THE PUNISHMENTS OF THE MIND
TSUBASA NOA
“What?” Obito snarled at me, clearly reacting to my sudden glee. “What?”
“You’re an idiot, that’s what!” I laugh at him, teeth bared. “I’m a wanted woman, you douchebag.”
The murderer (hypocritical insult, I know, but still) just glares at me, clearly still not understanding.
“Fun fact about me,” I inform him cheerfully, digging my sai deeper into his chest. “I’m not some nomad. I’m a Tsubasa. I’m Tsubasa Noa.”
Dawning comprehension. Now he was getting it.
“And Tsubasa,” I continue with glee. “Are notorious for positively reeking. Comes with how much chakra I put out. Half the reason that Kakashi realized that I was a Tsubasa to begin with, cuz I stank.”
Obito snarled.
“Yeah, yeah – get it out,” I grin sunnily at him. “So yeah, you’re a moron. Because I may look different than I did when I defected, but I still act the same. Approach problems the same, fight the same. And I still smell the same. So when rumours about the Fukushuu no Megami begin to spread like an Amaterasu based wildfire, where do you think the trail’s gonna lead?”
Now he looked worried. Hid it pretty well, though.
“You won’t be alive to see it,” He growled, threatening, and honestly he had no idea where her priorities were.
“Nope!” She shook her head, unphased. “And that’s okay! You know why? Because I’m going to kill you, Uchiha Obito, so my older brother doesn’t have to. Sound fun?”
So she wound back her arm, sai at the ready, and dropped the Mangekyo as she stabbed.
NARA SHIKAMARU
They reached the Mountain’s Graveyard in less than ten minutes, Kakashi plowing ahead with his nose in the air.
The corridors are rank and dark, and the smell of decaying plant matter is heavy in the air. Naruto immediately begins to spit out clone after clone, searching the place, and within a minute the blonde seal master gives a shout, the original beckoning us to a deeper layer of the base.
The statue was hideous.
It was towering and feral, and looked somehow mixed between being carved or grown. It was easily as large as one of Tsunade or Naruto’s boss summons, but rather than it being intimidating …
It just made me furious.
Kaguya and chakra and the Ten Tales and gods know what else were the reason Noa was gone.
His stupid, sacrifical girlfriend just had to be the savior. Just had to take on the burdens that no one else would.
He was going to kill her.
“How do we destroy it?” Shikamaru heard Sasuke ask from beside him, and he forced himself to take a calming breath as Tenzo responded.
“According to Noa, all we should need to do is release the trapped bijuu – and they should be able to finish the job for us.”
Release a bunch of tailed beasts. Walk in the park, this was.
Then a plant man – Zetsu – appears and peels into two –
Murderous rage on their half-formed faces,
TSUBASA NOA
Obito dodges, because of fucking course he does.
But I expected him to, and was more focused on making sure he forgot that he was in control of the mindscape – or, more accurately, that he had taken control of my mindscape.
I just needed to take it back again.
Thank you Ino, and your family’s shitty security system.
Okay, it wasn’t that shitty – but I was determined.
See, the thing that Obito doesn’t realize about mindscapes is that getting into one is easy. Child’s play – literally, because Yamanaka can literally do it as children. It’s maintaining control that’s difficult.
Because the mindscape is mine. It is made of me. And when you enter a mindscape without permission and lose the control you impress on it …
Well, not many Yamanaka live to tell the tale. Or keep enough brain cells to.
I can see the moment that he realizes that he’s lost control. It probably had something to do with the gun I pulled from behind a couch cushion and the bullet I then lodged between his ribs.
Yeah. My mindscape, my rules.
He roars wordlessly, anger and frustration and a modicum of fear about not being able to get out. Uchiha or not, he had nothing on me. My mind was a fortress.
It had to be.
He charges me, and the bullets I let fly lose the element of surprise as he dodges them one after another. Useless, I dissolve the gun and pull a riot baton, charged with electricity and swung to meet his torso.
He blocks with his arm. He immediately regrets it.
