Chapter Text
There are shinobi here.
She didn’t know how she knew, but she knew.
She turned her head just enough to look at Itachi’s back, to see if he’d already noticed (Itachi noticed everything) but her eyes didn’t get that far. Instead, they were drawn to something else as it cut through the air. A flash of metal.
A kunai.
It spun end over end, catching the pale sunlight and flaring bright as it tore down the mountain.
Right toward Itachi’s throat.
Time seemed to stretch, the kunai’s rotation slowing to a lazy, hypnotic turn. She could see the chip near the pommel, the faint scratches on the flat of the blade. She saw the way Kurotsuchi-sama, whose expensive robes did nothing to hide the sharp, hungry look in his eyes, flinched, not in surprise, but in anticipation. He knew.
The kunai was ten feet from Itachi. Five. Three.
Itachi moved, a subtle pivot of his feet that was as economical as it was deadly. He didn't even draw a weapon. He simply tilted his head, and the kunai sliced through the air where his throat had been, a silver whisper that buried itself in the dirt behind him. In the same motion, his hand flickered through a hand seal, and the air around him shimmered.
"Stay hidden, Kit," the Kyuubi’s voice rumbled in her mind, suddenly sharp and serious. "Watch. And do not be seen."
But she could barely hear him over the roar of her own blood. Four figures erupted from the rocks. They were big, broad-shouldered men, each clad in the grey, flak-armor-vested uniform of Kumogakure. Their faces were covered by plain white masks with no slits for the eyes, featureless and devoid of identity. They moved with a practiced synchronicity, fanning out to surround Itachi, their hands already weaving signs.
The client smirked, a cruel twist of his lips. Then, with a soft poof of displaced air, he vanished in a shunshin.
Naruto’s heart leapt into her throat. This was a set-up.
Itachi stood in the center of their circle, alone. The wind whipped his dark hair across his face, and for the first time, Naruto saw him not as her senpai, not as her kind, patient teacher, but as what he was: an eleven-year-old boy facing down four grown men. To her, he had always been a pillar of strength, impossibly tall and impossibly wise. But from her hiding place behind the rocky outcroppings, she could see the truth.
He was slender, almost delicate in his build, and the enemies looming over him were mountains of muscle and malice.
No, she shook the thought from her head, I have to have faith.
One of the Kumo shinobi lunged, a heavy ninjato raised high. Itachi met the charge smoothly, redirecting the impact. He flowed inside the man's guard, his hand blurring as he struck a nerve cluster in the man’s wrist. The sword clattered to the rocks. Itachi’s other hand came up in a sharp knife-hand chop to the throat, but a second attacker was already there, kicking low to sweep Itachi’s feet out from under him.
Itachi leaped, twisting in mid-air to avoid the kick, and hurled a trio of shuriken at a third man who was forming a familiar set of seals for a lightning jutsu. The shuriken were a feint; as the man dodged, Itachi completed his own seal.
Katon: Gokakyu no Jutsu.
A massive fireball exploded from his mouth, consuming the space where the lightning-wielder had been. The man dove aside, his sleeve catching fire, but the attack had bought Itachi distance.
He was good. He was so, so good. Her senpai was a whirlwind of precise, brutal efficiency.
But the enemy shinobi were relentless. They didn't give him a moment to breathe, to find an opening. They pressed him, their larger frames forcing him to move constantly, to expend more energy just to keep from being overwhelmed. Naruto’s heart hammered against her ribs, a frantic drumbeat of fear. They were wearing him down.
She knew what the problem was. The masks. They were blank, smooth, offering no eyes for Itachi to catch. His greatest weapon, the genjutsu that could end a fight before it began, was useless. He was forced to fight them on their terms: taijutsu and ninjutsu, a battle of attrition he couldn't win.
One of the shinobi feinted left while another came right, their movements a well-rehearsed pincer. Itachi dodged the first, but a third was already there, his fist glowing with crackling Raiton chakra. Itachi twisted away, but the punch grazed his side, searing a hole in his shirt and leaving a nasty, blackened burn. He grunted, a quiet sound of pain that she felt in her own bones.
He’s going to lose.
The thought was a shard of ice in her gut. Itachi, her Itachi, was going to lose. He was going to die here, on this cold, lonely mountain, and she was hiding in the bushes like a coward. Her promise to him, to stay hidden, felt like a chain around her neck, choking her. She wanted to scream, to throw her kunai, to do something.
"Remember the eyes!" one of the shinobi hissed, their voice lilting with the accent of lightning. "We need the eyes!"
