10.combat2

Ursura smiled, jumping forward with a thrusting palm. That area of the mist felt slightly different to her chakra perception. Not that she could really tell much with this dampening fog.

The genjutsu broke, torn off by the chakra emanating from her attack, revealing Itachi in a crouch. He shot inside her guard with a kunai in his hand, looking to stab her.

The Tsuchikage kicked out, forcing him to jump sideways, and then she changed the motion of her foot midair, driving him back further.

She lunged forward, swiping with her chakra claw and following with a downward palm from the other hand.

The ground cracked, divots opening where the chakra-shaped claws tore at the ground.

"Close combat with an Uchiha is dangerous." Ursura said, grinning. "But letting you get to your preferred mid-range and letting you use jutsu is more dangerous." Then she jumped forward, tapping the ground with a kick to intercept Itachi when he attempted to dodge.

She jabbed with a claw, and changed her mind while following through with her other hand and kicked instead, planting her foot in Itachi's stomach. She grunted as her chakra-hardened foot slammed into a log, smashing the surface.

She spun, and threw a backhand, even as she dropped forward to pursue Itachi after he aborted his stab attempt to dodge her backhand. "Barely made it in time with that kawarimi." She jeered.

Itachi shrugged, even as he dropped back from a claw-thrust and drove a side-kick between her guard. She knocked it aside by raising her knee and then reached down to dig her opposite claw into his thigh and cripple him.

Instead, he spun, pulling his leg behind himself and pushing up against her, pinning her hand between them. But her other hand closed on his back, hovering inches above his spine; his bathrobe was no armor. She would have ripped his spine right out of him if he didn't have a kunai pressed lightly against her liver.

"I'm pretty sure you're the real one." She said, smirking. Amusingly, she noted that she was several centimeters taller than him.

Itachi leaned up, and kissed her.

Surprised, she met his eyes for a minute.

The sharingan was a bizarre shape, like three sickle-blades on a wheel, spinning slightly.

Ursura sighed as she took in her surroundings. She was tied to a huge cross, crucified. The world was inverted, a black reality outlined in red and white lines. Itachi was standing on the curiously whirled ground in front of her, dressed in his regular Akatsuki regalia instead of the bathrobe that he was actually wearing. Ursura chuckled; now she was even higher above him. "I can't believe I fell for the old 'kiss the girl' trick."

Itachi shrugged. "If it works…" he trailed off, not bothering to finish any of the many thoughts that such a sentiment lead to.

Ursura grunted, using the Kai technique.

"You needn't bother." Itachi said quietly. "In this illusionary reality of Tsukuyomi, everything is dictated by me. There's no way to escape."

"You'll forgive me if I try anyway?" Ursura mocked, using a chakra claw to nick her palm lightly. Nothing happened.

Abruptly, Itachi was holding a sword. He didn't draw it or bring it out with a summoning jutsu; it simply appeared. He stepped forward, and slid it between two pockets on Ursura's jounin vest, stabbing her through the stomach and internal organs until it came straight out her back and he could lodge it in the material of the cross.

"God dammit to hell." Ursura swore. "That hurts like a son of a bitch, you know that? Damn." She stilled, gasping as sweat rose on her brow. She looked down at Itachi, who was standing impassively beneath her, hands at his sides. His expression was resigned, slightly bored. He was in a professional mode. Scary stuff, Ursura thought. Pro torturer stuff.

Without any visible motion, he was holding the sword again. It was gone from her body, just vanished.

Itachi was holding it again.

"For the next 72 hours," Itachi said, "I will continuously stab you with this katana."

I I I

Grunting, Kisame pushed himself off the ground. He was bleeding from several deep parallel cuts, one that was perilously close to his eye. He glowered up towards the two women who stared down at him from the roof. That last attack had been dangerous; dozens of super-high speed wires flashing around, they had cut at least as deeply as swords.

Abruptly, he grinned. "Playtime's over, little girls!" His hands flashed through handseals, and he arched up and back, before abruptly rocking forward, spewing a huge volume of water out of his mouth. "Suiton: Bakushouha!"

The Aquatic Shockwave pulsed outward, and then condensed into a huge wall that rushed forward to completely engulf their position and wash them away.

"What the hell is that!" Tetsuko roared, as she and Kamome were swept away on a hastily summoned diving bird. Before Kamome could even hazard an answer, the bird gave a keen scream as a water-formed shark ripped through its wing.

They fell into the water, struggling to parry as five huge sharks formed from the very water engulfing them continuously mauled them.

Tetsuko had only one desperate, absurd view of Kisame cutting smoothly through the water like a shark himself before he was on her, dragging and wrestling her under the water.

'Shit!' She thought, struggling with Kisame, wrestling about. She could already see spots in her vision from so much exertion while holding her breath underwater. She stopped struggling, faking unconsciousness for a moment while she let a kunai fall into her hand from her sleeve. She was about to stab Kisame in the liver when he surged forward, undulating his body like a fish to propel himself through the water, dragging her along. He exploded from the water and spun, flinging her down against the roof.

