've bothered to remember," Kyuubi replied, his hands already coming together in the seal of the sheep.  "The technique that dumped me into this abysmal prison."  His hands flew, forming eight additional seals.  It felt to Masako as if the bottom of her stomach had dropped out; she knew that she had no chance of surviving a technique that could stop Kyuubi in full rampage.

            "Fuuin Jutsu.  Shiki Fuujin, Kyuubipoi," the demon-possessed boy declared.  Masako saw chakra flow out of him in a rush, but she could see no other outward effect.  "Now, this technique would usually consume the life of whoever used it, as a part of the cost.  It drags the soul of two beings out of the bodies in which they reside, that they might dance forever in the depths of Hell," Kyuubi explained.  Behind him, Masako could see a massive gathering of chakra, swirling red and black.  It had the general shape of a human, but it was fourteen feet tall, and hovered well above the ground.  She could see nothing more specific, however, despite her Sharingan eyes.

            "However, my soul is tethered in place for now, thanks to the seal that this very avatar of death created," Kyuubi continued, and the form behind him materialized fully.  Shaggy white hair hid his horned head, a short knife clutched in the avatar's teeth.  Billowing robes snapped around his body.  When the avatar had materialized, they had been a pristine white, but were now slowly becoming red, as though someone were dipping them in blood.  A vague humanoid form hovered in front of the creature, and a length of beads were clutched in his left hand.

            "Will it kill the boy, and launch us all into his grasp?" Kyuubi wondered aloud.  "Will it break the seal, and send only the two of us to Hell?  I don't know, whelp, but I suppose that we'll find out together."  Masako's jaw trembled, and she stumbled to the ground.

            "You're crazy!" she shouted as the avatar's robes became fully red.

            "Not as much so, no," Kyuubi taunted with a chuckle.  "Unlike you, whelp, I have only to will myself back into existence once death claims me.  It is life, now, that entraps me."  Suddenly, Kyuubi snapped his head to the left, where Sakura had been creeping towards the line that Masako's technique generated.

            "Away from the line, little one, or you'll join the blue-haired whelp in my little experiment," Kyuubi growled, and Sakura stopped dead in her tracks.  "He needs nothing more from me.  Now, even if the boy takes over, Death will claim those that it can.  All I have to do is will that he take you as well, and he will.  He does, after all, have two hands."  Sakura, paralyzed with fear, simply stood in place for a few moments, then took a wavering step away.  Behind Naruto's body, the avatar was raising his left hand.  Swirling red tattoos appeared on his arm, and he reared his arm back.

            "Good girl," Kyuubi grinned, and the avatar thrust his hand into the back of the humanoid figure that hovered in front of it.  From Naruto's chest erupted a gigantic arm, clearly larger than the one that the avatar possessed.  It hit Masako with enough force to throw her completely into the air.  Then, just as the avatar's elbow emerged from Naruto's chest, the hand stopped, and Masako's body flew away.  Clutched in the hand was what seemed to be a wispy white cloud.  Slowly, it withdrew, sliding back into Naruto's chest.  Already, the circle that surrounded the three figures was beginning to fade.  The avatar's arm was soon fully withdrawn, and he bowed respectfully towards Masako's corpse, which had tumbled to the ground near the far line of the circle.  The next moment, he was simply not there anymore.  The hundred foot tall effigy of the demon fox had vanished as well, leaving Naruto alone on the battleground.  Only a faint wisp of chakra remained in his entire body.  He staggered forward, his head lolling, then half-turned to look in Sakura's direction.

            "Sakura. chan," he managed, then pitched forward to fall, face down, in the dirt.  After a moment's hesitation, Sakura threw herself towards Naruto's limp body with an inarticulate scream of grief.

 

*   *   *   *   *   *

 

            "That is." Itachi trailed off, amazed.  Even from kilometers away, he recognized the only figure that the floating demon could be.  "Death's hand.  I know that technique."

            "What is it?" Sasuke asked, not quite sure what was going on.  When Kyuubi had appeared, the fight had halted.  Both of them were far more interested in the gigantic demon.  When, at length, Itachi had declared it a mere avatar of chakra, their interest had only grown.

            "The piece of Death that is summoned with the Shiki Fuujin no Jutsu," Itachi explained, shaking his head.  "We should not be able to see it.  I don't understand."  Itachi's shoulders sagged, and the two of them watched as the figure bowed, then vanished.  The chakra avatar followed suit a moment later.

            "What does that mean?" Sasuke asked, confused.  A part of him still wanted to kill his brother, but another part, a part that he'd buried years ago and was only now resurfacing, looked up to the elder Uchiha.  In a completely unfamiliar situation, he relied, as he had in his youth, on Itachi's judgment.  For some reason he couldn't fathom, Sasuke couldn't bend his mind around any possibilities regarding anything that he'd seen.