Bile rose in Naruto's throat, unbidden. As if summoned by her dread, Kurotsuchi-sama reappeared on a high ridge, his hands already flying through the final signs of a powerful jutsu. The air grew thick, crackling with the smell of ozone. The lightning coalesced between his palms, a blinding, buzzing sphere of raw power. He was aiming for Itachi’s exposed back.
But Itachi was still facing the other four, his attention divided. He didn't see the new threat. He didn't see the killing blow aimed at his spine.
Naruto’s promise shattered.
"Itachi!" she screamed, the name torn from her throat, raw and ragged.
He heard her. His head snapped toward her voice, his eyes wide with surprise and something else—fear. He twisted his body, an impossible, last-second movement. The lightning bolt, a spear of pure destruction, missed his center mass, striking him square in the left shoulder.
The sound was sickening, a wet, sizzling crackle of flesh and bone. Itachi’s body convulsed, spasming violently as the electricity arced through him. He didn't even cry out. He just fell, his limbs locking, his face a mask of agony as he collapsed onto the unforgiving rocks.
A scream tore from Naruto’s lungs, a sound she didn't know she was capable of making. It was a sound of pure, unadulterated horror, a wounded animal's cry of loss. The world went red.
“Damn it all.”
The Kyuubi’s voice was no longer in her mind; it was in her blood. It was a roar that eclipsed her own scream, a tidal wave of burning, furious chakra that erupted from the cage in her soul. It slammed through her system, a scorching, agonizing flood. It felt like her veins were being filled with molten lead, her tenketsu points bursting one by one. Her skin was on fire, peeling away in flaking, ashen strips as the crimson energy bled through.
She couldn’t stop screaming.
The pain was blinding, but beneath it was a terrifying, exhilarating power. Her muscles swelled, tearing the fabric of her shirt. Her vision sharpened, the world dissolving into shades of grey and crimson. The four Kumo shinobi, who had been moving in to finish off Itachi, stopped, their masked faces turning toward her.
She didn't think. She didn't plan. She moved.
She lunged from the trees, a blur of red and orange, a comet of pure rage. The first shinobi barely had time to register her presence before she was on him. Her hand, now tipped with claws of chakra, swiped through his throat, nearly vaporizing the skin and tendons. Blood sprayed in a wide arc, and the man dropped, gurgling.
The second and third attacked simultaneously, one with a kunai, the other with a kick. She caught the kunai arm, her grip crushing the bone within the man's forearm. She spun him, using his body as a shield to block the kick, the sound of his ribs cracking like dry twigs echoing in the sudden silence. She threw his broken body at his partner and followed up, her other hand plunging into his chest, ripping out his heart in a spray of gore.
The fourth man, the one Itachi had burned, stared in terror. He made a hand seal for a jutsu, but she was faster. She was on him, her fingers sinking into his eye sockets, her thumbs pressing into his brain. He screamed once, a wet, gurgling sound, before going limp.
She turned her burning eyes to the ridge where Kurotsuchi stood, his face pale with shock, the lightning jutsu fizzling in his hands. He had the sense to be afraid.
Naruto lunged for him, her fury all-consuming, but he was already forming the seal for a shunshin.
A guttural, animalistic snarl tore from her throat, and she pushed off the rock, her chakra-coated feet finding purchase on the sheer cliff face, and ascended in a single, impossible leap. Her teeth snapped irritably as her clawed fingers swiped through open air.
Naruto’s slitted pupils scanned the rocky terrain, searching for any evidence of her target. A tiny flash of fabric caught her attention ahead of her; the man was the picture of speed as he fled her vengeance. She tensed her muscles, preparing to leap again.
But then-
A strained weeze sounded from below her.
Itachi.
The red haze receded as quickly as it had come, the roaring in her ears replaced by a deafening quiet. The agonizing fire in her veins cooled to a dull, throbbing ache, leaving her feeling hollowed out and cold. The strength that had felt infinite vanished, and her body screamed in protest. She was kneeling on the ridge, her hands slick with warm, sticky blood, the metallic scent filling her nostrils. Her skin felt tight, raw, and she could feel the sting of the air on the patches where the chakra had flayed it.
Her gaze fell, and she saw them. The bodies. Not shinobi, not enemies, just… lumps. Bloody sacks of meat and broken bone, scattered across the rocks like discarded dolls. The man whose throat she’d torn out, the one with the crushed ribcage, the one whose eyes she had… she couldn't look anymore. A wave of nausea rose in her throat, hot and acidic. She had done that. She had turned them into this.
He was still down there, lying on the cold, hard ground where he had fallen. He wasn't dead. The thought struck her with the force of a physical blow, and everything else—the massacre, the pain, the monster she had just become—faded into a single, all-consuming point of focus. It was his pain that had snapped he rout of this rage in the first place.