She gasped, sucking air in, and sat up, wincing. At least three ribs were broken. She grunted, forcing herself up. She was having trouble breathing, and she was still winded from her near-drowning. She wasn't capable of keeping up with him for a number of minutes still.

With a sudden feeling of foreboding, she spun, but it was too late, the water swept up around her. She had only an instant to force her lungs to swallow as much air, saturate her lung tissue with chakra, hold as much air as she could before the water surrounded and trapped her. She glared at the Kisame grinned at her, right hand outstretched to maintain the imprisoning water sphere around her.

Kisame grinned as he lightly landed on the roof, several meters away. It seemed the one maintaining her prison was another water clone. "You almost tricked me with that kunai. But we're not really done yet!" He glanced absently at the courtyard of the inn, which was still obscured by the thick fog. Then he turned to face the street, which was ravaged by the flood-like effect of his jutsu. "Isn't that right?" He finished.

Kamome glared up at him, before biting her thumb again and flashing through the hand seals of the summoning technique again.

"Please let your wings be my legs!" Kamome shouted, vaulting into the air by using Kurokuchibashi like a pole. Beneath her, in a cloud of smoke, a crane the size of a huge horse appeared. It was totally white, except for the circle of red sweeping up into his face from his beak, giving him the name, Akakamen, Red Mask.

Kamome landed on his back, wrapping her feet down around his shoulders as Akakamen launched into the sky with surprising speed.

Kisame chuckled as the huge crane shot into the sky, banking, before it spun around, folding its wings and diving forward, Kamome holding the Kurokuchibashi forward like a lance.

He jumped to the side as the pair dived down. His eyes widened as he saw the ripple of air, a cone of air around the two waver, distort… was it a wind type chakra effect? He leaped even further out of the way, hands flashing through seals.

The Suijinheki no jutsu swept up, armor to protect his body as the crane and rider swept past him. There was a loud crashing sound as they passed, and then the cylindrical water shield was shattered, and his exposed face and hands were cut more, his cloak becoming shredded as it protected his body.

"Scary." He muttered to himself. He grinned, and wiped some blood of his forehead with his sleeve. "Using the transonic cone that compresses the air as you move at the speed of sound to heighten the power of that wind jutsu… even a glancing blow would tear most people to shreds." He paused, as the two banked around for another pass. "Takes a while to reset it, though."

He grinned as the summoner and her summoned monster lined up another pass.

"Shoot across the Cloudy Sky! Spear!" Kamome roared, even though it would be drowned out by her jutsu as she dived at the enemy. She leveled the Kurokuchibashi again, channeling her chakra and converting it to the wind type, raising the density and deadliness of the pressure cone. The two dived, and the shark man used the same jutsu as before to create a cone of water to protect him. Ready, Kamome dipped her lance to one side at the last instant, slightly changing the approach vector. The two screamed through the shield like paper, and she had one delicious look at his surprised face before the cone turned him to bloody shreds.

Which then dissolved into water.

The real Kisame launched up from the ground, swinging his sword around with his monstrous strength to smash her as he came down. Kamome heaved the lance up, arm muscles screaming protest against the wind resistance from her high speed.

She managed to cut him in half while he was still coming forward to her, but instead of spraying gore, or dissolving into water, a bisected log appeared before her.

She didn't have time to react before the top half slammed into her, knocking her unconscious.

Kisame grunted as the Cloud woman with the spear was knocked off her crane by the top half of his kawarimi. He guessed her face was pretty broken; the bottom half nailed the summoned crane like a meteor. He could hear the wing-bones snap from his position on the roof.

He grunted sourly, a little disappointed he had managed to win with such a simple jutsu in the end. He glanced to where his clone still had the Stone jounin trapped. At least, he thought, she was still capable of glaring death at him. He estimated she had about nine minutes of air left, based on how much air she'd managed to suck into her lungs first. He hadn't been much surprised by that; the breath holding jutsu was common among the underground-traveling Stone ninja.

His hand twitched. He glanced down at the ring. Sealed with mysterious jutsu, they were the key to the astral projection the Akatsuki used, and allowed for a certain, low level of telepathy between wearers.

His partner was summoning him.

"Looks like you're saved for today." Kisame said. Knowing Itachi, they were probably retreating now.

Tetsuko glared at his retreating back, even as she gasped and heaved when the jutsu holding here dissipated.

I I I

The Nekomata shot forward, and swiped at Hidan. He rocked back, sneering, and rolled around behind the demon cat.

It glanced over its shoulder, and a tail flashed out, smacking him away. He skittered across the roof like a marble, cursing.

He forced himself up, grunting. Even as messed up as his body was, he could move fine in ritual form as long as his bones were all attached. More so; even if he was reduced to just his bones, he could move just fine like this.

