Peace for Traitors

The jinchuuriki is a dichotomous creature by its very nature, as both human and demon personalities must exist side by side, simultaneously expressed, instead of in a mixed state of compromise as one would recognize in a hanyou. The strengths of the demon vessels are profound, but what many scholars fail to recognize is that their weaknesses are equally pervasive and that the creature is, in many ways, quite fragile. Just as the jinchuuriki shares energy among its mates, so too does it borrow energy from them; a delicate state of homeostasis susceptible to any perturbation of either individual's chakra. Thankfully for the creature, subordinates are astoundingly tough and most direct assaults against their energetic anatomy usually fail. This is not, however, to say that in an inborn vulnerability cannot be exploited. Though rare, there are some recorded cases of jinchuuriki mated to an individual with a pre-existing chakra abnormality that were sickened or even maimed by it in place of their subordinate. From this, the only conclusion that can be drawn is that the unnatural chakra sharing between an elemental demon vessel and its mates is a bidirectional pathway that can be modulated, but not halted.

-Koumyuo Sanzo, Lives and Habits of Far Eastern Demons

Hiashi watched the miserable cowards slip away, always the moment his back was turned, hiding like the ungrateful little children they were and running off into the night to follow his wayward, traitorous daughter. The Hyuuga leader grit his teeth, the sharp hurt of their betrayal almost choking the air away from his lungs, suffocating him. Even Hanabi, the fiercer and far more pragmatic of his offspring, chose to follow her sister on the path of cowardice and for what? Some bizarre and clearly misplaced sibling loyalty? Love between sisters who should, by all logic, hate each other? He did not understand. Hanabi and Hinata were rivals, just as he and Neji's father had once been, set at odds from birth for the sake of producing the strongest patriarch. Hiashi always anticipated that the two girls would try to kill each other one day since they couldn't be married, as would have been the case if one were a male heir. A match between them was expected and even encouraged in order to establish the next generation of clan leadership. Instead his daughters collaborated against him, the pathetic little bitches, joining forces on the eve of what would be the clan's most difficult battle since antiquity to seed dissention in his troops.

Desertion was inexcusable, but that they even had the gall to leave in the first place was more than shocking, something he'd never even considered as a possibility. He scowled. The clan had somehow become weak, easily misled, a situation he would remedy immediately. With a hiss, Hiashi turned back to his rapidly thinning troops and quickly performed the gesture for the curse mark at the first soldier he noticed twitch. With an agonized shriek, the man crumpled into the snow with a heavy thud of flesh and armor hitting stone, holding his forehead in both hands as if he could pull the mark off his face by force.

"To those who think to betray us, who would betray our clan, THIS is your fate!" Hiashi snarled and a wave of shocked muttering spread through the assembled ranks.

The soldier, Hiashi wasn't even entirely sure who it was, writhed like an eel in the snow and screamed over and over again until his voice was raw. He let the torture go on, watching the spectacle with frigid indifference. Many years had passed since the Hyuuga royal house used the curse-mark for anything more than a cursory reprimand, a brief reminder of a servant's place usually more than sufficient to command obedience, but an example needed to be made. Hiashi let the mark burn, let the man keep screaming, pleased by the sounds of shock and terror echoing through his troops. Desertion was a crime and the same fate awaited any one of them foolish enough to try. Perhaps he'd been too lenient. The younger branch house members might not even know what happened to a person in whom the curse mark was activated and simply left that way, but the time had come to remind them, old and young alike.

"My Lord! He's my brother! Please!" A veteran in the far left ranks cried, falling to his knees.

"Desertion is a serious offense. The same fate waits for all the others, my foolish daughters included. Watch carefully before you decide you want to think for yourselves." Hiashi said coldly.

"No! Please!"

"Watch." Hiashi hissed.

The wailing was already beginning to sound more like the cries of an animal, frenzied and endless, squealing with raw agony. Someone in the front vanguard feinted with a soft thump onto the ground, lost among the rows of startled faces. The cursed man's hands stiffened, turned inward like a raptor's claws in rigor mortis, the first indication that his brain was beginning to suffer irreversible damage. His eyes rolled back in his head and he jerked, seizing in earnest against the unforgiving parade ground stones, body beating rhythmically like a dove caught in an electric snare. He bit through his tongue, gagging on the blood, gore spraying through the snow and his brother several lines back shrieked in helpless horror. Hiashi crossed his arms. Soon, he knew, the seizure would stop and then the little traitor would do what all of them did in the end. He hoped the gruesome spectacle would be enough to compel loyalty in the others, a pity such barbarism was necessary, but sometimes ugly things had to be done.

"Stop! Stop! He'll die!" Someone cried, one of the younger soldiers.

"I will not stop. The punishment for betrayal is absolute," Hiashi snarled, "So learn the lesson well."

The man on the ground finally stopped shaking, wheezing noisily as he gasped for enough air to scream again, his body a sweaty, panting wreck, but the pain never stopped. The curse-mark couldn't be stopped , not unless Hiashi chose to stop it, so the agony would only continue, never waning, until the ultimate conclusion of the curse. Barely conscious, teeth chattering eerily in the otherwise oppressive silence, the Hyuuga soldier raised himself up onto quivering arms. Hiashi knew what would come next, he'd seen it once before, but the Hyuuga leader refused to stop the mark. He could not compromise, not now.

"Oh Kami! No! Nooo!" His brother wailed, trying to push through the crowd, but it was already too late.

With another broken shriek, the nameless, unlucky, Hyuuga common soldier surged forward to smash his own forehead savagely against the icy stones. Blood sprayed from the wound in a steaming spurt, and he collapsed for a moment from the force of the blow, but Hiashi knew he wasn't done yet. Someone screamed from the assembled ranks as, weaving like a drunkard, the man raised himself up only to dash his own gushing skull against the ground again. Hiashi watched, refusing to close his eyes, as the man did it again and again, breaking his own desperate head open like a ripe melon against the rock rather than endure the agony of the curse-mark. The sick squelching of fractured bone and ruptured flesh was the only sound after a while, the awful wailing silenced in place of it. He beat himself to death, right there before the eyes of every Hyuuga warrior still assembled, gasping one last rattling breath just as bright flames erupted to the east.

Hiashi turned just in time to catch the full roar of the explosion in his left ear as billowing flames surged up in brilliant, orange waves from the main gate entrance, the heat palpable even several yards away as Naruto's initial assault began in earnest. Hiashi cursed, the main gate into Konoha was the entrance most lightly defended. People were already streaming toward the center of the compound, trying to beat out the clinging flames on their clothes as they ran, and the sound of steel meeting steel rang out through the night. Hiashi neatly stepped over the oozing corpse and into the midst of his forces, trying to gain a better vantage point for the molten destruction hurtling towards the center of the formation. Naruto had chosen to fight him head to head through the main gate, in full view of the Konoha public, just like the fucking barbarian he was!

Ear still ringing with the swan song of his own, dying hearing ability, Hiashi turned to his troops, gesturing tersely for the formation to move and reform into a tighter position. Bodies churned, moving softly through the snow, as more soldiers from the main entrance fell back to join the central offensive structure, trying awkwardly to integrate in the already shifting formation. Hiashi barked orders to his commanders and the night was suddenly alight with chakra pulses carrying his commands to the rest of the soldiers watching with the Byukugan. They were moving, but barely fast enough and he needed to direct the point of their defense towards Naruto's initial assault. The frightened soldiers shuffled, their training pulling feet and arms into a smooth front guard positions through muscles memory alone until a solid wedge of spears was formed up along the narrow alleyway leading to the main gate.

The jinchuuriki was powerful, but he was subject to the same laws of engagement as any other opponent and the narrow pathway through the houses, specifically designed to bottle-neck an invader in a siege, would slow him considerably. Already, Hiashi could see the clones, each a perfect replica of their master and masked with in the stylized red and white likenesses of foxes, surging over the tops of his buildings in a black wave of energy made matter. If Sasuke's clones were tough, he could only assume that Naruto's would be nearly as durable as true flesh, but now the Hyuuga forces were fighting on their own home territory, backed against the wall and fueled by the frenzy of desperation. The only piece left to ensure victory was probably still sitting in a semi-catatonic daze on the floor of his main reception chamber. The poor, unlucky mongrel still bleeding into the snow would not be the only person to die at his own hands tonight, which was doubly unfortunate. The Hyuuga clan leader swore in silence that he would make Naruto pay for forcing him to do such awful, savage things, but Hiashi would have victory, no matter the cost.

"Bring my nephew." He ordered, crossing his arms as the swirling inferno engulfed the gatehouse.

"He's sure to disobey you." Bunta warned, moving up to stand at Hiashi's right.

"That is to be expected, but I have ways of subduing him." Hiashi replied.

"My Lord, he's useless…" The commander closest to his elbow hedged.

"No weapon is useless until it's destroyed completely." Hiashi said softly, almost to himself.

OoOoOoO

Naruto's clones tittered amongst one another, filling the air with a strange sort of whispered racket that set Sasuke's teeth on edge, always saying a variation of the same thing and just different enough to be distracting. They climbed and tumbled everywhere, their movements too erratic for the stunned Hyuuga forces to anticipate, chittering like a horde of possessed locusts and consuming everything in their path. They were occupied with searching for Neji, whether Naruto willed their directive to be that way or not, constantly whispering about him as they tore the Hyuuga compound apart. Sasuke watched, readying his own forces to move once Naruto's vanguard carved a path. Overhead, his winged clones circled, occasionally screaming with his own unsaid eagerness and bloodlust. Sasuke reveled in the destruction, enjoying the crackling of burning buildings and ringing of steel in combat far more than he knew he should. Even locked safely away by the thrall, the Seal was not dead, and it stirred sickeningly within him with every movement of his specialized clones, seeking blood. The despair he felt before, the awful realization that Naruto would be willing to ruthlessly slaughter any warm body in his way was mercifully quieted now. Despair, hope, almost everything was incinerated in the heady rush of adrenaline and the pounding rage of battle and perhaps his alpha had intended it that way from the beginning.

Naruto was far more thoughtful, more strategic, than anyone ever gave him credit for, which was probably why Sasuke was one of the very few people to fight the kitsune and win. The little gold devil had learned long ago to do things his own way, far too inured to doubt, criticism and ridicule to be bothered by something petty like protocol or tradition. Even now, Sasuke knew that the battle was progressing the way his alpha wanted even if it looked, to anyone not intimately knowledgeable about Naruto's state of mind, like utter disorder. The movement of their army was almost comical in its bouncing, rolling, weaving carnage, and the way the clones flung one another into the air was almost ridiculous, but the chaos of it was just a distraction. Sasuke knew better than anyone that this was his alpha's true strength; that what looked like play was, in fact, deadly serious and designed to antagonize a response. Hyuuga would probably fall directly into Naruto's claws like everyone else, underestimating his will, or intelligence or focus just as the blonde intended.

