Chapter 44

A/N: I’m terribly sorry for leaving you guys on a cliffhanger. After I lost my job I got sick, and with all that going on I had a really hard time focussing on writing. Terrible excuse, I know. I have the remaining chapters for this arc completed, so even if there’s another hiatus there’ll be a resolution to this act at least.

Btw, I was surprised how many readers thought Shino died last chapter. Regardless of what happened to the others, Shino was last seen teleporting away (using the reverse-summoning scroll Naruto had given him) so he at least is still alive. I have edited the last chapter to make that a bit more clear.

-o-

The explosions could be heard even inside the Kazekage’s sealed-off sanctum, the walls and floor shaking with each detonation despite the barrier seals that shut him off from the outside world. In his mind’s eye, Rasa could see every one of the explosive tags as they fluttered down from the sky, could feel their presence through the golden sand that carried them as though he were holding them in his own hands. His golden eye watched it all from up in the clouds, gazing down at the trees and buildings of Konoha as if he were surveying a map. Flashes of red lit up the territory intermittently, striking down areas of strategic importance and bathing the streets in flame wherever Konoha ninjas gathered.

“One of our men started the attack before we were ready,” Chiyo said. “We’ve been betrayed, Rasa.”

“Or perhaps one of the genin merely got overzealous.” Rasa did not open his eyes, focussing all his attention on the battle that was taking place all around their guesthouse. The Konoha ninjas were desperately trying to organize a defence, but the constant barrage of explosions made doing so almost impossible. By contrast, his own household guard fought with perfect synchronicity, moving swiftly from target to target and tearing through Konoha like a desert storm.

Chiyo snorted dismissively. “Coincidences do not exist where ninjas are involved. We need to get out of here, Rasa. Whoever betrayed us will be coming for you, next.”

Rasa nodded. He formed the seals for the shadow clone technique and left the resulting double behind to direct the battle in his place. As effective as their surprise attack had been, it was only a matter of time before Konoha got their act together, and then their window to escape would close forever. It was time to leave.

“Did you manage to get the Hokage, at least?” Chiyo glanced back at him as she made towards the door, one hand already on the handle. “It would be nice to think that for once in my life I managed to poison someone without that blasted slug princess curing it straight away – assuming that Yūra really did manage to distract her long enough like he claimed he could.”

He motioned Chiyo to back away from the door. “My sensing technique does not allow for auditory feedback, unfortunately, but I imagine the old professor is cursing my name with wet and bloody coughs right about now.” He sent a few particles of golden sand under the door, too small to be visible to the naked eye, and scattered them across the hallway. Wherever they encountered resistance he gathered more of the same gold dust, slowly covering the hidden figures until he could sense their complete outlines. At last the poison started to take effect and the figures began flailing around erratically, some running up and down the hallway in a panic while another charged for the door and hacked away pointlessly at the sealed-off timber. Finally there was a disturbance in the air as some kind of ninja technique went off, and then all movement stopped.

“You can undo the seals, now,” he said.

He stepped into the hallway, and Chiyo followed after him. There were three, four bodies sprawled along the walls and floor, some of them still twitching and gurgling blood. They all looked quite young to him, and he could not help but wonder what their ranks had been, but then he supposed there was no real way to tell a chūnin from a jōnin except by the ease with which they died.

There was a twang followed by a sharp snapping sound behind him, and as Rasa turned he realized that a fifth ninja had dropped down from the ceiling behind him in an attempt to impale him with some kind of halberd. His body contorted in mid-air like a puppet dangling from tangled up strings, and then slammed into the nearest wall before crumpling into a heap alongside the others.

“Missed one,” Chiyo said.

That one would have been a jōnin then, Rasa supposed. It must have been his technique he sensed, blasting away the poisoned gold dust right before it could enter into his skin. He had to admit to being somewhat impressed.

“Lord Kazekage!” Yūra burst into the corridor, followed by two members of Rasa’s household guard. Each of them wore a half-veil as well as a sand-coloured armoured jacket. “What happened?”

“You not doing your job,” said Chiyo, “that’s what bloody well happened. Weren’t you lot supposed to be guarding this area? Some head of security you are.”

“We were just checking on the integrity of the sealing network,” Yūra protested. He blanched as Chiyo narrowed her eyes at him. “That is, I’m not saying you’re wrong to criticize me, Lady Chiyo, but…”

“Enough,” said Rasa. “We must leave and regroup with the rest of our army at the border before Konoha can muster their full forces. Is everything ready?”