"Just an animal." He sneered. "You know that?" He stumbled forward, and paused, dropping his hand onto his knee, even as he pulled out his spear with his right hand. "Maybe you're some sort of super-being, but you're just a goddamn animal." He smiled as the huge cat leaped forward, swinging a paw around to bat at him. He made no attempt to dodge, but he did swing his spear.

He nicked it's leg when it sent him flying through the air. The demon chakra in the deep slash wounds would have killed a human, if the cuts themselves didn't. The demon chakra was driven out in purple flames by the cursed power of Jashin.

He smiled as he licked the tip of the spear, and stumbled when his curse form wavered, realigning to its new ritual bond.

He limped two steps forward, sneering as the Nekomata circled, exactly like a cat toying with its prey.

"Loser." He sneered, ramming the spear into his the side of his neck, going right through to the other side.

Blood squirted out the new wound, and dropped down, splattering from his foot to over a meter out, crossing the line of the ritual circle.

"A human would've stopped me from getting back here," Hidan gloated as the Nekomata collapsed, yowling and gargling, "but you're just a stupid cat."

He reached up, and twisted his own neck, which broke with a sick crack.

The Nekomata collapsed, and the flames pulled back. Hidan looked around himself and sighed. He hadn't even noticed when that other girl had run away. He really should hunt her down in the name of absolute slaughter, but….

He looked at his ruined body, and then up at the Nekomata. Jashin-sama had been very clear: he should obey the commands of the Pein, because the Pein would cause immense slaughter. The Pein would stain the whole continent with blood, and Jashin-sama wanted the loyal Hidan to be a tool of that.

So Hidan would obey the Pein and bring him the Nekomata.

He grinned, as his body ripped, sizzling slightly as his flesh rebirthed itself with the holy chakra of Jashin-sama.

I I I

Reiko stood, waiting for Kakuuzu's next attack. He didn't seem surprised she'd turned down his offer to work as a missing-nin for him, but then again he didn't seem happy about it, either. Reiko hoped Chigaku would be able to free herself from the water prison he had her in soon.

The crying mask popped around his shoulder, the water swirling in the mouth, even as wind begin to spin in the howling mask. "Hyouton: Toukoudo." Kakuuzu said.

The water and wind condensed into a huge cylindrical shell of ice. The Frozen Wasteland was a hardened elongated oval that streaked through the air, gleaming cruelly.

Reiko countered with a powerful lightning blast, knocking it off course.

When struck with her attack jutsu, the ice shell detonated, shooting thousands of razor-sharp ice shards into the area at high speed.

The shards of ice shredded the log Reiko replaced herself with.

Kakuuzu turned, his left hand rocketing out towards his opponent, catching Reiko by the throat where she appeared after emerging from her kawarimi.

She choked as the hand began to crush her throat, but she abruptly grinned.

Her right hand grabbed at the thumb, and her left dug at the fingers. Kakuuzu had only the tingling warning of the defensive charge Reiko built in her skin before she dumped thousands of volts of electricity into his left hand from her gauntlets. Because she had charged her skin, it tried to ground through Kakuuzu's left hand.

But that tingling warning was enough. A single thread reached from the hand deep into the ground, carrying the deadly electric current safely away from Kakuuzu's hand and into the dirt.

Reiko snarled ferociously as the hand began to sizzle slightly.

Abruptly it let go, and threads whipped around her legs, tugging her to the ground and lashing her in place.

She struggled, and brought her hands up, but more threads caught her elbows and pulled them back, pinioning her into the ground.

She looked up, and saw Kakuuzu jumping high in the air above her, left arm trailing down to the threads binding her. His right foot was raised above his head in an axe kick. From that height, it would kill her when it connected.

"Damn!" She swore.

A spear of dirt launched out, and Kakuuzu had to swerve to avoid it. He looked, and saw that Chigaku had managed to reach the bottom of the water sphere imprisoning her with one hand. That contact with the dirt was enough for her to use jutsu. Her free hand flickered through some clumsy one handed seals, and the water prison technique was punctured by several blades of dirt that erupted out of the ground. Then the thrusts of earth caught Chigaku as she fell, coughing. She looked up weakly, cradled by her earth jutsu.

Kakuuzu sighed as he landed between the two. "So close." Threads reached out, pulling his arm and the heart-containing lump in it back to him, even as he released Reiko, recognizing the jutsu she was about to use to fry her way free.

"Even using Hyouton…" Reiko said.

Kakuuzu shrugged. "The water user this heart previously belonged to was a member of that blood limit, from Hidden Mist. So, I'm capable of using some of those jutsu."

"That's pretty morbid." Chigaku said.

He flexed his left hand, frowning as it bled slightly from the sizzling wounds. "I'm beginning to get tired of playing with you two."

Reiko snorted. "That's some arrogant stuff to be spouting, when you're having such a hard time."

Kakuuzu just sighed in a put-upon matter. "So far, all I've used is simple stuff. Maybe it's A-class, but they're just dumb chakra-dump jutsu." He shook his hand out slightly, satisfied with its recovery. "Meaning, the genjutsu and advanced ninjutsu I've accumulated over more than a century of winning ninja battles, you will see some of those now." In that last part, his voice took on an ancient and ominous quality.