Everything about the jinchuuriki's nature was like this, a rampant maelstrom of conflicting movement hiding a unified intention, and perhaps it was simply a strange hint at what lay within. In the swirling tempest of Naruto's wind and Kyuubi's fire, his alpha lived in a state of energetic dichotomy, his very nature composed of completely separate facets. Sasuke could hardly imagine what internal, instinctual mastery over two elements must feel like, but if Naruto's power was anything similar to what it felt like through the thrall, it was half a miracle the vessel hadn't gone completely insane long ago. Naruto lived in a state of chakra pandemonium the way most people lived in the quiet singularity of their own mind, so it was no surprise that his approach to battle had a tendency towards the absurd.

Absurd or not, their tactics were working, and the Hyuuga forces were falling back in droves, unable to hold a solid line. A group of clones swarmed over the rooftops of the nearest buildings, tearing the very shingles from the structures as they went, revealing the vulnerable wood beneath in readiness for his fire. The Hyuuga soldiers were merely torn to pieces. The masked clones descended on the compound in a wave of white and red faces, each wearing an identical vulpine grin, all the while whispering to each other and to no one.

"Find Neji." They said, the sentiment echoed in a thousand different ways.

"Neji, the traitor, drag him back, drag him back."

"Find Neji! Save him!"

"Save Neji, bring him home…"

"Neji killed Sai…"

"Neji is lost, find him, find him…"

"Neji saved us…"

"Find him…find Neji…"

The eerie echoes of the conflict in his inner thoughts aside, Naruto showed no hesitation in his mastery of the army and the clones tore through both people and buildings like weak rice paper, finding the swiftest path through the compound like a river made of running bodies and pure destruction. Sasuke's clones gnashed their teeth, even the normal, human shaped ones, but the time was not yet ready to release them into the battle. For sheer meat-grinder might, Naruto was stronger, and the longer Sasuke engaged in pitched battle the more of a foothold the Seal would have in him, which put their entire strategy at risk and might eliminate the possibility of reclaiming Neji as well. He sighed. Sakura wanted the Hyuuga back and so did he. The absence of the other man on the field felt hollow somehow, like suddenly being deprived of one's shadow. Sasuke wanted Neji with them, at his side, hands clasped in his own and, even if he denied the sentiment, Naruto clearly felt the same way.

Neji belonged to them, with them, and if he truly was a traitor, Sasuke would simply beat him into submission, tear him apart piece by ragged piece and put him back together until the genius understood that there was no loyalty except to them. The bonds of duty were weak against love and the chains of obligation even more so. Soon Neji would see the truth of his existence; that being loved by Naruto freed him from all other bindings and that it was the kind of love no one could escape from for the sake of petty things like filial clan guilt. Sasuke closed his eyes, taking a breath, trying for another measure of patience and control. Soon, soon he would be upon the field as well, but not yet. Naruto was the club of their attack and he was the blade, better suited for a single target instead of mass amounts of wanton destruction. Sasuke agreed with the plan, it was his plan, but the waiting was grating on him more than the raven wanted to acknowledge.

Though silent, his army was far more agitated, moving about in milling circles, scraping blades against their hands in hungry readiness for the bloodshed yet to come. Every crunch of burning wood and agonized scream set Sasuke's nerves on edge, bringing the tingle of half-mad laughter to his lips. Time was precious and for all he knew, Neji might already be dead. If he was, any hope of reclaiming Naruto's sanity was probably dead along with him and Konoha would be ruled by a pitiless warlord instead of the sunny, benevolent titan he'd married. Either way, Sasuke supposed that those who deserved to be punished would be. The only one he hurt for was Naruto and the hurt was merely an echo now, a whisper in the typhoon of the building eagerness for death already sizzling in his blood.

He would find Neji or he would find his corpse, either way, the Hyuuga would be reclaimed in whatever way the gods allowed. If he was alive, Sasuke would make sure that he never wandered again. The raven was not afraid to inflict pain, pain was a tool he understood well, and sometimes a man needed to be shattered before he could be healed. Sasuke would shatter Neji if it meant having him back in his arms, he'd break him a hundred thousand times over and pound the truth of it into his flesh so that he, too, could be a prisoner of love. The gilded cage Naruto had built for him was the only salvation the once-Uchiha had ever known and the peculiarity of being saved was that Sasuke firmly believed that another person could be as well. Neji deserved to be saved as much as any of them did.

The battle was slowly climbing to a steady thrum of violence as Naruto's clones bashed like a hammer through the meager organized shield walls and into the first formal courtyards. There were traps everywhere, the deafening explosions sending bodies flying and not all of them were made of chakra and willpower either. The Hyuuga suffered in their own arcade as much as they'd suffered in his, but that was how Hiashi fought. The old tiger had bodies to spare, so of course he laid traps even beneath the feet of his own troops, the ass. Sasuke sincerely hoped that Naruto would allow him to be the one to kill Hiashi. If he did, Sasuke would destroy him slowly and make it the kind of death only Orochimaru could have matched for pain and humiliation, the kind that made a person's soul hurt into the afterlife and beyond. He smiled and the expression was not one Sakura would have liked.

Sending a thought and a brief gesture to his clones above, Sasuke generated wind, using the air to clear the field of smoke, debris and other poisonous hazes so that he could track Naruto's progress and prepare for his own initial assault. Not surprisingly, Naruto's clones had been heavily culled. The purpose of kage no bunshin was originally to spring traps before a ninja ever set foot onto a course and they performed the task beautifully, spreading like waves through the Hyuuga streets and triggering every device they could find. Snares, blades, poison mist, bombs, pits and darts pinged through the clones, striking only smoke or neatly dodged. The control Naruto had over them was astonishing, each clone mimicking his own reflexes as if each and every shadow was one of his own limbs instead of a conjured illusion.

Naruto himself was already swathed in a robe of swirling flame with two of his nine tails coiled almost luxuriantly about his shoulders, eyes blazing purple with both concentration and vehemence. Sasuke did not believe in god, but if he did, the being would probably pale in comparison to his alpha. For a bare instant, Naruto turned his violet gaze towards Sasuke in unspoken command, but the black haired murderer was already moving. The time had come and his clones were diving down out of the sky before Naruto even moved, the intention somehow ringing through the thrall the instant the jinchuuriki even thought to convey it. Sasuke laughed as he directed them into a swirling storm of death, fuel for the fire already kindling in his belly.

The flames grew, hot and deep inside his body where the chakra slowly solidified, becoming a concentrated force with enough power to incinerate anything except the careful chakra bubble caged around it. The key to fire manipulation was to be utterly fearless, to accept that the very element of one's weapon could turn in the next moment and destroy the wielder's body, and to revel in the danger instead of retreat. Fear was the farthest feeling from Sasuke's mind. He loved caging the blaze, the challenge of containing so much destructive force a bare whisper away from his own, vulnerable organs enough to chase away any other emotions. His clones shrieked from above as Sasuke lowered his mask almost leisurely, smoke curling from his smiling lips in slender tendrils as he chose a target.

Naruto's clones had prepared the path well and there was probably enough dry kindling to burn steadily for a week if the idea was to burn it slowly, but that, of course, was not what he had in mind. Hotter than magma, the inferno grew and Sasuke slowly added motion, creating a swirling vortex. He wanted the flames to have a concentrated direction, but also to spread. The fire within was testing the boundaries of his control, raising his body temperature, but Sasuke held it for a moment longer, pressing hard to achieve even greater density.

When he spat the flames, he could almost feel the savagery of Naruto's approving grin like a caress against his cheek, the jinchuuriki's anger matched, for once, to his own. The fire bloomed like a comet's tail, indigo like the hottest star at the center and trailing blistering red along the edges as it cooled. The monsters in the sky shrieked in rapture. The flames surged, blue with heat and spread like the wings of some mythical beast belched up from the very heart of a volcano, setting the snow clouds alight with scarlet vehemence and then settling to glow a more familiar orange. The buildings on either side of the fire-stream ignited from the heat alone, erupting like bombs on both sides of the narrow corridor, sending the closest squadron of Hyuuga soldiers leaping away in screaming panic. The shrapnel alone was more than enough to kill, but Sasuke contracted his belly and spat another volley into the ravaged compound, this one moving like a missile straight into the faces of Hiashi's vanguard formation.

Men and buildings burned, the air hot enough to feel even several yards from the true theater of battle. Naruto's clones tittered with maddened laughter, waiting anxiously for the molten carnage to cool enough for the next wave of the invasion, their eerie fox masks illuminated by the flames like true demons crouching amongst the corpses. Sasuke gestured, his control not yet instinctual enough to move the clones with thought alone, and the first squad of his foot soldiers rallied with Naruto's waiting forces to form a perfect Morningstar formation. They moved, sidestepping with inhuman unison just off center so that the entire movement began to spin, moving with the slow power of melted steel towards the shuffling Hyuuga troops. Sasuke scowled with concentration, the movement of the clones almost more than he could bear, but then Naruto was beside him and controlling dozens of immaterial soldiers in one of the most difficult maneuvers ever invented felt easy.

"Your master created the Morningstar." Sasuke said, watching as their chakra shadows began moving up and down in addition to sideways, hurling projectiles over the heads of their own comrades.

"Yes, though he did it with men. That's harder." Naruto said, twitching his tails.

"I'm glad you think so." Sasuke snarled testily, pinching the bridge of his nose as the synchrony of the movement became even more challenging as the clones not throwing darts materialized bladed 5 point shuriken.

"Just hold it a bit longer, it gets easier the faster it moves." Naruto said, just the barest hint of strain in his voice.

"Shut up! You're distracting me!" Sasuke snapped.

The shuriken spun so that the entire formation moved almost like an animal's mouth, a slowly rotating vortex of gnashing teeth moving up and down in rhythmic destruction. Master Jiraiya invented the Morningstar formation to decimate a more numerous opponent guided by a few skilled commanders, grinding away soldiers locked into rigid patterns, and the maneuver worked superbly. The Hyuuga common soldiers were too distracted by the spinning blades to anticipate the missiles and their main house commanders were sliced away from them with almost laughable ease. The pattern was both complex and muscular, requiring half the soldiers to squat to the ground while shifting to the right in unison while the other half leapt up to launch kunai and arrows. The battle in which master Jiraiya first used Morningstar allowed a company of twenty men to destroy an army of three hundred, but a significant portion of the ninja later died of sheer exhaustion. With clones, there was no such danger, but no one had ever managed enough control over kage no bunshin to attempt it before. The way they were doing this was new, something only a jinchuuriki, and one intimately knowledgeable about Jiraiya's work to boot, could ever manage.

