Derecho

They’ve been traveling for three weeks.

Not nearly so bad as three years, but the nervous tension radiating off of Sasuke never once wavered. It made Naruto feel like they’d been shlepping through Lightning’s mountainous forests for three months versus three weeks. Even all of his cajoling couldn’t cheer the brooding teen, and honestly Naruto was a bit offended on his own behalf.

But, they’d finally found their Uchiha’s wayward brother.

Team 7 had followed every clue, ran down every lead, and once they’d been put on the right track Sakura’s Coyote summons took care of the rest. Tracking Itachi through the wilds of Lightning country. The trail eventually led them to a ramshackle tea house built on a high cliff at the dead end of a thin, winding mountain trail. The tea house was run by a single old grandpa and his ten year old granddaughter, the crooked building barely big enough to hold three small tables with the small porch outside holding one extra.

Places like these were fairly common, small waypoints in the middle of seemingly nowhere. Meant more for lone travelers, and wandering shinobi than merchants or any kind of regular business.

Team 7 frequented quite a few establishments like these when they were with Jiraiya. Everything from lone bars, small brothels, and on one occasion a public bathroom all existing in the middle of nowhere, and usually a front for something.

They’d never been to this particular establishment before, but Naruto knew from his own, small network, that the old man who ran this tea house doubled as a black market doctor. Higurashi Yamato wasn’t a trained Medi nin, but he was an infamous herbalist and apparently his young granddaughter had a large enough chakra core to begin learning Mystical Palm.

But, Naruto is getting off track. They’re here for Sasuke, who’s here for Itachi and judging by the look on the older Uchiha’s face the missing nin was not expecting them to be here.

It’s subtle, the expressions on an Uchiha’s face, but Naruto has had years to get used to their emoting patterns. It’s in the slight widening of his eyes, the tensing of his lips, the way long fingers forcibly relax around his teacup.

It’s in the way Itachi’s eyes scream in horror and anguish, the voices buried beneath a chilling mask.

‘Why are you here?’ They demand, ‘I left you behind to live.’ They declare.

Similarly beside him Sasuke has frozen too, almost like he can’t quite believe that they actually found his brother.

The giant, blue, man crammed in across the table from Itachi watches the two Uchiha’s stunned stare off. Amusement dancing in shark like eyes.

“Give us some space.” Sasuke’s request is quiet, but is nearly a shout in the tense silence of the tea house.

At the small table Itachi gives a subtle nod to his blue companion, the big man rolling his eyes amusedly but listening to the silent request.

Sakura sets a hand on Sasuke’s shoulder giving him a reassuring squeeze, her hand is pointedly not on the hilt of her sword.

“We‘ll be right outside.”

Naruto and Sakura turn and follow the blue man out to the small porch and the whipping, cold winds of the mountain side. Temporary truce agreed upon with both of their companions having their family reunion inside.

“…”

“…”

“…so…why are you blue? Is it like a skin condition, or a bloodline? Or…”

Naruto kicks Sakura right in the shin, aghast, and knows that her leg is still tender from that fucking centipede bite weeks ago. Sasuke had refused to treat it beyond handling the venom, stating that ‘Idiots who couldn’t pay attention to their surroundings would learn faster through suffering their consequences.’

“Sakura! You can’t just ask someone why they’re blue!”

“But, Naruto—!”

“What if it was a sensitive topic!”

The blue man laughs, deep and loud and startled.

“You kids are weird.”

_______

Mayu and Gaara make it to Suna’s wall just in time for the second bomb to go off. The teens stumble momentarily as the ground shakes, fire and sand flaring high above the walls visible from where they’re standing. Gaara forces them up and over the wall with a gout of sand, the two going airborne for just a few moments.

It’s enough to take in the damage already dealt to Suna.

What once was a bustling square, filled with people and colors and food and fabrics, has been reduced to rubble. Homes, and businesses turned to ash and rubbish, leveled and scorched. Mayu can sense, even now, flickering chakra signatures buried in the rubble. Most are too small to be shinobi, and many flicker and die even now, leaving empty black splotches stained over her senses.

The two Jounin land on a still standing building, taking off at a run.

There, hovering high above the ruined village is the perpetrator, standing on some kind of bird like creature. A summon maybe?

A flash of light, briefly illuminating the shadowed figure atop the odd bird, before it falls plummeting towards the village below.

“Gaara!” Mayu wastes no time and leaps into the air, lightning sparking through her legs as she flies up. Gaara flings sand forward and up, encapsulating the falling bomb and capturing the resulting explosion before it can touch the village. Mayu continues past the explosion, shielded by Gaara’s sand and leaping from his provided platforms when she runs out of momentum.