            "Masako-sama is dead," Itachi stated flatly, "Weather she summoned the avatar or was the victim of it.  One of your friends as well."  Sasuke's heart wrenched, and immediately ruled out Sakura as a possibility.  Nobody would waste their lives to bring her down, and he knew that she didn't know the technique.

            "Naruto," Sasuke said, knowing that the blond-haired boy was the only realistic option.  Itachi, after a moment of though, nodded in agreement.

            "Well," Itachi mused, turning to face his brother.  "What now?"

            "I don't know," Sasuke returned with a shrug.  Honestly, he couldn't think of a possibility that didn't involve fighting, and this worried him on a level that he couldn't quite identify.  He'd lost something when he'd used Shijuukaigan the third time, but the younger Uchiha had no idea what.

            "Well," Itachi sighed at length.  "Masako-sama didn't tell me when I should kill you, and we're both outside of her supervision now."  Sasuke didn't understand the second half of Itachi's statement, but nodded his agreement to the first.

            "I'll see you some time," Itachi said, picking up his cloak.  "When I do. please, be ready to."  He didn't finish the sentence.  Sasuke was about to ask him what he meant, but his memory finally served the younger Uchiha with an answer.  Again, Sasuke nodded.  Itachi fastened his cloak around his shoulders and slowly walked away.  With a grimace of pain, Sasuke collapsed to the ground and waited for the medic-nin to arrive.

 

*** Author's Notes ***

 

            Hi, everybody, and welcome back for another chapter of Flash's obsessive drivel.  Well, this chapter was quite a doozy to write.  I think that I re-did the first section four times before I was happy with it, for example.  Anyway, here it is, in all its glory.  And yes, the next chapter WILL be the final installment of "Genin."  And I don't care how much you whine.

            Secondly, I am honestly floored by how incredibly bad many of my readers are at reading rather simple instructions. Over the course of two chapters, I put down the protocols for voting three times.  THREE times.  I provided my e-mail address twice last chapter, for your conveinance.  And. I received eighteen improper votes.  Eighteen.  I am. amazed at how many of you seem to have a basic inability to follow written directions.  Thus, as a countermeasure, I will be posting the names of each and every person that voted incorrectly.  If you so desire, you have one chapter left to vote properly.

 

            A slightly peeved,

                        ~Flash (Flashfyre5atmsn.com)

 

THE WALL OF SHAME: These are the people that voted incorrectly.  Enjoy your rather embarrassing moment of immortality.

Inferno-Dragonz

Fubar (An ironic, but appropriate, name)

Kepelus (You really should know better, Kep.  I know you.)

SilentOmega

Koori no Tenshi

Aaron

Death by Wasabi (Whose name I love, and want to steal)

Empty Sanity

Capped

PoofSpoon

MonkeyJ

Anders

Max Knight

Refused

XD

Babowonsuni

Adyen

A Shade of Fire

 

The Standings So Far: If you like an idea that isn't Number One. now might be the time to say so.  Chuunin is kinda running away right now.  A lot of the people on the Wall of Shame wanted #2. vote right, guys, so it counts.

Idea #1: 17

Idea #2: 2

Idea #3: 0

Idea #4: 2

Idea #5: 2

 

Number One Song on Naruto's Playlist:

"Symphonic Evil II: Evil Has a Name (Robotnik)," by Sephiros.  This is an oddball remix if Robotnik's theme from Sonic 2.  I like it, both for nostalgia and for its quality.  Nab it at vgmix.com.

 

Character Themes:

Umm. there's nobody left, so. yeah.  Nothing here.

 

New Techniques:

Hitori Sangun no Jutsu- One Man's Glorious Army (lit.), An Army of One (fig.): This technique is used in conjunction with the Honshitsu Bunshin.  After creating several Honshitsu Bunshin clones, the user commands each of those clones to create as many shadow clones as possible.  In doing so, he creates many times the number of clones that he would normally be able to create, even with a full night's rest.  However, this army is short-lived, and relies upon the original user of the technique for its maintenance, since all Honshitsu Bunshin clones are consumed in order to create the absolute maximum number of clones.

Karitori Enjin- Reaping Circle: This is an extremely high-level taijutsu technique, and requires a higher level of chakra control than few people, even those among the elite ranks of the jounin, are able to achieve.  The user spins his or her body with chakra, slashing dozens of times with a bladed weapon of some sort.  He or she then throws the bodies of those they've successfully struck upon anyone else in easy range, using centrifugal force to accomplish the maneuver.

Shiki Fuujin, Kyuubipoi- Dead Demon Imprisonment, Kyuubi Style: This technique is functionally identical to the normal Shiki Fuujinm except that Kyuubi uses his chakra to make the avatar of death clearly visible to all.  It also causes the demon to be an avatar in red, simply due to Kyuubi's preference.  He always was a showy bastard, no?


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