Sasuke grumbled under his breath as the movement slowly became less cumbersome to coordinate, just as Naruto promised. The maneuver was something they could only accomplish together and the vastness of the destruction unleashed was almost more than even Sasuke had ever imagined. Naruto's skill with the bladed shuriken necessary for the maneuver was too amateur to maintain the seamless unity required to move the bladed teeth without lopping off the heads of his own clones and Sasuke could have never managed enough chakra to even try. Together however, together they had made something that neither of their masters could have imagined, a formation of such succinct cruelty and ruthless effectiveness that both men would have been impressed even if neither of them agreed on anything else. The steel teeth of the monster they'd created sawed through the still smoking remains of any buildings still standing between them and Hiashi's main force as well as all three Hyuuga squadrons ostensibly sent to stop them. The killing was almost too easy and the Seal was slowly waking in response to the destruction.

The icy rush of pure evil crawled over his skin and Naruto shifted his eyes to meet his own. The Seal disliked the alien complacency of the look and Sasuke was already gnashing his teeth at the thought of tearing the expression from his alpha's face. The blonde was annoying, too strong, but he wrought such lovely devastation too and that was tempting. The Seal was conflicted, roiling with emotion even as it slowly began seeping into Sasuke's own awareness, the hungry wanting barely dimmed by his iron control.

"I feel…cold." Sasuke whispered, the best warning he could attempt as the writhing beast locked within his blood stirred and rattled its chains.

"Almost there." Naruto whispered, gritting his teeth.

"Naruto…There's so much death…" Sasuke hissed and the sound was closer to the awful thing he kept barely locked in his mind.

"Come on…a bit farther…" Naruto snarled, eyes glued to the clones.

"We're close, we must be! Look how they're tightening the lines instead of merely trying to distract us. It's because Hiashi's in there, commanding him. Let me kill him. Let me kill him." Sasuke asked, gripping Naruto's arm affectionately as the Seal sent another nauseating chill through his blood.

"The commander could be Hinata." Naruto replied, blue eyes as still as a serpent's in the luminous glow of his face.

"I thought you didn't care?" Sasuke quipped, smirking.

"I don't." Naruto said, raising an eyebrow at his tone.

"Then let me have him, please lover? Make a gift of him to me, I want a new toy…" Sasuke chuckled, the Seal too close to ignore as he lathed his tongue against the pulse in Naruto's throat.

"I suppose the prize goes to whoever finds him first. If that's you and whoever else you have in there, it's only fair." Naruto sighed, eyes worried.

"Only fair…" Sasuke echoed, laughing as their formation slashed through another battalion of terrified people.

"I don't care what it takes." Naruto snarled, turning towards him, his eyes burning with some wordless surrender and a little madness as well.

"I'll find him," Sasuke said, grinning like a maniac, "And I'll break him in ways no one has ever even seen before. I won't permit him to die until I've used every nerve, every last fiber, until his soul remembers the pain…"

"Do whatever you like, Teme. Just don't eat him." Naruto said, kissing him and deftly avoiding Sasuke's attempts to bite his tongue.

"Uh…Not even the pieces?!" Sasuke asked the voice of the Seal strong in the breathy groan of disappointment.

"That's the only condition. Do whatever else pleases you, baby. I want him to feel his death into the next reincarnation. Believe it." Naruto growled.

"Let's move onto the next wave then." Sasuke said, almost moaning with the thrilling rush of so much death.

"Send them." Naruto agreed.

The swooping winged clones activated their Sharingan, buoyed by Naruto's endless energy and the burning cold of the wakening Seal, shrieking like vultures circling above a fresh kill. Arching in fiendish grace, they began searching for two chakra signatures. One would be Neji, and Sasuke devoted more than half his forces to the active search for their mate, the hunger in the Seal echoing his own desire for the brunette's return. The Seal rumbled inside his soul, cold and deep, eager. The demonic thing was just as invested in finding Neji as Sasuke was, though not for the same reasons, and Sasuke shivered as he tried to stem the flood of the Seal's desire into something he could manage. He still had control, barely, but it was enough. The rest of the clones began doggedly hunting for Hiashi, flying low over the gathered forces and examining the chakra of each soldier in turn, the chakra of a hundred men filling Sasuke's already burning brain.

"Easy, baby." Naruto cautioned as Sasuke's left eye began to bleed.

"Fuck off, we want them! We want to find them! One for the pain and the other for pleasure, yesss…." Sasuke hissed and continued looking.

Using more than three sharingan clones at a time was well beyond his own limits, simply too much information to sort through, but Naruto's chakra supported him and Sasuke wasn't looking at everything. He glanced from one body to the next, searching for a few key places in the chakra web that would identify the individuals he sought. The difficulty was that the Hyuuga clan soldiers were so close to one another genetically that every person's energy looked almost exactly the same on casual inspection. The technique taxed him, the pain boring into his eyes in a way Sasuke had almost forgotten. Only a few years ago, the sharingan was excruciatingly painful to use any time he employed the technique, but being enthralled to Naruto, the visual talent became as easy as breathing. Sasuke grunted and focused, searching. Only extremely careful breeding could make a hundred people all look so similar, but his own clan used the same strategy and he already knew the way around it. There was one sign, however small, that would surely give him his prey, something he knew how to recognize as readily the sound of his own name. Sasuke had once used the tell to kill his own Master long ago and the extra brightness in the chakra lines at the temples was something that experience taught him never to ignore. Those meridians only grew bright when someone was desperate to win and ready to give anything for victory.

OoOoOoO

Sakura met Tsunade at the gate just as the sky on the north side of town exploded with scarlet light and the muffled booming of explosions close enough to move the air, but still too far away for her to feel the vibration. She frowned. That was Naruto, the blossoming flames arching up into the sky had all the character of massive amounts of chakra expenditure and godlike fury that even Sasuke would be unable to match. The battle was underway and she gasped as another stabbing pain arching through her abdomen. Even as distant as she was, both physically and through the link, the effervescent rage was almost enough to raise her pulse. The second volley of explosions sounded just as the sound of whispering feet came through the trees over-head. Sakura smiled and almost swayed with relief, her sensei was faster than she'd hoped.

Tsunade leapt down from the trees, breathing hard, but still perfectly graceful. Sakura smiled at the godaime hokage as the woman stood, brushing the snow from her shoulders and removing her wide traveling hat with an irate flourish. Tsunade wasn't happy, that was more than obvious from her expression, but she was there and that was all Sakura wanted at the moment. Tsunade was far older than she looked, wise in anything medical or political and, most importantly, she was someone the young matriarch could trust.

"Sakura! What in the hell going on?! Naruto still hasn't invited any kind of diplomatic intervention and…" Tsunade began, her large breasts heaving with the exertion of running all the way from the tower.

"Naruto doesn't know I've called you, but there's nothing you can do to stop it. One of the clans is going to fall tonight and I just need someone to…to…oooh!" She groaned as the pain came again.

"Shit! Is it true labor or just practice contractions?" Tsunade asked, running to her side like a blond flash and putting a hand against her belly.

"I…I don't know, they don't seem regular, but they're certainly strong…" Sakura answered, panting.

"By Kami! And you're supposed to hold off a siege like this?!" Tsunade squawked indignantly, "I'm gonna wring those boys' necks! All four of them!"

"I'm sure they'll be most apologetic…if we all live." Sakura huffed.

"Bloody idiots! Just goes to show that intelligence isn't additive…" Tsunade growled, hiking up her robes and hefting Sakura into her arms as if she weighed nothing.

The girl squeaked in surprise, but she was in no condition to resist her old teacher. Despite the utter indignity of being carried, Sakura was desperately glad that the Hokage was there to help her hold the pieces together. With Tsunade, the frightened young woman knew she could count on both sound advice and medical help, not to mention the comfort of a familiar face beside her. Little things like friends and teachers became exceedingly important when one's husbands were hell-bent on pitched battle against the most well established clan-head in the kingdom. She giggled a little at the sheer magnitude of it all and Tsunade narrowed her eyes in a way that would have meant a 72 hour psychiatric hold for anyone else in the universe. The Hokage shifted Sakura's weight a bit against her shoulder and then hopped lightly onto one of the gate posts for a single moment to observe the fires issuing from the Hyuuga compound.

"Careful, sensei," The girl whispered, "You're not as young as you used to be."

Tsunade scowled ferociously at her, but sprang back down onto the garden path with equal grace, landing with a soft puff of snow and all the indignation of a queen who'd been offered a piece of quartz instead of a diamond. Sakura rolled her eyes. The woman was far too proud to admit anything like weakness even though she was old enough to be Sakura's grandmother and a little concern was certainly appropriate. Being carried by her teacher was strange, and embarrassing, but the girl tried to let go of as much foolish vanity as she could and simply enjoy the comfort of the gesture for what it was. Tsunade carried her back into the house with the kind of maternal authority almost everyone in Konohakagure had learned to fear, but too many years had passed between the two women for Sakura to be intimidated. If anything, she found Tsunade's fierceness soothing and Sakura finally allowed herself to relax a fraction.

The house was dark and creepy, filled with weapons caches and traps, but the Hokage merely wrinkled her nose at the place like Sakura's mother would when she found dust on the shelves. Sakura gestured towards the bedroom and Tsunade moved into the space like she owned it, glaring at the collection of grenades on the bed with obvious disapproval. If Sasuke and Naruto did manage to return in one piece, they were in for one hell of a tirade. Materializing a monkey summons to move the explosives aside with an annoyed flick of her hand, Tsunade put Sakura on the bed and pulled a stethoscope from a pocket in her voluminous kimonos. Without another word of explanation and nothing like an apology, the woman put the ear-pieces in with the smoothness of long, long practice and began listening, her expression weirdly neutral. Sakura fought the urge to fidget.

"Rate and rhythm are both normal." She said at last.

"I could have told you that!" Sakura grumbled.

"Hush, you are in no position for sass! I think we're in the clear, but I'll still have to examine you." Tsunade warned.

"I know." Sakura replied.

"Were you going to tell me at some point that you allowed your little man-harem to fracture your chakra into two completely independent systems feeding your baby separate from the rest of your body or was that supposed to be some kind of surprise?" Tsunade asked testily.

"I haven't been able to leave the compound! Sasuke…" Sakura began.

"Is completely psychotic, but there are some things that women need to tell each other before trying to have a baby!" Tsunade growled.

"Sorry, sensei." Sakura said, doing her best to sound contrite.

"Bah! Young people these days are too independent!" Tsunade huffed, turning around so Sakura could undress.

Sighing, the young woman began undoing the ties of her kimonos with shaking fingers, weirdly nervous even though sensei had once dug an arrowhead out of her left breast and a little pelvic exam was certainly nothing compared to that. So much time had passed since anyone except for her men had touched her and she felt odd, weirdly vulnerable. The Hokage was tapping her fingers impatiently and with one last huff of breath through her nose, Sakura finished and laid back against her pillows, Naruto's scent still clinging faintly to the orange fabric. For a moment Tsunade merely stared at the blank wall, looking at where one of the tapestries should be, saying nothing. Sakura bit her lip and pulled a sheet over her upper body to ward off the chill.