His hands flickered through seals, almost faster than even Reiko's trained eyes could follow. "Genjutsu: Madoi." Called Delusion, it was an ancient genjutsu that filled someone's senses with meaningless stimuli, just sensory noise.

Reiko stepped back, as colors stopped making sense, as things blurred around her, and bizarre whistling sounds began to fill her ears. "Kai!" She said, breaking the illusion. She had only an instant to grasp what was before her: Kakuuzu was hurtling towards her, arm cocked back.

Kakuuzu's fist slammed into her face, knocking her through the air. Reiko felt some teeth loosen from the impact. She turned, spinning around in mid-air only to fold up as Kakuuzu drove his heel into her stomach, slamming her into the ground.

He was about to smash her brain into paste when a huge mass of rock slammed shut on his position from all around him. He jumped, flipping over the rock that now protected Reiko after it had threatened him.

He dropped to the ground, and formed a single hand seal. Two Kage Bunshin appeared on either side of him.

Each Bunshin went through a separate set of seals; one finished just an instant before the other.

"Genjutsu: Zouokai." Chigaku gasped as the world suddenly went dark, a hundred skeletal figures rose from black waters, and grabbed at her with bony, clutching hands. She was trapped in the World of Hatreds. She didn't try to cancel the illusion, but first did her own handseals, ignoring what her senses were telling her.

"Suiton: Sensatsu Suishou." Thousands of water needles formed from the water scattered from the water prison and Kakuuzu's earlier water blast. They flickered up, forming, and then darted in to impale Chigaku from every direction. They impacted the cocoon of dirt that rose up around her, protecting her.

The last, the real one, dropped to the ground, and he shot forward over the ground, shooting his arm out, hardening it with jutsu to smash the earth cocoon, further concussing the already beaten Chigaku inside.

Meanwhile, Reiko had not been idle. She pulled herself together quickly, and staggered to her knees, and began to fill her gauntlets to their maximum capacity. She forced herself to her feet, snarling around broken ribs and the pounding from her head.

She drew a kunai from her hip holster. It had a bizarre shape for a kunai; it was radially symmetrical, really more of a huge needle than a throwing knife. She held it lightly with the tips of her fingers, pointed parallel to her arm. More exactly, it was precisely parallel to the centerline of her coiled gauntlet.

It was the ammunition for her deadliest jutsu, with attack power totally exceeding even Kakuuzu's masks.

Kakuuzu slammed his fist into the cocoon of dirt, and it collapsed like dough, empty inside. He glanced down, sighing. She had escaped through an underground tunnel.

Reiko sighted Kakuuzu's back.

He turned, just in time to see her loose the jutsu.

"Raiton: Amadenkou no Megami!" Reiko shouted. The Goddess of Sky Lightning discharged the huge well of lightning-type chakra in her gauntlet into an extremely powerful electromagnetic field. As the field expanded, creating an electric flux, it exerted an immense force on the steel kunai. This rail gun type weapon was capable of accelerating the kunai so fast that the air caught fire around it.

In a brilliant roaring arc, the kunai shot off, the friction so great the air burned around it as it streaked through the sky as fast as lightning, glowing white hot. It exploded through Kakuuzu, tearing a great chunk out of his chest and blowing a huge exit wound out of his back.

He tottered, and then dissipated in a burst of smoke.

Reiko dropped, as a fist soared over her, going through where her head was.

She gasped as a foot slammed into her kidney from the other side, picking her off the ground and throwing her through the air.

She rolled over the ground, and pushed up to see Kakuuzu and his Kage Bunshin standing in front of her.

"That was a very impressive jutsu." One of them said. "However, anyone with a little skill will always exchange the real self with a Kage Bunshin using kawarimi when there's a chance they could be attacked… like immediately after the attack on that other woman failed."

The second one turned, looking towards the ground. "And escaping underground like that took a lot out of her, when she's already bleeding internally from the pressure damage."

Then they both stiffened, looking up, past Reiko.

Reiko turned her head, forcing herself up a little more.

Standing behind her was Itachi, standing calmly, placidly, in his bathrobe. He radiated casual menace. "It's time to go." He said plainly. "Your partner has already achieved his objective."

One of the Kakuuzu poofed out of existence while the other slapped his forehead. "I'll never hear the end of it from that sanctimonious bastard."

Itachi paused, then nodded, before he too poofed out in smoke. Another Kage Bunshin, Reiko realized.

"You two were lucky today." Kakuuzu said. He paused, and then turned to Reiko. "I should probably kill you, but it seems like a waste to murder such a genius." Then he was gone.

Reiko grit her teeth, waiting for a moment to see if it was really over. "You okay?" She asked.

Chigaku slowly, painfully emerged from the ground. "No. But I'm alive." She said.