“Ah!” Yūra’s eyes widened as if he only just remembered something. “That is, I was just talking to Baki, and… It’s your children, Lord Kazekage! They’re not at the agreed meeting place.”

Rasa cursed inwardly as he reactivated his sensing technique. After spending all his energy on the battle and Chiyo’s talk of betrayal, it had completely slipped his mind that his children would have been caught off guard by the premature start of their attack as well. After focussing for just a moment, he sensed a distinct cluster of seventeen golden particles at the eastern side of the Village, with another cluster of eighteen close by. The bulk of the fighting was taking place well away from there, fortunately.

“They’re at the outskirts of the Uchiha district,” he said. There was no point in guessing what could have motivated Temari and Kankuro to so blatantly defy his orders. It seemed he was forever cursed to have offspring with more bloodlust than sense. “We’ll have to fight our way to them before we can evacuate.” He sighed inwardly. Kurura, love of my life, with what madness have you afflicted our children? Is this your revenge for allowing Chiyo to possess your pregnant body with that demon? If so, I cannot say that it is entirely ill deserved.

“Right then,” said Chiyo, seeming to come to a decision. “While you’re doing that, I’ll be taking care of my own business. Now be a dear and point me in the right direction, and I’ll be on my merry way.”

Rasa looked up. “Chiyo, no. We’re in the middle of a hostile Village, surrounded by the most powerful army on earth. The plan has suffered enough as it is. We cannot afford any more distractions.”

Her eyes narrowed dangerously, and his household guard took a hurried step back at the sight of it. “What’s a distraction to you is important to me,” she said. “I’ve gone out of my way to grant you your vengeance, Rasa. Now it’s high time I had mine.”

He looked back into her eyes, unflinching. “And if I refuse?”

“Rasa,” she said, “I have been with you ever since the Third Kazekage disappeared without a trace all those years ago. You were the Sand’s golden child, a forgotten noble who came out of nowhere to lead us in our darkest hour, uniting the fractured council in a way I never could. I’d be lying if I said you were like a son to me, but even so you have managed to worm your way into my black and shrivelled heart. Yet my vengeance is near as old as you are, and I will not delay it a second longer. Not even for you.” 

There was a moment of silence in which not even the explosions outside seemed to dare to go off. Then he turned away, and everyone around them was allowed to breathe once more. “Do what you must,” he said. “The golden sand will show you the way.”

She smiled predatorily. “Thank you, my dear. I’ll be back before you know it, just you watch.”

“Just go,” he muttered. Outside, his army was waiting for him.

-o-

Small sheets of parchment drifted from the sky like snowflakes. Wherever they touched the ground, death followed. Blasts of fire sent shards of masonry flying across the streets like stone shuriken, destroying any walls and barricades almost as fast as the ninjas of Konoha could erect them.

They’re deliberately staggering the blasts, Kakashi thought from his perch atop the great red administrative building. They’re less concerned with inflicting casualties than with causing maximal chaos.

And it was working, too. Konoha’s commanders were scrambling to form any sort of cohesive force to drive back the invaders, but the constant thunder of explosions and the screaming civilians made it almost impossible to hear the orders being shouted, and by the time their forces got any momentum going the enemy was already gone and a new barrage of explosions forced them to scatter once more.

Explosive tags, carried aloft by golden sand and hidden in the clouds outside even the Byakugan’s range…

It all felt eerily familiar, somehow. Even though the method and the actors were different, the principle behind it remained the same. Just like when the Hokage’s tower had been demolished, just like that time when Konoha had been bathed in the Kyūbi’s fire, way back then. All that senseless destruction to orchestrate the death of just one man.

Perhaps it was just naivety talking, but he did not think that ordinary people thought that way. There was something that blocked even evil people from considering the idea of torching the most powerful Village in the world as a distraction. It betrayed a mentality that was somehow… inhuman.

He was reminded of his team’s mission in the Land of Waves, riding on the back of his great wolfhound as the village burned down all around him. The concept had been exactly the same back then, but he did not see how those events could possibly be related, and that mere fact bothered him even more.

Kakashi leaped down from his perch when he finally spotted his target and body flickered across the rooftops without any heed for the screaming civilians and panicked shinobi that were running every which way. I would’ve noticed him a lot sooner if he were still wearing Orange, Kakashi thought wryly.