"Are you angry, sensei?" Sakura asked timidly.

"Furious, but not with you, I could never be mad at you for too long." Tsunade replied, chuckling quietly.

"Then…Naruto?"

"No, not even him, not really. Mostly, I'm angry at myself. I knew this would happen, I saw it so clearly, and yet…" She sighed and for once, looked very, very old.

"No one could have known Sai would fall." Sakura offered, trying not to feel uncomfortable about the fact that she was naked in front of her teacher as they talked and as big as a whale.

"What kind of a leader watches her city tear itself apart, and does nothing?" The Hokage asked.

"What could you have done?"

"The worst part is that I don't even know! As Hokage, my hands are tied, I'm absolutely forbidden from interfering with the clans. Even now, clan politics reign supreme. I'd hoped, no maybe even more than hoped, that someday Naruto would be able to change all of it, put the interests of the many ahead of the traditions of a few," She laughed bitterly, "But even he got dragged into their bloody plotting. No one is immune to the bullshit I suppose."

"Naruto tried to remain neutral, we tried everything! Hiashi wouldn't accept peace!" Sakura hissed defensively, drawing her knees up as far as they would go with her belly in the way.

"Hiashi, the old bastard, maybe I should have just killed him myself!" Tsunade growled.

"Maybe, but then you wouldn't be Hokage and we need you to much." Sakura whispered and her old teachers' shoulders finally relaxed.

"Well, either way, we are too busy now to fret about it." Tsunade sniffed, turning to face her at last.

The Hokage moved between Sakura's legs and examined her with the gentleness and proficiency only the most experienced physicians ever achieved, her fingers probing deep enough to hurt, but not as much as the next contraction. She grunted softly with the pain, fighting hard not to tense up. The Hokage pulled a small vial of oil from her sleeve and drew a jutsu on Sakura's belly, which the girl couldn't see well enough to read, but which she assumed performed the same function as an ultrasound. Minutes passed and she began wondering if there were something really wrong as the older woman stared into her uterus to the little life inside. Finally, the Hokage waved her hand and dispelled the energy, sitting back on the edge of the bed with a contemplative sigh.

"Well? Are we okay?" Sakura asked timidly.

"I think so, though I have to confess that I've never seen energy work even remotely as complicated as what you've got going on in there. I assume that has to be the work of Neji Hyuuga and our little resident psychopath since no one else is brilliant enough to figure it out or arrogant enough to pull it off. It's a miracle you lived through the procedure." The Hokage said, shaking her head.

"Is it…is it intact?" Sakura asked timidly.

"Yes, and before you ask,the baby seems to be fine too. The problem is what Naruto's doing, he's drawing too much energy from the thrall and it's causing the energetic web inside you to shift energy from one organ to another too quickly." Tsunade explained.

Sakura fought not to shudder. The thrall always seemed so endless, an ocean of energy that could never be abused or exhausted, but she supposed there must be a limit to everything. If anyone could find a limit to something like the thrall, to himself, that person would certainly be Naruto. Naruto had no conception of his own vulnerability, which was always the problem anyway, but now there was more than just his body at stake. The Hokage stood and removed her gloves, stripping them from her hands at the wrists, her expression closed and a little worried.

"What does that mean?" Sakura asked at last, mostly to have something to say.

"Well, nothing right now. The structure is well constructed and flexible enough to withstand the insult as it is now. The only thing you feel are some disorganized uterine contractions, which are normal in this stage of pregnancy anyway, so I'm not really concerned about your body. The problem is that I'm not sure what will happen if he loses Sasuke or if Hiashi decides to use the curse-mark on Neji. I have no idea what Naruto was thinking sending him back…" Tsunade said, biting her thumb and shaking her head angrily.

"Well, Neji isn't under the thrall and Sasuke's pretty hard to kill. Everything will probably be fine…" Sakura laughed nervously.

"What are you talking about? Of course Neji's under the thrall!" The Gondaime asked, crossing her arms with a huff. Sakura shook her head.

"No, no he's not. Something's wrong with him, with his energy, Naruto tried to put him under a few weeks ago, but nothing happened." Sakura said, sitting up and slipping her under-kimono back on.

She could tell immediately that her answer was not what the Hokage expected to hear. Tsunade stared at her for a few moments, wide eyed and obviously confused before her expression became shuttered again. The Hokage brought her hand to her chin, obviously thinking and Sakura decided that somehow, somewhere, she must have missed something.

"Sensei..."

"What normally happens when he screws one of them?" Tsunade asked instead of answering her, raising a querulous eyebrow.

"Well, nothing I guess, but you of all people should know that the initiation is really different…" The matriarch huffed.

"Sakura, there was no initiation because Neji's already been under the thrall for months. He's been enthralled to Naruto since you performed the chakra transfer, the one done in the hopsital…" Tsunade whispered, eyes firm and intent.

"Wait, what?" Sakura asked, eyes widening.

"When you saved his life after the match with Hinata, you had to give Neji enough energy to restart his heart, enough that the apparatus began to break…"

"Naruto wasn't even touching him!"

"I don't think it matters. Their energy moved, back and forth, I imagine that it was more than enough of Naruto's chakra to claim him." Tsunade shrugged as if the fact that two people had merged without even touching was somehow coincidental.

"How can you possibly know this? It's just a theory! No one has ever managed a successful chakra transfer with a jnchuuriki before! Not in a surgical setting!" Sakura argued fiercely, her belly suddenly cold and tight with terror.

Despite what she wanted to think, the whole procedure did seem weirdly similar to when Naruto initiated the thrall with Sasuke, now that she thought back to that day so many weeks ago. There was the movement of chakra, the opposition in Neji's flesh to the foreign energy as well as the pain of instinctual resistance being overcome. Even heavily sedated, the Hyuuga had been screaming as Naruto's energy poured into his body, only calming after his vital signs spiked far outside their margin of safety. She swallowed. Everything was the same, every reaction she could have possibly anticipated in the initiation of the thrall happened in that operating room, but Sakura didn't want to believe what her own logic implied. She didn't want to accept the fact that Neji's choices and freedom had been compromised by her own hand, the shackles of his commitment to her clan clasped in a hasty attempt to save his life.

"No one has ever attempted a chakra transfer with a jinchuuriki because of the risk of the thrall. The recipient of the energy might survive only to end up unwillingly mated to the vessel! That's why it isn't done, Sakura, not because it isn't possible. I thought you knew about this! I thought you decided to go along with the procedure anyway despite the risk…" The Hokage said shaking her head in confusion.

"No! No! I had no idea that something like that was possible! We all thought Naruto had to be…had to be sexual with him!" Sakura yelped, shaking her head.

"Then…Why did Hiashi marry him into the household in the first place? I thought he did it because he had no choice, because he found out that Neji was already tied to Naruto's chakra? From what you're telling me, no one knew he might end up enthralled?" Tsunade asked, raising an eyebrow.

"No, sensei. No one even thought of it…" Sakura admitted, hiding her face.

"Sakura! For shame! How could you do something like that without knowing how a jinchuuriki's energy might react? It's practically basic science!" The older physician snapped.

"I'm sorry! We didn't know enough about how it worked and…and he was dying sensei! Dying!" Sakura spat, suddenly defensive.

"Would he have preferred to die? Did anyone even ask?" The Hokage replied tartly.

"No. We did not ask, because that's completely ridiculous!" Sakura argued, practically shouting.

"Is it? He was taken from ANBU, Sakura, taken from his people and his duty. Everything Neji cared about before was taken away from him that day and you are just as responsible as anyone else! He was excommunicated from his clan for Kami's sake…!"

"Not because of us! We made no claims on Neji's freedom, thrall or not!" Sakura argued hotly.

"Then why would Hiashi the push for arranged marriage? Why this grand charade?" The older woman asked, bringing her fingers thoughtfully to her lips.

"I'm not sure. We were all surprised. Naruto thought that it was some last, ditch effort towards peace between the clans. Sasuke, of course, thought he was planted here as a spy." Sakura said, biting her lip.

"As far as Hiashi is concerned, Sasuke was probably right. I doubt the old bastard realizes that Neji was enthralled in the hospital, he doesn't know enough about jinchuuriki and if you were also unaware…he can't have known…" Tsunade mused.

"Maybe it's far more simple, maybe he just wanted the chance to attack Naruto when he was weak after claiming a new subordinate. It's been tried before." Sakura suggested.

"Regardless, you have placed a very dangerous pawn into your enemy's hands by sending Neji back to him with your terms! He can easily be used against you!" Tsunade grumbled.

"If you're right and he is under the thrall, all Naruto would have to do is compel him to return to us. Naruto is bringing him home and Neji won't betray us again." Sakura said firmly.

"Your naiveté is charming, but that's not what I'm talking about." Tsunade sighed.

"What then?" Sakura asked tightly, tired already and feeling frayed by the news.

"The curse-mark."

"What about it?" Sakura asked warily.

"It's an energetic fetter, one placed long before Naruto's energy did or did not claim him. His energy is already disrupted and the chakra he shares with Naruto moves both ways…" Tsunade said, crossing her arms.

"Oh…Oh no…" Sakura whispered.

OoOoOoO

Kiba watched the sudden flood of scarlet fire into the skies, the arching flames dimming the stars for a single heartbeat before falling back down to earth. A moment later the trees in which he and his stolen puppies crouched were rocked with the scalding the wind generated from the explosions, trunks bending in creaking agony the way they would in a hurricane. He grimaced. Those weren't the conservative, directed attacks of a man trying to find a singular target and avoid collateral damage. Naruto was conducting total war, probably burning the whole damn place to the ground with whomever was unlucky enough to still be left inside it, sawing his way through the buildings to the main vanguard parked in the compound center. He whined under his breath and hoped again that his wife had managed to make it out of there with the trailing refugees who were still trickling away from what was slowly turning into a massacre.

Below his perch, Akimaru crouched against the snow, nose to the wind and concentrating. The women and children, the first to appear in a disorganized jumble in the streets below, were already safely placed at the Inuzuka compound. Kiba was still a little amazed that they managed to reach them at all. Moving in a terrified, wide eyed clump, the refugees scattered at every noise like deer in a lightning storm and managed to get lost twice along the three mile path from one house to another. Kiba shook his head. They were ninja, schooled ninja, but most of the branch house women had never been allowed outside of the compound and had no idea about something as basic as walking through a city. His own young troops were really no better, dumbstruck by every well-lit sign or overly large building, though the boys tried their best to hide the fact that they'd never actually seen the outside world before. As a male child, Kiba was not part of the direct line of ascension in his house which, he supposed, made him a bit like a branch house member, but Inuzuka never restricted its people this way. The Hyuuga branch house members were made prisoner by their ignorance as much as any physical barrier and the invisible shackles were proving much harder to break.

