Naruto: The Unwoven Threads of Fate

I respond to her blow with one of my own, I violently slam my head into hers dazing her for a brief instant. It's just long enough for me to reach into my hip pouch and pull out a scroll. I quickly unfurl the meter long piece of paper and wrap it once around her neck. Then I leap away from her to watch the show.

She's quick to try and remove the crude collar I gave her but she's not fast enough. She couldn't stop the seal from activating and it is a masterpiece.

Gluttonous amounts of fire billow forth from the seal completely covering everything in a five meter radius from its origin point. Which is Yugito's neck.

"Haha! It's not as fun when someone else lights you on fire is it!" I laugh crazily as the fire continues to rage around her. "Totally knew that would be awesome. Aw crap it turned blue."

The now blue fireball, also known as Yugito, sprints at me and starts shredding me with her claws. She's slashing them over and over again, aiming at anything and everything. But despite her crazy attack my arms always intercept her claws, limiting the damage to just my arms instead of my… well my everything.

But it's not just the claws that are hurting me, even if the actual damage is negligible to me. Her cloak of fire is slowly but surely burning my flesh, starting with my fingers. They're getting hotter and hotter, pretty soon they'll turn to mush.

"You better toss in the towel soon." Yugito says as she continues her relentless assault. She spears her hand forward once more, aiming for my shoulder. Unlike each blow before this one connects, it's such a forceful hit that the claws stab all the way through me. "I'm amazed that you can move your arms at all, let alone stand the heat of my fire. That last hit is just icing on the cake."

"HAHAHA!" I cackle like a madman as my left hand darts out and wraps around her neck once more. Her eyes widen in shock and fear as my right arm raises up to ready a punch. "I haven't had this much fun in ages!"

SLAM

Yugito goes flying away from me, bounces twice across the ground before tumbling to a no longer on fire heap.

"No one over in Oto fights me like you are now! Even if they've seen me take a ridiculous beating they still don't attack me like you do! You don't have any issues using crippling attacks against me! I'm having so much fun, why would I want to stop now!"

"You're insane." Yugito spits out an insult at me as she pushes herself back to her feet.

"No, you're the insane one. I just love the thrill of battle and truly enjoy freaking people the fuck out." I take this moment to experimentally roll my right shoulder - the one she stabbed - around for shit, kicks and giggles. "I don't know if you've noticed or not but I'm beating you."

"I have noticed." Now that is unexpected, perhaps her judgement isn't as clouded as I thought. "Overall you've taken more damage than me but you haven't slowed down at all. You've done the opposite, you've sped up and hit harder. But me? Your attacks are starting to take their toll. I'm weakening. At the start of this fight you'd have no hope of grasping my neck like that."

"Aww is that a surrender I hear?" I arrogantly speak down to her to rile her up. I don't want to stop this yet, I'm having too much fun. I never thought I could hold my own against her like this.

"No, it is an acknowledgement of your prowess. I recognize that I will not be able to beat you like this." A red haze forms around her, encompassing her entire body. It bubbles like a viscous liquid and clings to her frame despite the laws of physics. Most worrisome of all is the single red bubbling tail that is twitching around behind her. "But I am far from beaten."

"That's the spirit! I've been saving this move for a while!" I whip out another scroll and unseal its contents. A mound of kunai clatter to the floor at my feet. "Let's see just how good that chakra coat really is!"

I extend out five chakra strings from my fingertips and let them connect to five unique kunai. Said kunai rise up into the air as if by my sheer will alone, but then something different happens. I make five elemental changes, one per string and kunai. Each respective element quickly wraps around the kunai adding on an extra layer of deadliness.

"Let's see what lightning does!" I let it fly and it is little more than a straight blue line aimed right at Yugito's chest.

She moves out of their way, no, moves doesn't do it justice. Every step she takes sends dirt flying to the air. Every swing of her arms cause the very air to burn. Her very presence causes destruction wherever she is.

The kunai sails past her by a wide margin and hits a tree. Then goes through it. And the next one. And the one after that. And a boulder. And keeps going.

"Damn kid. You should have opened with that." Yugito praises me as we both stare at the inconspicuous hole in multiple trees and rocks.

"Meh, this isn't really my style but I wanted to try it out." I wiggle my fingers and the kunai respond, they're tracking Yugito who has started to move around the clearing to make hitting her harder. "Let's see what water does!"

The water kunai speeds off towards Yugito at a much slower speed. She doesn't bother stepping to dodge, she just tilts her head out of the way. But on its way past the water that covers the kunai reaches a razor sharp tendril out to her, it would have ripped into her shoulder but her chakra cloak stopped it from causing damage.