“Kakashi-sensei,” Naruto said in relief as Kakashi landed beside him. He and Sasuke had just come back from training in the woods with Rock Lee by the looks of it, and now the three of them were huddled together in an alley underneath one of the many walkways spanning the rooftops of Konoha. “What the heck is going on? Is the Sand attacking us, or…”

“That’s right,” said Kakashi. He glanced behind him, checking to see if he had been followed. “Listen, I need you three to head up north and help the civilians evacuate to the caves hidden underneath the Hokage cliff faces, all right? Leave the Sand and everything else to me.”

“We can help,” said Naruto. “I’ll leave you some shadow clones, they can-”

“Shadow clones don’t make you invulnerable,” Kakashi said. The Fourth had been at least as skilled in their use as Naruto, but it had not made one bit of difference in the end. “All it takes is one skilled enemy with genjutsu or sensing ability to locate your real body, and then you’re just a regular ninja except for having already used up most of your chakra.” That was how he had defeated Zabuza, after all.

“But we can’t just do nothing,” Naruto spluttered. “We were just about to-”

“Leave it,” said Sasuke, placing a hand on Naruto’s shoulder. He regarded Kakashi with a perfectly neutral expression. “Our teacher can handle himself.”

“Good,” said Kakashi, relieved. “In that case, Lee, I’m officially assigning you an A-rank escort mission. Your task is to make sure my students make it to the evacuation point alive, understood?”

“Yes sir!” Lee gave him a thumbs-up. “I shall protect them even if it costs me my life!”

“Oh come on,” said Naruto. “We’re not-”

But Kakashi was already gone. He body flickered onto the nearest rooftop and turned towards the smoking centre of the Village, where the flames and fighting raged hardest. Of his students only Sakura remained, but she should be at the hospital with Tsunade of the Sannin, which was as safe a place as anywhere on the planet. That meant he was now free to divert his attention to lesser concerns.

Objective one, protect students: Accomplished. Objective two: protect Konoha or die trying.

He raced towards the fighting, choosing to leap from building to building rather than waste any more chakra on the body-flicker technique. After scanning the area and ducking underneath a stray shuriken, he spotted the recognizably gigantic shape of Chōza taking cover behind a pile of rubble in the streets.

There we go.

He leaped towards his target, hitting the ground running and rolling underneath a ball of fire that a Konoha ninja had cast at some unseen target, before springing up again and dashing towards his fellow Jōnin. “Chōza! What’s going on? Where are Shikaku and Inoichi?”

“Kakashi,” Chōza said, sounding just as relieved as Naruto had been. “I don’t know, I haven’t heard a word from Intelligence. They must be blocking Inoichi’s transmission technique somehow.” He turned and reached over the barricade with his bō staff, expanding its size mid-swing to swipe a leaping Sand ninja out of the air and slam his body into the dirt ground. “That’s the first one I managed to get so far,” he said, wiping his forehead with an oversized handkerchief. “It’s like they’re not even trying to fight us.”

“They’re not.” Kakashi took cover behind the pile of rubble next to Chōza, glancing around with his Sharingan for any sign of enemies. Huddling close together was generally considered bad tactics, but there was frankly no other way to make themselves heard over the constant explosions and screaming all around them. “We outnumber them – they’re just trying to keep us busy while they are accomplishing their real objective.” Left unsaid was that their communications merely being blocked was the most optimistic possible scenario: There was no telling how many of Kakashi’s friends had already been killed.

“Hm,” said Chōza, “and what do you- watch out!” Kakashi felt himself being pulled aside as something impacted the ground nearby, and he was thrown across the dirt even as the road behind him went up in a plume of smoke and dust. “That one didn’t come from above,” Chōza shouted. “We’re under-”

A volley of kunai came flying through the cloud of dust, and Chōza hurriedly raised his right arm to block, increasing the size of his arm guard to form a makeshift shield. The knives clattered off Chōza’s gauntlet, scattering all around him in a way that almost seemed natural, and Kakashi’s Sharingan only barely managed to spot the chakra strings in time for him to body-flicker towards Chōza and slash the blue lines with his chakra sword before the knives could impale the giant ninja from every direction at once.

“Chōza, run,” he said, already preparing for the next attack. “It’s a puppet master; you can’t see their strings but I can. Find Jiraiya or the Third and tell them it’s the same as last time, they’ll understand.”

Chōza seemed to hesitate, but then he ran off, his great legs carrying him away with impressive speed. The fallen knives were already lifting off the ground again, but this time Kakashi was not fooled: He leaped into the air and towards the corpse of the Sand ninja that had crawled out of the dirt behind him. Kakashi vaulted onto the dead man’s shoulders and channelled as much raw lightning chakra into its body as he could manage. A second later the corpse fell back onto the ground and was still once more.