Already, Granny was half-way to her wits end trying to explain to the women how to put on armor and set up a preliminary perimeter at the edges of the compound; something Inuzuka children learned to do when they were three. The Hyuuga women were not permitted to learn ninjutsu beyond the basic tenants, with a few exceptions, and they were only a little better than civilians as far as the siege preparations were concerned. Kiba watched the next volley of jutsu driven fire and decided that if Naruto was the victor in this miniature war and then decided he wanted Hinata's head, it was going to be a very short siege. Above him, Aki and Yumi used the Byukugan to assess the complete and utter destruction of the only home the boys' had ever known. Kiba would have given more than a few coins to know what they were thinking, but now was not the time for conversation. Hinata and Hanabi were still out there somewhere and Kiba couldn't just run off into the night to search for them without breaking the delicate protocols established in the alliance.

"They're doing something different now, a formation. Looks like teeth or something…" Yumi whispered down to him, voice faltering only a fraction.

"Teeth? Jawgear?" Kiba asked.

"No, it's like jawgear, but smoother and moving up and down instead of to the side in a circle. This technique is rotating, but it looks way more complicated and they're doing it with clones…" The boy hissed.

"Shit, that sounds like Morningstar!" Kiba groaned.

"Morningstar?" Aki asked.

"It's one of Master Jiraiya's most difficult formations. I never thought anyone would be able to pull it off with clones though…" Kiba sighed.

"Aki, is your mother with the refugees?" Yumi asked softly.

"Yeah, but my father's still in the compound." Aki answered softly, eyes fixed to the surging devastation a few blocks away.

"Maybe there's still time!" Yumi whispered, "Maybe we can do something…"

"Anyone still still behind those walls is gonna die, boys," Kiba said softly, "Running off half-cocked on a rescue mission won't do us any good."

"But…" Yumi pushed.

"Everyone's gonna to lose someone in this!" Kiba snapped to the assembled troops, "You just keep yourselves sharp and maybe we'll lose fewer."

"Hai, Kiba–sama." They replied in unison, but there was deep disappointment in their tone.

Kiba sighed and gazed out through the veil of the snow crusted pine trees, his own vision far too limited to see troop movements or formation lines. Hinata would get out, she would, the Hyuuga princess was probably just waiting to make sure the last of the refugees made it through. Kiba grit his teeth. He was still missing someone too, dammit, but recklessness would be very costly in this war and he needed to set an example for the others. Even the combined might of his own clan and whatever soldiers Hiashi might have left wouldn't be enough to stop Naruto.

"The best we can hope is that Naruto will be happy with butchering Hiashi and whatever forces he's still got in there. Naruto isn't a killer by nature and he might very well leave us alone, but keep watching anyway." Kiba hissed.

"You think he'd come for us? For everyone?" Kaze asked from below, the fear tangible in his voice.

"I think it's a possibility." Kiba said.

"Kami! What would we do?" Yumi asked breathlessly.

"We'd run, scatter into the other countries, and maybe some of us might live." Kiba said grimly.

The boys traded a look, their freshly tattooed faces very grim in the shifting, ochre light of the roaring fires. People in the Hyuuga clan were rarely so direct and Kiba knew that his words seemed abrupt almost to the point of cruelty to his young soldiers, but there was nothing to be gained by benevolent ambiguity. Tonight, the Hyuuga clan would almost certainly die and the only question was whether or not Naruto would allow it to be reborn in another form or if the whole family would be obliterated the way the Uchihas were. Kiba knew that if the matter were up to him, if someone had come into his home and killed his loved ones, he would soak the ground with their blood and then sew salt in behind it. He was more than capable of killing anyone and everything that might look the slightest bit like a threat, but Kiba hoped that Naruto was a better man. The deafening destruction rising from the Hyuuuga compound would, however, imply that he was not.

OoOoOoO

Naruto felt numb and he'd expected to feel something else, to feel vindicated in some impalpable way when his forces finally shattered through the walls and gardens standing between his rage and the center of Hiashi's forces. Instead he felt nothing. The ache of Sai's loss still hurt and the nagging worry that Sasuke was losing himself to the Seal still nagged and the awful anger filling his being was barely dimmed. In one night, he'd wrought more bloodshed than the entire massacre of Sasuke's family, because the Hyuuga clan was bigger and there were more bodies to destroy, but he did not feel any better. Blood was, as Sasuke warned, a poor balm for the pain of a broken heart.

The wind smelled like ashes and gore, burning in his nostrils in the same way the rage burned in his blood, but Naruto refused to turn away from the spectacle. This sin would not be something to share and if he truly was going to take so many lives, the very least he could do would be to bear witness to it.

"Death is never pretty, kit, but it is necessary." The Fox rumbled.

"I thought I would feel something, or something else at least…" Naruto murmured into his own thoughts.

"We just haven't killed enough yet, we haven't killed the right target. How can we feel differently when Hiashi still lives?" The Fox argued.

"You're right. Killing his pawns is just useless butchery and he's the one we really want." Naruto agreed.

"We're very close too. Look at Sasuke; your subordinate can almost taste him now," The Fox hissed and Naruto could practically feel the demon lashing its tails.

Naruto did look, but unlike Kyuubi, he did not find the sight of his best friend and beloved mate wearing a death's head grin and giggling madly to himself all that reassuring. The concentration required for Morningstar was probably the only thing holding the dark haired murderer back from complete insanity and rampant bloodlust. Sasuke was dipping into the Seal or perhaps merely being tugged into the jutsu by the violence and cruelty of what they were doing. Either way, Naruto figured that the Seal's awakening was his fault along with everything else. The attack on Hiashi's holdings was his choice alone, his move, and the guilt of the murders happening there was a price he was already more than willing to pay. He could accept responsibility for the monster in Sasuke's skin and all the lives they were taking too, but he hated to watch his subordinate suffer. Already, his beautiful killer wasn't sounding like himself, his voice tainted along with his chakra and Naruto wondered vaguely how far he should let it go.

"He's losing it. It won't be long until the Seal takes him over, believe it." The vessel whispered in his mind to Kyuubi.

"Let him use it if he must. We can always pull it back from his mind with the thrall as we did before." The Kitsune shrugged, sounding entirely too blasé for Naruto's comfort.

"It hurts him." He hissed.

"And he loves to hurt." The Fox countered.

"That's mean, even for you."

"It's also true."

Naruto glanced to his partner out of the corner of his eye, watching carefully for any signs that he might imminently surrender to the madness of the Seal, instead of just using the evil for their own goals. The Seal of Heaven, he knew, almost had a mind of its own and on some things Sasuke and the monster could be in accord. On others, they disagreed. When his subordinate agreed or disagreed too much with his resident parasite, he became more vulnerable to full possession. Too much feeling on one side or the other and his lover would teeter and fall into the abyss. Even now Naruto could practically feel the danger of it in the razor edge of Sasuke's control. The damn thing was almost like Kyuubi, only way, way more evil and very new, a demon freshly spawned out of Orochimaru's unholy experiments. He shuddered and looked away. Teme's mind was relatively stable for now and he wondered if Kyuubi was right, if perhaps letting him suffer a bit was permissible if doing so served their goals. The Seal and it wickedness was certainly nothing Sasuke hadn't dealt with before, but…he grit his teeth. He was supposed to be protecting everyone, dammit!

"We can win without it, the Seal is a liability…" Naruto argued.

"He brought this upon himself and used it long before he came to be our mate. You cannot protect him from everything…" Kyuubi muttered.

"Yes, I can. Isn't that the whole point!?" Naruto snapped.

"The point is to protect our female and I think Sasuke understands that better than you do! We cannot afford to be weak now, to falter, the Hyuuga will use that against us and we don't have the forces to recover if we lose any ground!"

"We haven't lost any ground, but we will if I have to fight both him and Hiashi at the same time! Leaving him this way is a risk, believe it!" Naruto contended.

"We've lost one subordinate already and if we give Hiashi the chance, he will take Neji from us as well! You cannot afford to be emotional, kit! This battle hangs by a thread!" The Fox snarled.

"I'm going to stop it." Naruto said stubbornly.

"No! If you do that our formation will fall apart!" The Fox howled.

"We'll reform."

"We haven't found him yet! Give Sasuke more time!" Kyuubi hissed.

"I know. I don't like it either, but…I love him." Naruto whispered.

"I know you do, in many ways I do as well. I understand your love kit, but we're doing this for them! We have to wipe the Hyuuga out or we'll never be safe!" Kyuubi pleaded.

"Is there even such a thing?" Naruto asked.

"As what?" Kyuubi asked, confused.

"As safety?" He wondered.

The Fox was silent at that, but the deep chasm of ancient sadness filled his mind again and that was answer enough. No matter what they did or did not do, nothing was absolute and the Fox knew the truth of their vulnerability as well as he did, the same vulnerability Sasuke had once thought to avoid by killing everyone he loved. Naruto frowned and tried not to wince as Sasuke laced his fingers through his own and dug the sharpened beginnings of claws into his palm with enough force to draw blood. The black haired nin purred, eyes spinning bloody red with the sharingan, but his face was still mostly human and Naruto couldn't help but wonder.

Maybe Kyuubi was right, maybe if he just looked the other way for a little while they could find Hiashi and bring Neji home without risking anything. Maybe using the Seal was justified. In the compound below their vantage point on the wall, the clones were still shredding through troops like a shuriken through paper, but the pull on his chakra was enormous and Naruto knew Sasuke was probably feeling it even more acutely. Soon, his subordinate would be fatigued and Hiashi was still elusive among the bunched formations of Hyuuga soldiers below.

The Seal was a well of energy, just as Kyuubi was, and Naruto could understand why the old Fox wanted to use it. Even when he lay paralyzed and badly injured from his mating with Sai, Sasuke managed to hold off an aggravated Hyuuga assault for hours by wielding the Seal of Heaven. Orochimaru's creation was an excellent weapon, but a very unstable one and every moment his subordinate dug into its power was another opportunity for the Seal to turn against them.

Sasuke snarled and gnashed his teeth, which were looking suspiciously fang-like, but he still maintained enough control to avoid transforming completely, holding the evil at bay. As long as his Teme held the madness in check, the Seal only helped them and even if he was overwhelmed…Naruto shook his head. Allowing Sasuke to use the monster as a fully awakened entity was not an option he was willing to entertain any further, whether it was a viable option or not. Shredding his subordinate's mind apart only because he had the power to put it back together again was the kind of thing people like Hiashi and Madara did, and Naruto was not prepared to become anything like them. He gently pulled Sasuke's claws from his flesh and turned to face the other man fully.

"Time to take the field, Teme." He whispered.