Reiko chuckled, even though it sent waves of pain through her chest. "Good answer."

I I I

Ursura collapsed bonelessly, sliding down Itachi's body. She couldn't actually feel her fingers through a haze of sympathetic pain, but she still managed to dig them into his back, and snap his spine like a toothpick with her chakra claws. Then the real pain washed over her, a red haze that filled all her synapses with screaming noise.

He began to collapse, too, but then he vanished in a poof of smoke.

With him abruptly gone, Ursura simply fell forward and landed in a heap with a thud, collapsing onto her side and rolling onto her back.

She craned her head back, and met Itachi's eyes as he looked down at her.

"Almost had you again." She teased, voice hoarse. "Sloppy, man, sloppy."

Itachi nodded. "A Kage Bunshin I created before we began fighting was observing. The instant I created the Tsukuyomi, it exchanged places with me, in the slight delay between the execution and release of the technique." He paused, thinking. "That is the closest someone has come to killing me in a long time."

"You sure do know how to make a girl feel special." Ursura said. "You wanna lean down here and whisper some sweet nothings in my ear? I still can't really feel my arms or legs but I bet I could bite your jugular out real good."

Itachi's face moved, the muscles in his upper cheeks tightening slightly, and then the corners of his mouth eased up a little. It was, Ursura thought, a pretty weak-ass smile.

"Weak sauce." Ursura scoffed. "If you're gonna do it, stick me already. Hell, man."

"I gave up meaningless killing," Itachi said, "the night I left my village behind." Then he turned, and walked away, disappearing into the mist.

I I I

"Dammit, dammit, dammit…" Naruto chanted under his breath, kunai in his hands, looking back and forth. It all looked the same; stupid-dense fog in every direction, and it made his skin feel slightly numb.

He created three Kage Bunshin. Two jumped into the air, and a moment later the third jumped. When the third reached the first two, they each grabbed it by an arm and threw it higher. When they landed, they formed a triangle with the original, each scanning an arc, trying to find someone.

They all paused for an instant when the Kage Bunshin had cancelled itself mid-air to return some intelligence. The club-lady from Stone and the chick in the big clothes from Cloud were facing off with Itachi's freaky partner; he couldn't see what anyone else was up to, but the whole local area was totally swamped in this weird fog.

He was beginning to contemplate just dropping a big-ass Taijuu Kage Bunshin on the area when a huge explosion went off behind him.

Startled, he turned to look in that direction. He made eye contact with one of his clones, which shrugged.

He created another clone, and it nodded, darting forward to scout the situation as he followed with his other two. Normally he would just charge in, but something about Itachi seriously gave Naruto the willies. He didn't think he'd ever forget that time when he was traveling with Jiraiya and he opened the door and there was Itachi and his stomach just about dropped into his balls and all he could think was 'that's not Sasuke because Sasuke doesn't scare the crap outta me.'

So he was being a little bit more cautious than normal. Naruto didn't have a problem being afraid; but he wasn't going to be ruled by fear, either.

The scouting clone cancelled. He swore, and darted forward, tucking his kunai back into his equipment pouch and pulling out a roll of bandaging.

"Oh shit, are you okay!?" He shouted.

Kirema looked up, startled. Dumbfounded, she watched this enemy spy rush forward and start frantically worrying over her stab wound.

"Oh man…" He bit his lip. "Uh, uh…."

Finally she spoke. "Just, calm done." She sat back. "If you want to help, cut away my vest around the injury, and pull out any fabric that might have gotten caught in the wound."

"Okay!" Naruto said, getting to work. For a moment, he industriously hacked at the armored vest, and Kirema gritted her teeth every time he bumped her in his enthusiasm to help. Then he tugged her shirt, pulling it away from the wound and ripping it open.

"For now, just pack a bandage over the wound, and hold it tight." She said. Direct pressure was one of the best ways to stop bleeding. But unless something could be done about the internal bleeding, she would die soon.

Kirema snarled, going carefully through the handseals for a general tissue-closing healing jutsu. She was barely at the level of a "battlefield lifesaver." Fortunately, stopping bleeding, slowing poison, and preventing shock were the three most important skills for that group; all a battlefield lifesaver had to do was keep someone alive long enough for them to reach a medic nin.

Then, she used it to seal up the stab as best she could, closing the organ tissue and the membrane sheathe around the kidney, and then the skin, as best she could. She sighed, wincing as that much motion sent a jolt of pain in her side. The healing was haphazard at best; any vigorous motion would rip open the tentative heal like tissue paper. She was out of the fight.

"You okay?" The blond brat asked, worrying his bottom lip with his teeth.

"Just fine." Kirema sighed. "Just fine." She formed the tiger seal, and cancelled her jutsu, clearing the area of the mist and fog.

The two looked across the courtyard, to where Ursura was laying spread-eagled on the ground.