Kakashi’s Sharingan followed the broken chakra strings back to their origin: The roof of a civilian house on the other side of the street. There was a dim outline of an old woman standing there, clad in colourless grey robes and wearing what appeared to be a brown wig and about three inches of makeup.

He eyed her warily. “Lady Chiyo, I take it?”

“Hmph, I suppose you expect me to be flattered that you recognize me.” She stepped off the roof and plunged towards the ground like a brick, but at the last second her fall slowed and she touched upon the dirt road without so much as a sound. “It’s been well over twenty years, but I finally managed to find you, White Fang. Now at long last, I will be able to make you pay for what you have done!”

It took Kakashi a second to realize what she was talking about, and even then his confusion remained. “Ah, I’m not the White Fang, Lady Chiyo. Sukumo Hatake was my father, and he killed himself a long time ago after failing an important mission.”

“Eh?” For a moment she looked taken aback, but then the coldness in her eyes redoubled. “Of course I know that – what do you think I am, senile? But that suits me just fine: An eye for an eye, a son for a son we’ll say. Are you ready to die, Konoha thug?”

“Please hold on,” Kakashi said, raising his hands in a warding gesture. He had always considered himself to be something of a smooth talker, but convincing a crazy old lady to drop an age-old vendetta in the midst of battle seemed well beyond his abilities. “I’m sorry for your loss, Lady Chiyo, but I had nothing to do with that. In times of war loved ones always die, no matter how much we try to prevent it.”

The old woman let out a scornful snort. “So I’m supposed to believe that you’ve rejected your father and want nothing more to do with him, eh? Where did you get that fancy white chakra sword of yours then?” She narrowed her eyes. “It’s always the same with you children… no sense of responsibility. You use your father’s fame but want nothing to do with his shame – you think you can inherit his money but not his debt. With a good-for-nothing son like that, no wonder the bugger offed himself.”

Kakashi showed no reaction, but her words unnerved him in a way he could not readily explain. It was the way she talked about shame, he thought. It had sounded far too much like the constant torrent of insults and abuse by Konoha’s Village elders that had finally driven his father to take his own life. “Lady Chiyo, please reconsider,” he said. “My father was only following his Village’s orders, just like your son. He never wanted to hurt anybody!” The explosions and the ring of steel on steel had faded into the distance, he realized with a start. Was the Kazekage deliberately diverting the battle away from them?

“Tch. If he didn’t want to hurt anybody, he shouldn’t have gone and killed my children, now should he?” A scroll sprang from her sleeve and unfurled itself with a sudden expulsion of air. Two puppets appeared next to her, one on each side, each shrouded in plain brown robes. One resembled a young man with red hair wielding a spiked whip, while the other appeared as a woman with long black hair wielding a katana. “It’s only appropriate that I should use these puppets against you. Do you recognize them, White Fang? They are the likeness of the children you murdered. My adorable grandson, Sasori, made them just so he could feel their embrace one last time. Try for a moment of regret if you can, brigand!”

The two puppets flew at him with weapons held high, and Kakashi dodged to the side as the bladed whip came cracking down at him. No point fighting puppets; she can always summon more. He parried the blade of the female puppet and made to dash between them, but strands of almost invisibly thin razor-wire stretching between their hands forced him to jump back at the last second. He hurled a volley of kunai with explosive tags at Chiyo as he leaped, but the puppets were instantly yanked back in defence. When the blast cleared, the two puppets were standing in front of Chiyo in guarding positions, each with one arm outstretched: Wooden panels had opened up along their forearms, inscribed with seals from which chakra emanated in the form of shimmering blue shields. Before Kakashi could react their mouths opened up and a withering barrage of needles was fired at him in a wide spread.

Poisoned, can’t take any risk. He pressed his hands to the ground, and an earthen wall rose up before him just in time to block the senbon with a series of thuds. He flashed through another set of seals, and then the world shifted around him as his original body sank into the earth beside him while he dashed from cover to engage the enemy head on, lightning already chirping along the length of his blade. The female puppet leaped back at the sight of his Chidori-infused sword while the male puppet tried to hold him off with his whip, but Kakashi easily sliced through the sinewy material and left him with just half a weapon. He kept going and cut straight through the puppet’s chakra shield as well as the arm that held it, but the clacking marionette simply kept on fighting as though nothing had happened. By then the female puppet had finished circling him and came at him from behind, and he was forced to fall back until the two of them were in front of him once more.