"I haven't found him yet…" Sasuke snarled, jerking his wrist out of Naruto's grasp.

"We'll find him on the field and Neji too. We'll do it alone. We don't need the Seal either, believe it." Naruto said, pressing his lips to the deep crease of anger between Sasuke's elegant eyebrows.

"Don't you dare ssstop ussss!" Sasuke warned, hissing angrily.

The icy wash of sadism coming from the thing inhabiting Sasuke's body was almost enough to morph his own spiritual numbness into something like true pain and even watching the evil without feeling it was ugly enough. With an inhuman snarl, Sasuke bit him on the mouth, the wound gushing sharp pain in a warm drizzle down his chin. Naruto winced, but refused to let go even as he felt the clones falter and begin to lose synchrony, gazing fearlessly into the red vortex of Sasuke's eyes. No more. No compromise with wicked things or malicious people for the sake of mutual interests.

"Pull back, Teme. Lock it away." Naruto ordered.

"You…can't…" The voice was definitely not Sasuke's, a rasping metallic hiss filled with unearthly hatred.

"Back!" Naruto snarled, feeling the thrall move through his energy and into Sasuke's ready channels, incarcerating the monster again.

Sasuke shrieked, trembling with both the pain of the order and unwilling pleasure as the thrall rocked him, uniting him to Naruto's intention. The jinchuuriki could almost feel it, the seething coils of the Seal of Heaven, the slithering devil trying to escape the shackles of energy flung around it. Naruto grit his teeth and focused even as he felt the clones dissolve into milling chaos as Sasuke lost his concentration, the neat battle formation shattered. For a moment, there was only rigid tension in his subordinate's body, his back drawn tight like a bow in unnatural rigor. Naruto fretted, wondering if he was only causing more hurt, but then Sasuke sighed, falling back against him with a small moan. His eyelids fluttered a moment, dark butterfly wings against the porcelain smoothness of his cheeks, smearing the drying blood there.

"That was extremely stupid." Sasuke said, swallowing carefully as he raised his eyes.

"I know, but…I just can't watch it do that to you, change you…" Naruto confessed.

"Our formation was finally working and I had it under control! I was so close to finding him and you decide to go all soft! Baka! You have really shitty timing…" Sasuke hissed, pushing out of his arms.

"What's the point of all this death if I make you suffer too?" Naruto asked, nettled.

"We all suffer, moron." Sasuke muttered and crouched low over his heels, muttering as he tried to organize his forces.

Naruto sighed as he felt Kyuubi echo the sentiment, but there was no point wasting time arguing with either of them. Whether or not Sasuke should allow himself to be possessed by an artificial manifestation of hatred any time it became convenient was a topic for another time. Now, they had a clan head to kill. With a gesture to Sasuke, Naruto leapt from the wall and raced through the ranks of his clones, leashing them back to his will as he went. Sasuke followed, gesturing to the few winged clones still material after his chakra was disrupted by the thrall. They dove into the heart of Hiashi's holdings, moving like a pair of hunting falcons through the charred remains of what had once been buildings, gardens and homes. The little resistance they met was easily overwhelmed by Naruto's still numerous clones, but the Hyuuga formations grew stronger as they neared the center.

Sasuke organized his clones into a hammerhead formation, smashing them up against the Hyuuga battalions like a battering ram with steel spines. Overhead, the winged clones spat fire, igniting the few buildings not already burning around the main parade ground and neatly cutting off any escape into the remaing structures. The wet squelch of a hundred razor-sharp blades snapped into flesh with each push of Sasuke's troops was like the sound of unripe melons being smashed open, the sound still audible beneath the chorus of agonized screams. The Hyuuga lines faltered, buckling against the onslaught of hundreds of sword-wielding copies of the most feared killer in the world, the fear of seeing Sasuke's face on the clones almost as deadly as their taijutsu.

Naruto used the weakness to launch his own offensive, spreading his troops into small three man teams each generating miniature cyclones to release into the massed forces trying to organize off to the right flank. Not quite rasengan, but close enough to drive the Hyuuga common soldiers back against the slashing claws of Sasuke's attack. The butchery continued for a heartbeat, the maddening movement of too many bodies and flickering flames almost confounding Naruto's vision, but the jinchuuriki simply closed his eyes and continued on by touch alone. The Hyuuga's abandoned formations to attack as individuals, engaging Naruto's clones in hand to hand combat, trying to fracture his focus. It was a good tactic, probably the best defense against a shadow army, but Naruto had been using kage no bunshin far too long to fall for such an obvious distraction. He pulled his clones away from the scattered nin, harmonizing them into a steel ribbon pattern three bodies deep, a formation specifically designed to punch through disorganized opponents. The ribbon undulated, the outer clones snapping kunai into their Hyuuga opponents while the center shifted forward.

The carnage wrought by the technique was less than Morningstar, but still terrifying and the snow underfoot was completely melted with the steaming blood of enough people to fill an entire army. The gore made the footing slippery and even Naruto had to avoid losing his stance in the river of gore that was both sticky and almost ankle deep. Sasuke, ever graceful, sprang up onto the still burning buildings and commanded his clones to launch a volley of arrows into the swirling maelstrom, trusting that Naruto's clones would be nimble enough to move. As one, the fox-masked kage no bunshin fell to their bellies, avoiding the arrows and taking the opportunity to slice curved knives into any unprotected ankles they found. Several of the clones were still using Sharingan, searching madly for their target as both claws and weapons found living flesh.

Synchronized with Sasuke in a way that was beyond mere thought, Naruto changed direction, forcing the already startled Hyuuga vanguard to shift focus and open their left flank. Sasuke's hammerhead dispersed, the clones moving like spiders fleeing a shaft of daylight, ricocheting like bullets into the fresh veterans still standing behind the lead lines. They spun, pulling the formation apart through sheer force of momentum and ferocity, tossing combatants aside like dolls. Naruto snarled, feeling another tail manifest as the spiritual flames roared around his body with the rising battle rage.

He pulled deep into the well of Kyuubi's chakra and stirred a finger into the already milling air above their heads, generating a pounding gust of colder wind to cut like an axe through the last of Hiashi's fresh troops. The technique was one he'd already experimented with, something the Fox had inspired while in the combined form. More than momentum, the technique relied on a disruption of temperature, pulling the heat from one layer of air while heating another. The sharp scythe of air stole the sound from the battle for an eerie moment of unnatural stillness before carving into the stunned troops like a gigantic sickle through a stand of brittle, winter wheat. The Hyuuga soldiers caught against the blade of furious air were rent in two, their screams silenced abruptly in the swirling air.

"Kaze no Buredo." Naruto whispered, naming the jutsu even as he moved to swing the blade again.

Just as he released the technique, he felt it, pounding through his spirit like the resonant baying of a hunting wolf. Sasuke saw Hiashi. Sasuke was already moving to intercept him and the quarry was on the move. The blade of wind forgotten, Naruto sprang towards his subordinate, feet barely touching the ground. He moved like a missile, the flames of his tails smashing anything that got into his way. The Hyuuga forces unlucky enough to be caught in the swirling flames were incinerated in less than an instant as Naruto surged forward, barely slowing him. He moved toward the pull in the thrall and found Sasuke was already engaged with the Hyuuga leader, swords crossed with tanto steel against steel and shedding sparks into the smoky twilight of the far corner of the parade grounds. Naruto watched Teme spin and strike low, trying to cut Hiashi with the sharpened steel blade tucked along the side of his boot, but the Hyuuga leader sprang up and away.

Naruto snarled and closed with him, already making the swirling gestures to generate rasengan, his father's gift, the ultimate wind technique. Hiashi pulled a heavy chain scythe from behind his cloak and spun, sending the weapon in a deadly strike towards Naruto, but he repelled it with an irate flick of wind. Hiashi re-grouped quickly, flipping up and over the chains of his own weapon, drawing the blade back in a slicing arch. Sasuke back-flipped over the razor sharpness with barely a millimeter to spare, and brought his sword down with the squealing shriek of steel against stone onto Hiashi's battle mask. The porcelain shattered, revealing the Hyuuga lord's sneering face and a fresh surge of hatred and anger pounded through the jinchuuriki's blood. Naruto surged forward with one of his tails, shattering the cobbled surface of the courtyard with the force of his attack as Hiashi spun away, pulling the chain scythe with him.

"You're finished, you butcher!" Naruto snarled, pursuing him with rasengan still building in his hands.

"What can you do, little commoner brat?" Hiashi taunted, changing his stance.

He was going to perform eight trigrams, sixty four palms, but Naruto already knew that he would be ready first. With a savage smile, the jinchuuriki dug deep into his chakra for the extra ounce of momentum he needed to complete rasengan, shifting the ball of spinning air into his left hand as he prepared to strike. This would be rasengan as it had never been before, the most perfect execution of the technique ever performed and he could already feel the alignment of the air currents bending to his will and awaiting the last push.

"Rasengan!" Naruto roared and moved.

Nothing happened. Nothing at all. The technique simply vanished as if the last fraction of momentum Naruto needed to perform it simply wasn't there, wasn't within his will to command. His eyes widened with shock as the deadly sphere of concentrated air dispersed and disappeared the moment he moved forward with his left arm, leaving only useless, spinning eddies of confused wind in its wake. Naruto was practically frozen in shock. Rasengan had never failed him before, not like this, not like the ability was simply…no longer his own. Sasuke's eyes widened and he moved to intercept Hiashi, but it was too late. With a cruel chuckle, Hiashi struck, pounding his chakra hardened fists into Naruto's body with the speed and force of a locomotive, hitting both flesh and energy.

The jinchuuriki gasped and choked, blood spraying from his lips as Sasuke shrieked with the shared agony. He struck and struck and struck until Naruto knew his flesh was breaking, his chakra blocked. He tried to block the attacks, but his body was clumsy and the rhythm was all wrong, he was off balance. The clones dissipated in a misty rush of air as the jinchuuriki fell to one knee, gasping to pull breath into his ruined chest, choking on the blood.

"See? You really were worthless all along." Hiashi jeered.

OoOoOoO

In the darkness, he drifted, empty and formless among the memories. The sickening feeling of his mother's heart slowing, stopping, beneath the blood-soaked softness of her once plush pelt flooded his senses and then there was only the endless sky above scorching dunes. The blue of it, of the sky, there was something more than hurt in that color…something that reminded him of profound affection and the warmth of love, but it was lost with the currents. The child grieved, soundlessly, but the sorrow was deep. The weight of the shackles hurt, shackles everywhere on his tiny body, burning hot against his quivering skin beneath the merciless sun, and no water for hours and hours and hours. He was carried, an unwilling hostage, carried and sold like a piece of meat to men who lived far, far away from anything he had ever known. The fever burned, scorching his mind, and he wasn't sure what the others wanted until he was already in the grasp of the snake shinobi who lived in the darkness and by then, of course, it was too late.