"Hey." The Tsuchikage croaked. "That pretty-boy screwed me up good." She struggled, and managed to flop up to her feet, arms dangling, quivering. She grimaced and leaned on her hands, forcing herself up to her feet. She stumbled twice, nearly falling on her face, before she managed to get next to where Kirema was crouched, with Naruto standing over her.

Ursura grunted, going through hand seals at roughly twenty percent speed. Finally, with an uneasy tumble, she managed to hit the ground with her hand.

Three bears appeared, different then the two before. Ursura sighed in disappointment; she hadn't even gotten the chance to use her precious bears. Total miscalculation on her part; Kirema's area jutsu was just too at odds with the way she fought. Itachi had barely even needed to try to capitalize on that.

"Hey boss. You okay?" One of the bears said, worried.

"Eh, no injuries exactly but my pain nerves got messed up with genjutsu." Ursura said. "Anyway, you three split up and track down the other three members of the squad. They'll be working with another lady from Stone against a guy in a black cloak."

"GOT IT." Another bear ground out, and the three immediately bounded off in different directions.

Ursura shook her head, and regretted it because she was beginning to feel woozy. She sat down. "Damn, did he get me."

Kirema stiffened, looking up. "You." She snarled.

"Please come with me, Naruto-kun." Itachi said quietly.

Naruto looked up, to where Itachi was standing passively a few meters away, hands at his sides. He had appeared, stealthing in with shunshin, and they hadn't even noticed. "Screw you." Naruto said. And then for good measure, added "And the horse you rode in on."

Itachi closed his eyes, and when they opened again the sharingan was spinning. He looked up, and Naruto unflinchingly met his gaze.

One of the bears barreled up with Tetsuko and Kamome, dropping them so it could snarl at the man in the bathrobe. It was ignored, and Ursura waved it down.

The two stared for a minute, not blinking. Naruto was barely breathing, not breaking his gaze from the almost hypnotic spiral of the sharingan, refusing to allow himself to be drawn in.

Itachi calmly met Naruto's gaze. Naruto, Itachi noted, was staring back, fighting the mild genjutsu off with raw stubbornness. And then the color of the younger boy's iris began to change from its blue, flecks of red, and the shape of the pupil was less round, beginning to hint at slits. Itachi began to feel the supernatural pressure of Naruto's killing intent.

Itachi closed his eyes. "I see." He glanced up, and his sharingan was much slower, rotating about lazily.

His eyes flickered about him; the last two bears had returned, with passengers. All five of the women were injured, and the bears were nothing. Good; the Two-Tails jinchuuriki was not among them. He could capture Naruto and escape.

But that would be a lot of work.

He turned, and walked away. "We will meet again. Naruto-kun."

Naruto stared after the man, before shaking himself and turning back to the others.

"What the hell was that about?" Ursura finally asked.

Naruto shrugged. "Hell if I know." He glanced across the group. "Hey… where's Yugito?"

Okute coughed, flecks of blood landing on her hand. "I'm sorry, leader."

Ursura sighed. "No, you did your best." She turned to Naruto. "It looks like those bastards won… so we're going to be talking to you now."

Naruto turned to Okute. "What do you mean, 'you're sorry.' Where the hell is Yugito?"

Kirema frowned at him. "Not that it's your business, little boy, but they captured the Two Tails."

Naruto turned to stare down the Cloud leader. "You mean, those Akatsuki bastards captured her? You let them take her!?"

Kirema sneered. "There was no let. They beat us, and we have to cut our losses."

"That's bullshit!" Naruto roared. "You don't just let them take your people!"

"Hey. Kid. It's not as if we want them to control our jinchuuriki." Reiko said.

"Don't call her that!" Naruto shouted, swinging around to jab a finger at her. "Don't, don't you dare call her that! She's, Yugito is a person! A ninja, one of your ninja! I won't let you act like she's something less than that!" Naruto stood up, running his fingers through his hair. "Arrgh! I gotta go save her!" He turned, adjusting the kunai holster on his hip.

"Child." Ursura said. "You don't seem to understand that you're our prisoner right now."

"Just try and stop me you old hag." Naruto said, flinging a smoke bomb to the ground. When the smoke disspated, he was already charging after the group.

"Who's a hag you shrimp!" Ursura shouted at his back. She shook her head. "Jeeze… why the hell does he care so much?"

I I I

"You carry her!"

"She's your target, moron. You carry her."

"Asshole! I got torn the hell up fighting her! You carry her!"

"That's because you're incompetent. You carry her!"

The four Akatsuki were standing in a circle (or a square; Itachi thought both were equally applicable shapes) around the body of Yugito. She had been shielded from the worst of Hidan's jutsu by the Nekomata and it's nature, and was breathing shallowly.

"Stingy bastard! You're the one with super-strength, why don't you use if for once and carry her!?"

Hidan and Kakuuzu were discussing which member would be the one to carry the victim to their lair so they could begin the extraction ritual.

Kakuuzu sighed like he was dealing with a particularly obstinate and dim-witted child (in his mind, he was). "Hidan. She's you're target, you carry her."