She scrambled down the cliff, not with the impossible grace of the Kyuubi’s chakra, but with the frantic, desperate clumsiness of a child. She slipped and skidded on the loose scree, not feeling the scrapes and cuts she was adding to her already battered body.
She reached his side and fell to her knees. His eyes were open, dark and impossibly wide, fixed on her. They weren't looking at her with fear or disgust. They were just… watching. He had seen everything. He had seen the slaughter. He had seen her.
"Naruto."
His voice was a dry, croaking whisper, barely audible, but it shattered her completely. The dam of shock and adrenaline broke, and a sob ripped from her chest. It wasn't the ragged scream from before; it was a broken, hiccupping sound of a terrified little girl. Tears flooded her eyes, hot and immediate, carving clean, salty tracks through the blood and grime caking her cheeks. She was a mess.
A monster, crying over the one person she had tried to save.
"I'm sorry," she wept, the words tumbling over each other. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I tried to stay hidden, I promised, but he was going to kill you, and I–"
"Shh." The sound was strained, but it was a command. "I forgive you. I'm fine."
It was a lie. He was the furthest thing from fine. His left shoulder was a blackened, smoking ruin, the fabric of his shirt fused to the cooked flesh. His whole body was trembling with the lingering effects of the lightning, his fingers twitching uncontrollably.
But he was alive. And he was talking to her.
"Can't… move," he rasped, his breath hitching. "The lightning… it's still… holding me." He tried to lift his good hand, but it only twitched against the dirt. "Naruto. Listen to me." His gaze was intense, cutting through her tears. "We have to go back. Back to the village in the Hot Springs. Can you… can you carry me?"
The question was so absurd, so impossible, she almost laughed through her tears. She was tiny, a five-year-old scrap of a girl. He was a much taller, if slender, eleven-year-old boy. But looking into his eyes, seeing the raw trust there, the absolute belief that she could, she felt something new surge through her. Not the Kyuubi's rage, but her own. Her own stubborn, defiant, unbreakable will.
"Yes," she said, her voice thick with tears but firm. "Yes, senpai. I can."
She didn't know how. She just knew she had to. She wiped her face on her sleeve, smearing the blood and tears into a grimy paste. She shuffled closer, getting her knees under his shoulders. His body was dead weight, limp and heavy. She hooked her arms under his armpits, careful to avoid the ruined shoulder, and locked her hands together across his chest. She grunted, straining with every ounce of strength she had left, and heaved.
For a moment, nothing happened. He was too heavy. She was too small. Panic fluttered in her chest again. Then, she thought of him lying here, defenseless, while more enemies came. She thought of the cold, and the loneliness, and the promise she had made to herself to never be helpless again.
She thought of how Itachi had saved her, time and time again…
Move.
She pushed with her legs, her muscles screaming in protest even as she fortified them her chakra. The world tilted, and then miraculously, he was lifted. It was awkward, clumsy. His legs dragged on the ground, his head lolled against her shoulder, and his dead weight was almost more than she could bear. But he was up. She was carrying him.
"Okay," she panted, her breath coming in ragged gasps. "Okay, I got you."
She took a step, then another. The journey back was a blur of pain and determination. The terrain that had been a fascinating challenge on the way out was now a nightmare of obstacles. Every loose rock threatened to trip her, every incline was a mountain she had to climb. She didn't follow the path; she just ran, her body moving on pure instinct, her mind focused on a single goal: safety. The village. She had to get him to the Hot Springs village.
Her chakra, her own chakra, was low, almost gone after the Kyuubi's violent rampage. But she pushed it, forcing the last dregs into her legs, ignoring the burning in her muscles and the sharp sting of her flayed skin. She didn't feel the sticky air. She didn't feel the fear. All she felt was the weight of the boy in her arms and the frantic, desperate beat of her own heart.
She ran until her lungs burned and her vision swam. She ran until the rocky, hostile landscape of Lightning Country gave way to the gentler, steam-kissed slopes of the neutral nation. She ran until she saw the lights of the village glimmering through the dusk.
She burst through the village gate, a horrifying, blood-soaked specter, a tiny child staggering under the weight of a crippled shinobi. People stared, their faces masks of shock and horror. She didn't care. She stumbled into the center of the main street, her legs finally giving out, and collapsed to her knees, gently lowering Itachi to the ground as she fell.
She looked up, her vision blurry with exhaustion and tears, at the circle of frightened faces. Her own face was a mask of desperation, streaked with blood and snot and tears.
"Please," she cried, her voice a hoarse, broken whisper that carried through the sudden silence. "Help him. Somebody, please… help my senpai."