He jumps back, and I discard the baton and form a Squareness Gun – but it’s too similar and he dodges before I can carve a rectangle out of his chest.
“What is this?” He snarls, and I smirk with satisfaction as a lightsaber forms in my hand, perfectly balanced. “What are you doing?”
“What, the almighty Uchiha doesn’t know?” I snark, bringing the singing purple blade forward into a two handed grip. “I’m killing you.”
And with a lunge and a single blow, I do.
He chokes as Samuel L Jackson’s – Mace Windu’s – lightsaber killed him, his arms and torso skewered, rendered useless by George Lucas’ imagination.
I switch it off. He drops.
And I’m thrown out of my mindscape.
UCHIHA SASUKE
With a final blow, Black Zetsu goes down. With a final flare of chakra, it goes up into flames.
“Where is she?” Shikamaru snarls, adrenaline pumping and nostrils flared. “Kakashi –”
“Gone,” Is his sensei and taicho’s short, clipped reply.
And it’s not good enough.
“What do you mean gone?” Naruto asks, teeth gritted as he sends out a dozen clones to disintegrate the statue. “How can she be gone?”
“He trail stops cold,” Kakashi answers, teeth bared behind his mask. “And – and Obito’s, too. Just gone.”
“Kakashi,” Sasuke caught the Hatake’s attention, mind racing. “Kakashi, your eye. Your eye.”
The silver haired Jonin’s breath caught, and with a flare of chakra he’s gone.
But not before Shikamaru grabbed his arm and got dragged along to the pocket dimension with him.
NOA
So she was dying, then.
The unnatural chill of the dimension’s stone pillars pressed into her back, making her shiver. Or, well maybe it was just the chakra exhaustion.
Probably the chakra exhaustion.
But she presses herself up, using her forearms to lever herself up and turn. Forces herself to crawl towards the limp body beside her.
Obito’s eyes were vacant, empty. Distruction inside one’s mind left one crippled mentally. Even if he did wake up, one day, he would never be the same.
But she couldn’t allow that.
She sat up, sat back on her heels. Pulled a kunai with a shaking hand, pulled back her hand.
Cuts his throat. Carves out his eyes. Rams it through his ribs to his heart. Again to his brain.
It was over.
Her hand goes numb, and she fumbles the knife. Then she’s falling forward, and she has to push herself off of Obito’s corpse and roll to the side, nearly falling off the edge to who-knows-where.
She was out of chakra.
She was dying.
Odd, really. How once upon a time she lived without chakra. How so often she wished – she prayed – that she could go back to a time when chakra was just a storytelling tool in a manga series she read once or twice.
And now she had her wish. She had no chakra.
And it was killing her.
She …
She just hoped that Shikamaru was happy.
She just wanted everyone to be happy.
NARA SHIKAMARU
Disorientation is the first thing that hits.
The second thing was the smell of blood.
He whips around, Kakashi in sync with him, and several pillar-esq platform formations away –
He sushins over, not really thinking about how fuckty physics might be in alternate dimensions. But even that thought is on a back burner, because Noa is right there and there’s blood everywhere and if she dies he’s gonna kill her.
Kakashi makes a sound. Somewhere between a strangled sob and a cry and shout – and he’s not looking at Noa. He’s looking at the mutilated corpse beside him – the mangled body of Uchiha Obito.
Dead.
And Kakashi was mourning, and a part of him respected that, but Noa was right there and goddamnit the Hatake needed to get his goddamn priorities straight.
“Noa,” He shook her shoulder, a faint flicker of iryojutsu flaring to life between his fingers – leaching into her rib cage. “Noa.”
She doesn’t even flinch at the invasion. Doesn’t breath.
“Noa, no –” He realizes that he’s shaking. “Noa …”
“Shikamaru, we need to go,” Kakashi grabs him – wrapping a firm hand around his upper arm. “Shikamaru, we need to go –”
“I’m not leaving her!” He screams in the older jonin’s face. Screams to defy the world because he was not leaving her.
Not again.
“Hold her close and come on,” Kakashi orders him, and with another rip at his navel they flicker between dimensions again.