Out here, in the middle of the dry, arid desert it’s harder to call to her Storms. Muted, lacking, like trying to draw blood from a stone. When she opens the gates it takes precious seconds for the water to flow, and it’s not nearly so much as it should be. Her Storms will always be hers, blessings from her mother and strengthened through her fathers training, but Amaterasu has always harbored a deep dislike for the Storm Kami; and there is no stronger presence in the desert than the Sun.

It’s a dangerous, but small, weakness that usually wouldn’t bother Mayu. She hadn’t been expecting to face something like this though, and though the Storm’s Blood flows and sings as it always does, the celestial pull from the heavens is nothing more than a distant tug.

Mayu will just have to make up the difference with her own chakra. Her vast pool of energy not nearly so endless as the breadth of the skies, but it certainly rivals it.

With the combining forces lightning finally floods her, her skin alighting in an eerie glow.

Light flares as she flings her Tanto into the air. Illuminating the man on the bird briefly, a teen not much older than herself, and cutting close to the bomber. Strands of long blond hair fluttering away into the chilled, desert night.

The Seals on her gloves and Tanto flash purple, dragging them together and herself the rest of the way up and into the bomber’s face. The shinobi dodges her first strike, but not her blade running through his side as it tries to make it back to her. His pained shout is short but angry, and Mayu flips over his retaliating kick, grabbing hold of her sword in his back, and finishes carving a slice out of his side.

They exchange a flurry of blows that furiously illuminates the skies around them. Mayu, reinforced with her Nature, parries and trades blows with the attacking nin. Slicing through the explosions produced from his hands, a clay like substance wrapped around his fingers, and sending fire and lightning careening through the night sky. The very air around them shaking in the wake of their bloody light show.

The shinobi, a missing nin from Iwa by the headband beneath his swaying bangs, is very fast but it’s obvious that he’s not meant for close combat. Already his strength is flagging, blows growing sloppy and slow. Meanwhile Mayu has only barely begun, her stamina and speed has always been her greatest weapon. She can beat Uncle Gai in a race now, without her Nature backing her, a feat not even her dad is capable of.

Mayu flips over a, frankly insulting, low kick and nails the missing nin right in his injured side. Lighting arcs off her form, searing through the missing nin as he’s sent flying off his bird and through the rubble of the destruction he’s created.

Mayu lands some feet away from the downed terrorist, gathering in her Storms, pulling her lightning to wreath around her. Her Nature sparks, leaping across the ground and into the air, snapping hungrily. Mayu can feel Gaara somewhere behind her, can see sand slither and swirl across the ground, and through the air, all around her.

‘I am with you,’ it says, silently, ‘I will fight with you.’

Before her the missing nin is dragging himself to his feet, minute tremors, after shocks, jerking through him. Mayu notices his billowing cloak for the first time. It sways around him, black emblazoned with red clouds. Megumi warned her of the this, of them.

Akatsuki.

Anger fills her, and it flares her Nature brighter, higher. They’re here for Gaara, and they won’t have him.

“Look at you!” His voice is hoarse, exposed eye bright and wild. “You’re beautiful!”

What.

His arms spread as if to encompass her whole being. “You! You are art, true art! Explosion and decay, fleeting beauty there and gone in fire and blood!” He laughs, manic and crazed, delighted in something Mayu doesn’t want to understand.

Her ear piece, forgotten in the heat of battle, crackles to life and Genki’s panicked voice filters into her ear.

“We’ve encountered and engaged Akasuna no Sasori outside the wall! Megumi says you must be facing off against Deidara, he says to watch out for his clay art it can animate and explode at his will-“ Muffled shouting takes over for a moment, the unmistakable sound of flesh being sliced through.

“—Fuck! Whatever you do don’t let him unstitch the mouth on his chest, it lets him disintegrate anything!” With that last, ominous warning the line goes dead.

Disintegration. Does not sound like fun.

Mayu smiles, all fang and bloodlust, and above them storm clouds finally begin to gather. Thin and trailing, but still black and angry.

She won’t give him the chance.

…

Mayu flies, Gaara’s sand flies right beside her.

The Suna nin stays on the ground, stance firm and unmoving, as the missing nin and Mayu fly and fight thorugh the sky and the village. Gaara’s own physical conditioning may have grown by leagues, but he’s not fool enough to think he can keep up with Mayu in her element. She is the sky above them as much as he is the sand beneath their feet, he knows where his strength will best be utilized.

His Element covers her, shielding her from explosions that she wouldn’t be able to dodge. Pulling her out of the way from diving and swooping clay birds, giving her footholds and platforms spiraling through the sky. Anytime the missing nin tries to lose her in the tight maze of Suna’s buildings Gaara brings the ground up to roof level, forcing him back into the air.