From heat, from fever and desert, to the ice cold of underground laboratories and damp, freezing tables. He was locked away, no sound, no light except when it served the snake's purposes and then only harsh white light that burned his eyes and hurt his spirit. The child was an oddity, a thing that could change its shape at will or so they said, and there were interested parties who wanted to know how such a phenomenon could be achieved. The power of his mother, they wanted it for their own, and even though the shape was uncomfortable, even though it hurt when he moved or slept or did anything, he refused to change. He wept and no one cared. He was an animal, animals didn't feel.

Almost a year in the tiny cell, pulling everything that he was deep, deep down and locking it away so that the violation couldn't touch his true form. They could take his body, the child no longer cared, but mother's essence would be safe. The cruelty was palpable in the harsh sting of the needle and the icy pain of the scalpel's blade, the reminder that he was nothing more than a specimen to be pulled apart strand by strand. He had to hide, mother wanted him to hide. If the scientist knew, if he ever discovered that the child was not just another orphan, the pain would be worse and then, the child knew, it would never end. If he hid, if he dug all the secrets down into the farthest part of his mind and locked them with heavy chains, if he found a way to forget, then he might eventually be allowed to die. He did want very much to die. The memory was almost unbearable, the days blending together into formless agony of starvation and tests and cold instruments shoved beneath his skin.

He shuddered, the pain moving through his spirit like ripples in water and he wanted so much to fall away from it, fall forever. The darkness moved and he dove, embracing the cold, and the blackness, no stars, no stars so far down, but the pain followed. The chains were broken and his mind was whole, the awful things he'd once buried rising up like tormented spirits to fill him with screaming and sadness once again.

When the others came to burn the laboratory, the child already knew that there was no hope of rescue and that if he escaped, it was only coincidental. No one cared what happened to him. The others did not kill him as he hoped, but instead fed him and brought him to where other children were being held as well. He was told that there really was nothing in his heart after all and that the emotions he felt could be caged away along with the memories so that he could be free of them. He would become the tool he'd always been meant to be. Just an object. Something to use and then discard. The concept made sense; after all he was nothing more than a curiosity, not even a real person. He wanted very much to be empty, to forget, to react and nothing more. He learned to feel nothing and doing so was easy.

He drifted, finding a sense of peace in the memory of emptiness, the yawning chasm wide and black. He knew, because the cycle had happened many times before, that the numbness was only an illusion and that soon the very barrenness of his salvation would begin to ache as well. Soon, there would be the pain again, this time of longing…of hope…too much to interpret and he would fall away from the surface again. The black water lapped and moved, peaks and valley or ice cold nothingness, the only sanctuary he had. There were too many pieces, too many confusing elements, he needed to rest before he could try to put them together. He wanted to sleep forever, to forget until he was made to rememver, but the cloying blackness of the chilly water was restless and he could not freeze into dormancy as easily. He felt a change in the currents, an aching, more than a memory.

There was something else too, something else tugging on his soul like a voice calling from far, far away and no matter how far he went into the endless ocean of darkness, the pull was still there. The sensation was almost like pain, but more urgent, not a part of the nightmare. Something precious called, something he loved being threatened and even though waking meant facing the unveiled horror in his own mind…he stirred, flickering helplessly.

"Naruto…" Whispered soundlessly.

Just a name. He didn't have a name, it wasn't his own, but perhaps the name was attached to something he knew and perhaps even something very important. There was intimacy in the sound of it, something that echoed with the memory of pleasure, with the tantalizing sensation of salvation. The sun, the sun was above the water in the blue, blue, blue sky. He felt fragile, jagged, wounded. The darkness and drifting was a measure of sanctuary, even if the currents were only moving in circles, at least they were cold. The pain, it would be very bad, lurking at the surface where the water was green like her eyes. The light penetrated there and the pain would too, along with the fire and sunshine, but that was where the tugging was coming from as well. Something precious, something he loved being threatened, he loved, he loved and the love was calling…

OoOoOoO

Neji listened to the sounds of battle and fancied he could almost feel Naruto's presence in the vibrating boom of the explosions and the ringing clatter of scampering kage no bunshin along the rooftops. The jinchuuriki's forces were already in the compound and Neji knew without having to look at the rampant destruction that his one-time alpha was furious. Even without Sasuke, without any of them, Naruto was probably unstoppable and everyone remaining inside the walls of his ancestral home was going to die. Everything would be destroyed leaving only a scar on Konoha's soil, an ugly reminder of the price for hate and betrayal. The truth of their ultimate fall was sad, the inescapable fact that soon the proud house of Hyuuga would be utterly demolished by a jinchuuriki's wrath the way Glacier was by Gaara was definitely an event worthy of tragedy. Even so, Neji couldn't even manage a single tear for the death of his home and people. The grief of losing his lovers, of losing a family that loved him the way no one had since the death of his father took all the tears he had and his eyes were painfully dry. He knew that feeling so empty wasn't fair, that his cousins deserved at least a bit of weeping, but life wasn't fair for anyone.

Naruto was coming and, the silver eyed genius hoped, that he would be kind enough to bring him home for righteous sentencing or at least put him out of his misery. Neji was so tired of trying to choose a side that the certitude of his own imminent destruction was almost a comfort, almost, except for the bone deep shame that came along with it. Neji regretted almost every decision he made since losing to Hinata in the arena. He regretted marrying Naruto only to break an honest, loving man's heart and he regretted betraying the only family that ever, truly loved him. He regretted every moment he could have touched Sakura's hair, but chose not to for the sake of propriety, and every missed opportunity to kiss Sasuke's shoulders. He regretted that he never made love with Sai, that he held anything back from them, and that he never told Naruto how much he adored them all. So many things might be different if he'd only told them the truth, if he had just trusted in his feelings instead of following Hiashi's commands like a blind dog.

The night was dark and no lamps were lit, but the rising glow of flames outside the windows was almost as bright as true dawn, the fires reflected against the snow in hellish splendor. Everyone was gone, but one of the guards had managed the presence of mind to shackle his ankle to one of the heavy steel handles in the floor usually reserved for anchoring practice dummies. The steel was well-made, forged using the Byukugan to eliminate flaws and impurities and anchored into the very foundation of the building. He couldn't break the chain and even if there was a way, what would be the point? The guard's actions were intelligent, but redundant. Neji was not planning to escape and he had nowhere to go even if he could. Naruto did not want him and the Hyuuga could not find it in his heart to blame him. He was nothing more than a tool, a beast of burden, a pawn on a board he'd refused for so long to see. Finally, he was made the prisoner he'd been all along, chained in Hiashi's house until they wanted to use him again without any flowery pretenses of affection. Neji grimaced at the thought, feeling sick.

His cousin, she'd known the danger all along. She'd tried so hard to warn him, to save him from being used, but Neji had been too stubborn to listen. Hinata was stronger, she was better than he could ever be, and he chose to ridicule her instead of taking the wisdom for what it was. Neji deserved everything that happened to him, everything, and even a thousand years of pain would barely begin to pay for such blind foolishness. The soft whisper of well-oiled hinges drifted beneath the distant echoes of battle and Neji turned towards the door to see a wedge of light against the floor. The portal opened to reveal a small contingent of senior nin, but he didn't bother taking the time to sort out the identities of the people behind the battle masks. Whoever the masked faces were didn't matter. They were all just dead men anyway.

"Neji, Hiashi-sama commands your presence on the front." The leader, whose voice he recognized as Bunta's , informed him.

Neji ignored him in favor of slowly standing and moving towards the window where Naruto and Sasuke's fires were flickering only a few blocks away. The chain clattered and Neji was again reminded that he was nothing more than a dog, a hound bred for battle. He balled his hands into fists and ground his teeth. Hiashi could command whatever the hell he wanted. Neji was no longer taking orders from him and whatever his Uncle chose to do wouldn't change a damn thing. He would not be a weapon any longer.

"You will dress in your armor and join the vanguard with all speed." Bunta continued, crossing his arms.

"I refuse." Neji said simply, his spirit roaring with satisfaction at even the small show of rebellion.

"You don't have the right to refuse. Just because that demon made you his slut doesn't elevate you above the rest of us, boy! You're still just branch house!" Bunta snarled.

"I'm not going anywhere. Hiashi can fight his wars himself." Neji spat.

"You will fight, Neji Hyuuga, you will or you'll die a traitor's death just like Shinto! No one is immune to the curse-mark!" Someone hissed, voice raw with pain.

"I don't care what he does to me. I'm not afraid of the curse-mark anymore." He whispered.

"Idiot! Are you insane?!" Bunta railed.

"He's in love with that monster! The traitor!" Someone else accused.

"You'll come with us if you know what's good for you!" One of the others shouted.

"Then take me…if you can." Neji hissed.

The squad spread evenly into an offensive pattern, like a pack of wolves intent upon a kill, sinking low into flawless combat stances. Neji allowed his body to fall into a fighting posture as well, the chain rattling ominously as he tried to find solid footing while still keeping his back against the wall. His body was stiff and still cold, but Neji could already feel his blood beginning to flow again as the impotent rage harbored in his heart finally caught against the piercing shards of remorse and ignited. The anger filled him, burning with the same fury as Sasuke's infernos, so strong that for a moment Neji could hardly recognize the feeling as his own. There was no winning now and no reason to hesitate. He took a breath and struck, planting his foot hard against the floor and spinning down to one knee, rocking the floor with a thunderous earth moving jutsu of the sort that always reminded him of Sakura.

The smooth wood of the floor buckled and cracked, forced upwards in jagged spears by the rumbling soil beneath the foundation. Neji pulled deep and thrust his hands against the floor again, his energy rippling through the layers of wood, steel and cement to the responsive rock beneath just as the steel anchor on his chain creaked in its moorings. He pulled and the earth rose, shaking the supports of the entire building portentously. Bunta and the other soldiers snarled angrily as their formation shattered against the onslaught. They were not prepared for earth jutsu because that was not one of the clan techniques and several of his attackers lost their footing completely. Neji felt a savage sneer stretch the skin of his face.

"Fool! You'll bring down the whole hall!" Someone snapped.

"Then it falls before burning." Neji whispered with a shrug, tugging experimentally on the shackle.

"You're still Hyuuga! You can't escape from who you are!" Bunta shouted.

"I'm nothing." Neji muttered and spun again, sending Sixty Four Palms towards them.

