Nagato gestured, and the same invisible force the Deva path commanded tried to blow me away. But I was anchored to the ground and expecting it, so the technique just made my chakra shield erupt in a flare of blue pyrotechnics. When the pressure stopped I darted under the machine he rode in, and planted my fist in the underside.
It blew apart like it was packed with explosives, a cloud of twisted metal flying high into the air before tumbling back down to rain onto the earth around me. I could see Nagato tumbling through the air, trying to form hand seals for some kind of creation technique, but his hands were trembling from the nerve gas. He was still forming seals when my cutting wind vortex ripped him apart.
I sagged, panting with exertion. My whole chakra system ached with the effort of channeling so many high-level techniques so quickly, and my storage seal had shrunk alarmingly. Still, I spared a moment to grin.
“Hell, yeah! ‘Not a front-line combatant’ my ass, Sasuke! I am the champion of ass-kicking, you arrogant nutjob.”
I turned towards Naruto’s fight just in time to get flash-blinded by a series of gigantic explosions. With my true sight I could make out a pair of eight-tailed foxes trying to pin down a humanoid form that bounced madly around them throwing supercharged Rasenshuriken like they were free.
The third fox was down, the dense chakra that had made up its body slowly dissipating to reveal the unconscious jinchuuriki within.
“…ok, maybe I’m the runner-up. That’s alright, I can live with being second to a guy that can knock out the damned Kyuubi.”
29. Reversals
Disclaimer: I don’t own Naruto.
I dropped my chakra shield, and wiped the hastily-drawn seal arrays from my skin. Then I faded into invisibility, and glided silently across the ruins towards the main event. They were still throwing around absurdly huge attacks in there, gigantic beams of light and flame that could probably level a city. I couldn’t begin to match that kind of power, but I might not have to. As much as the Kyuubi hated Sharingan users, if I could interfere with Sasuke’s control he’d probably switch sides in an instant.
“Hinata, how’s your fight going?” I asked of the shadow clone she’d left in my mindscape.
“Not well,” she replied. “She’s better than I am, and I can’t keep clones up consistently with all these explosions. I’ve worn her down quite a bit, but I don’t know if I can actually beat her.”
“That’s alright, sweetie. With Akatsuki out of the way it’s time to end this fight, but to do that I need to make Sasuke think he’s won. Can you arrange to die valiantly, so the real you can get back into Naruto’s mindscape unobtrusively?”
She grinned. “No problem, Sakura. Give me a minute or two to make it look convincing, and I’ll be in position.”
Where the palace had stood there was now a field of overlapping craters a couple of miles across and hundreds of feet deep. I hid myself at the bottom of one of the huge trenches radiating out from that central zone of devastation, and carefully made my way to the edge of the cratered zone for a peek.
Naruto stood at the bottom of the deepest crater, bruised and battered but still fighting. One of his opponents was still down, either unconscious or dead, but the other two were grimly trying to murder him in a flurry of flashing red claws and tails. Sasuke stood well back from the melee, though from the way the occasional chunk of debris flew through him he was obviously using some sort of dematerialization technique. A second look told me it was Sharingan-based, which would make it a bitch to dispel.
“Crap,” I muttered. “Well, I didn’t really expect to take him by surprise. Let’s see, two Kyuubi copies up, Naruto is getting tired, Hinata should be ‘losing’ right about now…”
The shadow clone Hinata had left in my mindscape abruptly vanished. Inconvenient, but not unexpected. Being technically killed does tend to disrupt any techniques you have running, but she’d spent long enough as a ghost that I doubted it would slow her down much. Which meant it was almost time for me to play my part in this impromptu performance.
“Damn, this is going to hurt.”
The elder Hinata appeared behind Naruto, and planted one of her fancy chakra-disrupting super-jyuuken blows in the back of his head. He staggered, and Sasuke started making seals.
An instant later I was standing between Naruto and his Kyuubi-possessed foes with all eight gates open. I punched the nearest one in the chest, sending it flying back into the wall of the crater, and spun to slap my hand over the other one’s face. But the anti-Sharingan seal I applied fell apart at the touch of the Kyuubi’s chakra, just as I’d suspected it might.
Then the pain hit.
My hands were both gone, burned away by even that brief contact with the foes Naruto had fought to a standstill, and a river of tainted red chakra oozed into my body through the wounds. I fell to my knees, trying desperately not to scream as I struggled to force it back out. I’d expected it to be bad, but not like this.
“Demonic Mind Lock technique successful,” Sasuke said triumphantly. “Excellent work, Hinata. Kyuubi-Two, bring me Sakura.”
A hand wreathed in youki grabbed me by the neck to drag me across the torn landscape, and this time I did scream. The leakage from its aura burned out half my tenketsu in seconds, tainting my chakra and scorching my nerves, making it impossible to think. The shock was so great I lost control of my own body for an instant, and barely managed to wrench the Eight Gates closed again before the conflict between their uncontrolled energy and the Kyuubi’s alien power tore me apart.
Somehow I forced my mind to keep working, turned my sight inward to see what that poison was doing to me and how to stop it. It was like concentrated hate given physical form, and the light side of my soul that I’d been clinging to as a defense against Sasuke’s Sharingan could not abide its touch. I shifted myself darker, embracing violence and vengeance and my inner demon’s stern sense of justice, and the pain muted to a mere physical burn. By the time my captor threw me at Sasuke’s feet my chakra was my own again, and I knew I could heal my body with a bit of effort. Of course, my resistance to Sasuke’s Sharingan would be practically zero in this state, and he could probably see that.
Perfect.
I exchanged memory updates with the shadow clone I’d left in Naruto’s mindscape, and verified that she was still there. She was in full light mode, utterly immune to Sharingan abilities and ready to weave a counter to Sasuke’s genjutsu at my signal. According to her Hinata was in there too, though her opponent’s unconventional attacks had scrambled her chakra so badly she wouldn’t be able to form shadow clones again for a few minutes. That was inconvenient, but I could work with it.
I just had to hope Sasuke stayed true to form. I must have looked pretty damned beaten with my hands burned off and my chakra system destroyed, and wisps of poisonous red chakra oozing from my cracked and smoking flesh. But his chakra was more depleted than mine at the moment, and physically he was only human.
I formed a fresh new body in the depths of my mindscape and dropped an aspect into it. She immediately readied my best knockout technique, and set herself to step out and use it. Now I just needed the bastard to give me a good opening…
“And now we see who is truly the superior ninja,” Sasuke gloated. “Naruto is beaten, and in a few minutes I shall cast him out of the time steam entirely. I’d thought about sparing you that, Sakura, but after this latest display I think it’s best if you go with him.”
“I thought we were all going to go together, Sasuke,” I choked out around my damaged throat. “Or was that a lie too?”