Kisame turned his head slightly and made eye contact with Itachi. The shorter man nodded his agreement.

The two disappeared with shunshin.

That gave Kakuuzu an idea. He simply disappeared into a shunshin too. He also liked to simply get up and leave at restaurants, sticking Hidan with the bill.

Hidan turned purple and his head began to shake. "ASSHOLE!" He screamed at the absolute top of his lungs.

I I I

Hidan grumbled some more as he jumped along, hopping from roof to roof as he got out of town. The whole region was in chaos, because of all the fighting that had happened, but especially because those fights had involved high-power elemental techniques.

So he was high-tailing it out of the area before some more ninja showed up and hassled him for carrying a Cloud jounin over his left shoulder like a bag of rice. She was dripping blood down his already bloodstained back, and it was really annoying because it was getting in his shorts and making his chafe something awful.

"God-damned selfish asshole." Hidan muttered under his breath. "I swear to Jashin-sama I'm going to sacrifice his penny-pinching ass some day." He growled, shifting the burden on his shoulder slightly at the apex of his leap.

He heard something behind him; Hidan swung around in mid-air just as he got tackled by three identical blonde kids in their underwear. It was that ninja brat that had been staring down Itachi in the courtyard earlier.

"Give Yugito back!" The brat growled. Or at least, the one latched on his right arm growled.

The two on this leg seemed to be trying to squeeze him to death or something. Hidan honestly thought that that was pretty gay.

"Loser." Hidan sneered. He hefted the girl with his left hand, and flung her outwards.

The three ninja immediately kicked off of him, much to his annoyance.

Naruto frowned. He wasn't going to make it to Yugito before she smashed into the top of what looked to be a drugstore. He reached out without looking and took the hands of his Kage Bunshin, who acted as a secondary platform for him to launch off of and catch Yugito.

He grunted as he landed, desperately trying to protect her head and spine; he landed hard in a deep stance. It was pretty awkward, since Yugito was taller than his real body.

He checked her pulse. It was shallow but steady, and two holes on either side of her neck were oozing blood. He wrapped a bandage around her neck, but not very tightly. He had vivid memories of a particularly tight bandage job during Academy First Aid that had cut off the circulation to his left hand.

When he was finished, he looked up. Hidan was standing on the roof of a building on the opposite side of the road, cursing. His Kage Bunshin were standing a few meters in from where he was, between him and the enemy nin.

"Asshole!" Hidan shouted. He had pulled the scythe from where it was tucked into his belt behind him, and was using it to point at Naruto. "What the hell's the big idea, jumping on me like that!? Loser!"

"I'm going to kick your ass." Naruto swore, and he ran forward. He jumped in the air, clearing the street, and created a mass of Bunshin as he descended on Hidan.

"Bring it, little bitch!" Hidan shouted. He threw his scythe out, mowing through several Kage Bunshin. The rest landed and swarmed towards him.

Naruto himself landed and held out his hand, charging a rasengan with the help of a clone. He could do them one-handed since improving his chakra control with Kurenai, but it went faster with two sets of hands.

Done.

His clone ran forward, taking the rasengan in his right hand with it as he stayed behind, watching. Waiting.

Hidan swore, swinging his scythe and shearing through a clone. One was launched up by it's compatriots, and was coming down towards his head with a kunai. Glancing up, he reached into his cloak with his left hand even as his right swung his scythe around, driving clones back.

He grinnned as he thrust up with his pike, impaling the clone as it came down. It dissipated in a burst of smoke.

"An opening!" One of the clones roared, lunging in and grapping his scythe. Startled he tried to impale that one with his pike, too, but his raised arm was grabbed from behind by another clone, that was jabbing him in the side of the head with its sandle as it stood on his shoulder.

Some more were wrapped around his legs, holding him locked in place.

"Assholes! Get the hell off!" He roared.

"RASENGAN!" Hidan looked up, as a particularly pissed-looking Naruto lunged forward, holding a whirling blue sphere of chakra in front of him.

"Shit." Hidan said, as the sphere struck him right in the middle of his body. It hit; he roared in pain as it began to tear away at his body, one layer at a time, as he was unstably held in place by the clones. He struggled, and finally managed to free his pike enough to swing it down and prick the Naruto holding the rasengan.

Because of his struggling, the clones holding him lost their grip, and the whole group was blasted backwards as the rasengan exploded, launching Hidan to go skittering across the rooftop, where he crashed into and partway through an Icha Icha Violence billboard.

Hidan struggled, kicking his legs before he finally managed to flop forward, pulling himself out of the billboard.

He screamed. "It hurts!" He formed himself upright. "This suffering, Jashin-sama look at this suffering!" He pushed his arms apart, holding them wide, each gripping a weapon. There was a circular pit in his stomach, organs bleeding and floating ribs abraded to stubs. It looked like someone had just scooped out a few layers of his torso. "All this suffering!" He screamed. "It is for you, Jashin-sama!"