He takes any open shot he can get to, slicing into skin at every chance, slowly whittling down his stamina, his power.

Gaara feels a dark satisfaction curl through him as he succeeds in snaring both of the missing nin’s arms, sand curling tight around his limbs.

“Sand Coffin.”

The missing nin yells in pain as his arms are crushed beyond repair, blood spurting between the shifting grains of sand, the crunch of bone loud in the silent night sky. Mayu kicks off his platform of sand, twisting through the air as if guided by the wind itself. Her blade burns white, it’s ever present trail of lightning lengthening, gaining shape. A glowing, pure white dragon comes into existence, twisting through the air and guided by Mayu’s blade.

It roars and it’s the the sound of clashing thunder, and burning lightning. Mayu roars alongside it, her voice the heralding storm.

She nearly gores the missing nin, blood bursting forth briefly coating her silver hair and splattering her clothes, before the wound is cauterized by her blazing dragon. Light flaring through the missing nin so brightly it spills through his eyes.

The missing nin was right, Mayu is beautiful. But it’s not for him to appreciate.

_______

Genki has been poisoned and damn it if this isn’t an uncomfortable call back to the damn chunnin exams.

He can feel the poison burning through him, stealing his breath, making his vision shake and hands tremble. Agony jerks his limbs, and he can’t concentrate long enough to pull his shadows around himself. Soon Genki wont be able to move at all, won’t be able to do anything but suffer through agony, paralyzed.

Fuck. Fuck!

A short distance away Megumi plows through Sasori’s Puppet Army, shattering the weaponized dolls beneath his fists. Harsh fists blowing sizable craters in the sands surrounding them, destroying multiple puppets with each swing. Soon Sasori won’t have any puppets left, one hundred wooden soldiers suddenly seeming like a small number in the face of Megumi’s brand of destruction.

The legendary puppeteer is starting to get desperate, he’s not meant for close combat, and Sai is pressing his every advantage. With Megumi taking on the Puppet Army Sai had quickly closed in on Sasori, and was supposed to be getting support from Genki. Until a lucky shot with that bastards weird metal tail successfully poisoned Genki, quickly rendering him useless.

Well, at least Sai seems to be ok. The palest Hatake is pushing his bloodline to the limit, giant, inky hands scrawling across the very air to bat aside the floating structures of poisoned metal. Ink Beasts attacking the puppet of the Nidaime Kazekage, the teen pressing his advantage to go for Sasori himself.

For all that Sasori is an S ranked missing nin, he’s still a puppeteer and not the best suited fighter for close combat. Sai on the other hand was first trained by Root, and then taught further by the much more capable hands of the Godaime Hokage. His sister is Mayu, and Sai is apparently responsible for her being so good with her Tanto now.

All this to say, Sasori is pretty fucked, and he knows it too. He’s desperate, and a cornered animal is an unpredictable one.

Genki gasps as his knees finally give out, and he collapses to the ground the world spinning around him.

Fuck.

…

Sai feels the dark little monster in him croon when he finally runs his sword through Akasuna no Sasori’s heart.

What’s left of the human blood in Sasori’s body drips from his wooden mouth, lacquered eyes rolling in their sockets as they stare up at him stunned, angry, desperate. Of course he’s desperate, anyone willing to go to such lengths just to preserve their own existence would fear their own demise.

Sai has no time to relish his win, he must get back to Mayu. His little sister is facing a terrorist bomber, and their uncle was supposed to be attending a meeting in the village that’s just been partially leveled.

The puppet barks a harsh laugh.

“You may have killed me, but I still won.” Sai feels first confusion run through him, then fear freeze him when he spies the paper seal clutched in the wooden mans hand. It’s a detonation seal, but not for a paper bomb. It looks custom made.

Sasori’s eyes go vacant right after the seal is set, the paper burning away as its function is complete.

Within the village walls Mayu’s nature flares so brightly it near burns across his senses. Her Lightning Snake going off with a deafening roar, defeating the other Akatsuki agent.

The sky goes terribly dark, seconds later the ground shakes an oddly muffled explosion piercing the night air. Plumes of purple smoke flood the village, visible from above the walls. Even from here Sai can smell the metallic tang of poison, thick and terrible.

No.

Horror wells within him, then wrath. Mayu is still in that village, as is their uncle.

No!

Sai slams his hands together into a familiar flurry of hand signs, and Summons Isao an excitable Jack Russel Terrier and his fastest messenger.

“Go! Get to father and tell him what happened here, tell him we need back up! The village has been poisoned!”

Isao barks once and poofs away, and Sai—

Sai doesn’t know what to do.