Instead of targeting individual chakra points as he would with a single opponent, Neji chose an entire body for each of his marks, sending eight palms against each soldier as the glowing green yinyang of the technique blazed against the ruined floor. The attack took a few breaths to gain momentum before the swirling strikes took on a rhythm of their own, but Sixty Four Palms was still shockingly effective in a closed space like the main reception chamber. Two of the masked nin shrieked as the pounding chakra currents generated by Neji's fists shattered their ribs, tossing them like discarded toys onto the still devastated floor. The wind generated by his movement howled and Neji cracked his fingers in preparation to repeat the attack as Bunta clutched his belly with a grunt, vomiting blood in a ruby spurt against his own mask. The alarming squeal of steel against cement was the only indication Neji needed as he turned and jerked his body to the side, tearing the long steel pin from the foundation of the floor as he moved with a shower of sparks.

He hissed and activated the Byukugan, studying the chakra of his attackers, three dying, one dead and four more still fighting with hidden, critical injuries. The nin pushed on, attacking stubbornly, throwing themselves against him in fresh surges of steel and desperation. These men would all die by his hand, and for what? For the sake of fulfilling an order they had no hope of carrying out anyway? Sacrificed for nothing because Hiashi never expected any resistance? There was something about the attack that rankled, something that simply would not fit into any kind of strategy he could imagine, a piece missing from the puzzle. Hiashi must have expected some kind of resistance and he knew that the only Hyuuga ninja with any hope of subduing him effectively was Hinata, who would never do anything to further his uncle's campaign against Naruto. Neji moved, swinging the pin on the chain up into his hand the way he would a chain scythe and jerking the improvised weapon into Bunta's face.

The older nin blocked, but barely, and a moment later Neji was on top of him, driving his fingers down like a spearhead for the vital convergence of the old veteran's chakra meridians with enough force to crush the bone as well as the energy. Another of the nin tackled him, catching Neji around the throat with a razor cord, but he'd already looped the chain of his shackle in a makeshift glove around his fingers to stave off the weapon. The cutting wire tightened, sawing hard against the metal where his fingers were placed to protect his throat, shedding sparks. Neji grunted and drove his elbow back into his attacker's unprotected belly only to strike unyielding steel, the impact sending an electric shock of rippling pain through the nerves in his forearm. He hissed, cursing his own stupidity. Of course they would be wearing armor.

The man took the opportunity to drive a knee hard into Neji's unprotected kidney, sending another surge of aching pain through his back and deeper, bruising the delicate tissues beneath the muscle. He coughed and dropped hard to his knees, sending the other ninja tumbling over his head and down with a resonating crack against the sharpened splinters of the once pristine flooring even as the other man spun, like a cat, in the air. Neji rose again, jerking the head of the heavy steel pin into his cousin's belly, the resonant crack of breaking bone vibrating through the weapon and into his hand with another nauseatingly deep wave of pain. The others chose that moment to strike, generating kage no bunshin to cling to his arms and legs.

"Hold him!" Someone shouted.

Neji spun, moving like a cyclone and letting the slack in the chain ripple out in deadly loops of suspended steel, beginning the gestures for gentle fist even as several of the clones evaporated in clouds of pale smoke. Someone jerked a tanto into his guard, grazing his ribs with the weapon, but the wound was superficial. Neji brought his fists up into a firm high guard and smashed into the next warm body he could find, pounding into the yielding flesh without even a breath of hesitation. He was so occupied with the swirling chaos, with the clones moving everywhere, that he missed the deep strike into the chakra meridian of his left thigh. He screamed, falling to one knee as the energy in his leg simply ceased, frozen with the aching agony of bruised nerves and a tourniquet pulled too tight. There was another attacker, someone he couldn't see with Byukugan! It didn't make sense!

"What a pity, my dear nephew, that you couldn't hold onto your loyalty." Hiashi's voice sighed.

"Impossible…" Neji breathed, searching madly for the chakra of his uncle and seeing nothing.

Finding it useless, Neji released the technique in favor of searching the murky shadows with his own, human vision. There was no one there. As he watched, dumbstruck, Hiashi melted from the air a few feet in front of him, a phantom suddenly taking solid form. He shook his head. There was nothing that could be hidden from Byukugan the way his uncle was, nothing! Even the most perfect kage no bunshin still looked like energy, still looked like something with the power of the visual technique, but it was as if his uncle had stepped out of another dimension entirely. Neji fought with renewed vigor as whatever it was that looked like Hiashi stalked towards him, slipping his arms loose from the hold the other nin had on his wrists. He shifted his stance, snapping his dead leg up into the groin of the soldier with the worst injuries. The man buckled with a scream, but hung onto the sleeve of his kimono stubbornly.

Cognizant of the changing threat, Neji fought, forming jutsu one handed, but Hiashi dodged the attack as neatly as a swimming viper and struck him again, this time in the throat. Neji coughed as his vision swam, the bruised energy channels harboring one of the most vital chakra centers in his body. His limbs shook, but the pain from the injury ebbed almost as soon as it came, slowly receding as his body healed with the same preternatural speed as it had in Naruto's forest. He struggled, breaking someone's wrist even as the clinging clones forced him to his knees. Hiashi stalked closer, surveying the destruction of the reception chamber with obvious distaste.

"This room has survived several all-out invasions, hundreds of years of warfare, and you decided to destroy it in a fit of temper. How childish…" Hiashi grumbled, crossing his arms.

"Naruto's going to burn it anyway. He's going to annihilate us all." Neji rasped, nearly breaking free for a single, maddening moment before the weight of the other nin pulled him down.

"Oh yes, he did make you strong didn't he?" Hiashi mused.

"What in the hell are you?!" Neji snarled, voice almost full again.

"You can speak to me that way already? My, my, very impressive indeed! How unfortunate you are so unwilling to use that strength for the glory of our clan." His uncle sighed, sounding genuinely disappointed.

"Genjutsu…" Neji hissed, narrowing his eyes.

"No, nephew. No illusion. I am myself, in the flesh." Hiashi offered, his tone cold.

"You aren't real, the Byukugan…!"

"I'm very real and there are things about the Byukugan that even you, my most talented pupil, don't know." Hiashi whispered, moving close, his silver eyes as chilly and ruthless as a shark's.

"No…"

"In fact, the one rallying my troops is actually just a clone for now. You are that important to our victory, Neji, vital. You are important enough that I came to you in person." Hiashi said, opening his hands pleadingly.

"Lies! You're just a trick and I won't hurt them! I WON'T!" Neji roared, pulling hard against the nin holding him.

"That isn't your decision. The only choice you have left is whether to serve me in life, of your own volition, or serve me with your death." Hiashi said softly, stroking a proprietary finger down Neji's face.

The touch was a sickening mockery of affection, possessive in the same the way someone might finger a favorite knife or kunai, and Neji felt a wave of disgust rise into his throat at the power-mad leer on his uncle's face. Hiashi dipped his fingers lower, trialing them along the edge of Neji's simple, cotton kimono. He struggled, only to have three sets of fingers simultaneously strike the chakra meridians in his shoulder, hip and jaw, numbing his body with a shocking wave of fresh pain. He grunted, the agony locking his jaw for an endless heartbeat before his body began to heal, the pain for both the torn tissues and the healing almost enough to make him swoon.

"You're powerless, Hiashi, and all your threats are meaningless. Nothing you do to me will save you…" Neji hissed between his tingling teeth.

Hiashi struck him and the blow felt more than solid enough to be real, snapping his neck back hard enough to crack the vertebra in his neck with enough force to ring through his skull. Blood spurted into his mouth as his lips caught on his teeth, but Neji laughed softly anyway. Hiashi's expression was stoically composed, but a dark flush of true fury colored his uncle's cheeks. He'd struck a nerve and a little insubordination was well worth the pain even if it only goaded Hiashi further.

"Tell me nephew, what exactly did you do for that foreign abomination to make him love you so much? What sorts of perversions did you learn, I wonder, that clouded your mind enough to choose that monster over me, your own family?" Hiashi asked, sneering.

"Real love…Nothing you could understand." Neji growled, licking delicately at the blood oozing from inside his cheek.

"You must have enjoyed being violated by him more than I thought! You always were such an excellent student, you probably mastered the oni's bed the same way you do anything else and it does make a person curious…" Hiashi whispered coldly, fingers stroking lower across Neji's chest.

"You're disgusting…" He gasped, jerking away from the touch.

"I'm disgusting? Me? ME!? I'm not a miserable little TRAITOR who forgot to whom he BELONGED!" Hiashi roared, face twisted in rage.

"I'd rather let him take me a thousand times, in a thousand ways, than take another breath to serve you…" Neji whispered triumphantly.

Hiashi struck him again and Neji laughed like a madman, letting the pain roll through his body like water, his injuries healing almost as soon as they were opened. The crackling boom of another explosion rumbled through the room, sending dust showering from the ornate, brass fixtures on the ceiling. The wrought metal creaked, the swirling designs distorted as the room groaned with the force of Naruto's attack. The sound of ringing metal and screams rose in a wave, chasing the noise of the concussion like an omen. Hiashi fumed, shoulders heaving even as the bruises on Neji's face faded. He healed, he didn't know why, but the ability only infuriated his uncle more and for now that was boon enough. Let Hiashi hit him, bait him, even rape him. Any threat the Hyuuga clan-head made had paper teeth. Nothing would change what was about to happen and soon all of them would be nothing more than a greasy smear in the ash of one of Sasuke's fires, wiped from the face of the world by Naruto's righteous anger.

"You INSIST on betraying me and punishment is ABSOLUTE!" Hiashi railed.

"Kill me then! That's the ONLY thing you can do! KILL ME! You can't stop him! Naruto's going to DESTROY you!" Neji shrieked, spitting a mouthful of blood into Hiashi's face.

"I think not, nephew. I think not. You will still serve me, no matter what you will or will not do…" Hiashi growled and moved to make the gesture for the curse-mark.

"What's more pain?" Neji chuckled, closing his eyes.

"I hope your wretched lovers feel the same way." Hiashi hissed and finished the jutsu with a final angry flourish.

Pain erupted in Neji's head, the shattering agony arching like a scalding needle through both of his eyes and deep, running back along the nerves like scorching lightning through a rain-soaked tree. He held on for a moment, fighting the pain for a breath, two, and then he was screaming. The torture pounded through his skull like a flood of liquid nitrogen, the icy pain sending shocking spears of stinging hurt into the bones of his face only to be chased by the hot, ripping agony of fresh wounds. The helpless pain of the mark was just as he remembered, as fresh and raw as torn flesh sliced anew with knives made of salt, terrible and completely inescapable. He screamed, his lungs forcing the sound out without any regard for will. The pain, however, was not what caught deep in Neji's chest and pulled like a platinum stitch against the tissue of his heart.

The pain was only a feeling, nothing, peripheral and meaningless, but the chorus of screaming echoing through his spirit was something else altogether. Neji screamed in horror as the realization struck him, that the voice wailing across the darkness of his mind was not his own. No the voices were those of his own, beloved mates. Naruto's voice cried out along with him, melding with Sasuke and Sakura and Neji knew, knew in a way too deep to be ignored, that they suffered along with him.