He sneered as he looked at the Narutos, before shuffling forward. He stopped, and smiled, wildly, reverently. "Witness a miracle!" He commanded, and he drew a circle on the ground in his own blood, and inscribed a triangle.

Then he licked to blood off the tip of the pike, and his body rippled, transforming as he entered the curse form.

"Share my suffering!" He crowed, slamming the pike into his gaping wound, pushing it through until it came out his back.

There was a pause, and then all the Narutos popped into whisps of smoke. Except one, the one that had used the rasengan on Hidan. That one collapsed to its knees, holding its gut.

"How!?" It gasped, coughing up blood.

"I already told you, dumbass! A miracle!" Hidan shouted. "A miracle of Jashin-sama!" He gestured at his body. "When I'm in this form, with your blood in me, you suffer what I suffer! My pain is your pain!" Hidan grinned, and jerked on the pike still lodged in his chest.

Naruto twitched, falling forward and catching himself on his hand.

"Loser!" Hidan jeered. "You can't lose to the holy power of Jashin-sama!"

"I'll never give up." Naruto said, forcing himself to stand. "Not even if you cut off my arms and legs, I'll defeat you." He stumbled forward, raising his right arm, his left hand pressed against his stomach wound.

"As long as I still have breath in my body, I'll fight." He said. Chakra flickered, spinning in his palm. "As long as I can stand, I'll move forward." The rasengan bloomed into form, spinning in his right hand.

"That's my nindo!" Naruto roared, rushing forward.

"Just die like a worm!" Hidan shouted back, burying his scythe in his leg, piercing his hip, his thigh, and his calf. "Just suffer and bleed out like a loser!"

Naruto collapsed, Rasengan dissipating as he fell forward. He reached up, and pulled himself forward, one meter, two meters, trailing blood until he reached Hidan's foot. "Just… just one more thing…" He croaked.

"Yeah?" Hidan sneered.

Abruptly, Naruto grinned, his broad, close-eyed fox smile. "Fooled You!" He shouted.

His body erupted into roots and stems, growing forward and entangling Hidan's legs, growing up and entwining his body until Hidan was totally bound by a tree. "Magen: Jubaku Satsu." Naruto's voice announced from somewhere.

"Since when!?" Hidan shouted. "This is bull-shit!"

"Since the beginning." Naruto said smugly, as he emerged from the tree over Hidan's head. "I dropped a 'what you want is what you get' on you when the clones were attacking, right before you got nailed by my rasengan." Naruto smirked. "That pause after you stabbed yourself almost gave it away, but you were too stupid to catch it."

"Cheater!" Hidan shouted.

"You're just being a sore loser." Naruto said. He held his right hand out, and a clone of him emerged from the side of the tree, reaching out to cup over his hand.

A rasengan bloomed into being.

"This time I'm going to take off your head." Naruto said. The completed rasengan came down into Hidan's neck.

I I I

Naruto lifted up Yugito carefully, tucking her head against his shoulder. She was taller than him, so he could barely manage to lift her bridal-style like this; he had an arm wrapped around her back and another in the crook of her knees, but her feet were almost touching the ground, and her arm (the one that wasn't wedged painfully next to his ribs) looked about ready to spill out and drag on the ground or something.

It was tenuous, but he had her. He was relived that her pulse was stronger; it looked like she was just sleeping instead of passed out, now.

"Hey, Yugito-chan." He murmured. "Let's go back, okay? You're safe now."

I I I

AN: Lordy. This chapter seriously just kept getting longer and longer. I didn't even touch on what Kakashi's team did, or anybody else, but it's already like 15k words. Anyway, there's maybe one or two chapters to go, depending on how much it takes to tie up all the loose ends.

Consider Kakuuzu. In chapter 336, he explained that he fought against the Shodai Hokage. At the very least, he survived and presumably escaped under his own power. That puts Kakuuzu in the same league as Madara, who definitely lost to the Shodai when both men were in their prime. That is to say, Kakuuzu is as strong and deadly as Madara. And Kakuuzu doesn't have any sort of doujutsu at all. He's in the same class as Madara and Itachi and Pein, and he doesn't have any sort of fruity eye super-powers.

Also, apparently Hidan's afraid of bears.

Man, I just love writing the Akatsuki. They're so psycho, all the time. I also like to imagine they're tremendously high maintenance people, really bad at getting along with others. That's why it takes them like three years to accomplish anything. I bet Pein named himself after the stress-migraines he got herding these cats.

And yeah, I'm spelling it "Pein," not "Pain." I know I've been led astray by crappy scanlations before and subconsciously insisted on wrong spellings without knowing it (Tsunande, anyone?) but I just, I just can't call him "Pain." Every single time I type that, I just giggle because Prince Humperdink says "Alright, Alright, a fight to the death. Let's just get on with it, already!" And Wesley says, "No! We fight to the Pain!" And there's the Leader of Akatsuki, just standing there looking ominous.

Hey, that would be a pretty good omake