Any time now…

His original body burst out of the ground directly behind Chiyo and breathed out a stream of flame so bright and searing that the old woman was little more than a silhouette outlined against it. Her right arm whipped around at the last second, seal-encrusted wooden panels jumping out through some hidden mechanism as she projected a chakra shield to block the great gout of flame. By the time the firestorm subsided it had given her little more than a singed face and hair.

She raised her nose at the smell and sniffed in distaste. “Pwah, that’s right – I’m still wearing that ridiculous getup, aren’t I? Be a dear and give me a second.” Strings of blue chakra began to claw at her face like invisible fingers, tearing away strips of false flesh and discarding her wig like trash. What remained was a thin crop of grey hair, skin like dried leather, and eyes that belonged to something that lay dead and rotten on the ocean floor.

Kakashi took half a step backwards, as much as an involuntary reaction as to draw attention away from his original body which was once again retreating from sight. There was something distinctly inhuman about those empty black pits – as if he was facing not just an old woman, but all of the hatred and spite that she had accumulated over a lifetime. It had always seemed a bit abstract to him when Jiraiya and the Fourth talked about putting an end to all the darkness in the world, but now, facing Elder Chiyo of the Honoured Siblings, he thought he finally understood what they really meant.

“What’s the matter, boy? Don’t like the way I look?” She raised her nose at him. “I suppose they teach you at the academy that it’s wrong to kill for hate and that you should kill for love instead? Pwah. Preaching love and kindness while sending assassins to murder your children in the night… what a poor excuse for a joke.”

“Lady Chiyo,” he said, “if it helps, I understand where you’re coming from. During my very first mission as a jōnin commander fourteen years ago I lost both of my childhood friends. Rin and Obito, they were called. I wanted nothing more than to make the enemy pay for what they did, but no matter how many Rock ninjas I killed it did not make me feel any better. In truth, it did not make me feel anything at all.”

She scoffed. “What, so some childish chit dies on your first mission and you think that lets you understand? Because of some brats that you knew for barely a decade?” She narrowed her eyes at him.  “You children are all the same: You demand to be treated like adults, but the moment things don’t go the way you want you run off and declare the world to be ruined forever. Try another twenty years of watching everything you love burn down in front of you, White Fang. Then you may talk to me of hate. Who knows, you might even be able to put up a decent fight by then.”

The two puppets came at him once more, their robes fluttering behind them as they flew through the empty street like wraiths. Kakashi turned and ran up the nearest wall until he had a clear line to his enemy, and then body-flickered directly in front of Chiyo, his white sword already outstretched and going for Chiyo’s throat. At the last second his blade veered to the side as her chakra strings grabbed hold of it while a metal blade pierced his chest from behind. The last he saw before the world turned black was the look on her face as his cloned body burst apart in a storm of thunder and lightning.

-o-

The real Kakashi leaped out of his hiding spot and slapped an explosive tag on both of the puppets as they collapsed in a fit of spasms along with their master, and then hurled several more kunai with explosive tags into the maelstrom that had enveloped Chiyo until the whole area was consumed by fire and thunder. When the storm cleared, the old woman was crouched and breathing heavily, both arms crossed with shields projected outwards in a perfect hemisphere that covered her completely.

“That’s the second time you’ve killed my children,” she said, her body twitching slightly as the last of the electricity left her system. “You really are a glutton for punishment, aren’t you?”

Kakashi eyed her warily. “Lady Chiyo, you’ve lost both your puppets, and those shields of yours won’t last forever. Surrender, and together we can convince the Kazekage to pull back his army and avoid any more unnecessary loss of life.” There was someone controlling the Sand from behind the scenes, he was certain of that now. Someone who could pull the strings of even a puppet master like Chiyo, someone who hid in the darkness and shaped the world to their liking without ever showing a single sign of their presence. If he could only manage to convince the Kazekage of that, then perhaps there was still a way for this day not to end in tragedy.

A twisted smile crawled up on Chiyo’s face. “Telling me to surrender? See me as just a bag of old bones, do you? Well, look again.” Her shields flickered out and she leaped to her feet faster than Kakashi would have imagined possible, a scroll already unfurling itself above her head as ten white wraiths leaped out. “Truth is, I only kept those two puppets around out of sentimentality. Let’s see how you fare against the ones I used to slaughter every single last living being in Tanzaku Castle: The first puppet master Monzaemon Chikamatsu’s White Secret!”