"Alright, I'm not really a water guy but that was fucking cool." The kunai used the water to branch out and make another blade. That's water's greatest strength, the sheer versatility of a fluid.

"Hm. I suppose I'll have to actually try to avoid them." Yugito spares her shoulder a glance. "Or not, it didn't even do anything."

"Then eat this one!" The earth kunai goes soaring at her next but unlike her boasting moments before she makes sure to give this one a wide berth. Good thing too because once the kunai hits a tree it splintered it. Seriously it looks like someone stuck an explosive tag inside the tree and set it off, a chunk of the trunk is just gone. "Ooooh! I like that one!"

"You have issues." Yugito dryly informs me.

"Sweetheart you have no idea. I haven't even used my favorite element yet." The next kunai, wind, isn't thrown like the other so far. Instead of throwing it like normal - like a spear - I threw it like a shuriken. It spins horizontally at a ridiculous speed and rips through the air towards Yugito.

She drops to the floor and lets it sail harmlessly over her head before standing back up to watch the aftermath. It doesn't disappoint, the spinning kunai cleanly cuts through four trees before finally running out of steam and falling to the ground.

"Good God kid how much chakra are you putting into those things?! And how can you use so many elements!? What the hell kind of a shinobi are you!" Yugito rounds on me with a weird emotion in her eyes. Is that worry I see? Or fear? Or excitement? I can't tell. Oh wait, it's not an emotion. Her eyes are red, that's why they're weird.

"More chakra than most chunin have. The Jiongu is amazing. A damn good one." I easily answer her questions in order as the final kunai lights up in flames. "Shall we see what the last one does? It's the one I'm most excited for!"

The final kunai glows red hot before I let it go. It takes off towards Yugito and she expertly moves way the hell out of the way. Good call too, because it did something neither of us expected. It melted, the molten metal split apart into tiny globs of liquid steel that splattered across a large area. A searing hot flame bursts to life everywhere one of the drops touches, the heat is just that extreme.

"I really like that one." I sensually let a throaty growl out while observing the aftermath. A new batch of kunai lift into the air and point at Yugito. "Now then! Dance jinchuuriki! DANCE!"

Countless kunai sail after the red blur that's sprinting around the clearing. She outpaces all but a few of my best and luckiest throws, but even those don't hit her. She used her tail to swat them out of the sky before they could connect.

"That's right! Run!" I call after the red blur. "I could use some target practice!"

On and on this goes as I deplete my stock of kunai. She's patiently waiting for me to run out as I continue to laugh my ass off. And sure enough I do run out, and sure enough she tries to take advantage of that moment.

"You've thrown your last kunai." She says as the red blur abruptly alters course and makes a straight line to me. I don't bother attempting to dodge or block as her hand wraps around my throat, nor do I bother crying out as the acidic chakra starts to eat through my scarf and into my skin. "You should have kept better track on how many you had left."

"That's just it though." I clamp both my hands around the arm that she's using to hold my neck, not in an attempt to free myself but to hold her in place. "My kunai come back."

All the kunai that I threw earlier raise up into the air once more with their deadly points aimed at us both. All the kunai I can reach at least, all of the lightning ones are long gone and some of the winds have sailed past my reach too. Not to mention the now liquid fire ones, so yeah.

"You're going to hit yourself." Yugito calmly points out as her chakra continues to eat away at me. "I'm surprised you can stand the feeling of the cloak, very few people can tolerate it without flinching. Are you suicidal?"

"Let's find out!" With a crazy grin I let the kunai fly. They all sail towards us but neither of us flinch. We're waiting for the other to act first.

At the last possible moment we both make our move. I stomp a foot to the ground and three walls of earth spring up around me, with their addition I'm completely protected. Yugito's body covers my front and the walls the rest.

Yugito merely snorts in mild amusement and coils her chakra tail around herself to take the hit for her.

"Impressive, but not good enough." Her hand clamps down harder on my throat. "Surrender, I have you dead to rights. You're not going to be able to escape my grip."

"That's what you think." I release my grip on her arm and point my index finger at my neck. "Jokes on you, I don't actually need this."

"Need what - HOLY FUCKING SHIT!" Yugito shouts as I form a wind whip around my own neck and sever it. My head topples off my shoulders and she reflexively release what she thinks is a dead body. But my head doesn't reach the ground, I caught it before it could fall that far.

With practiced ease I lift my severed head back up and hold it a good ten centimeters away from my neck. Countless black threads eagerly dart out of each part of the wound I gave myself and grasp onto each other. The threads coil and with a sharp and sudden yank my head is pulled back where it belongs.

"What the fuck was that!" Yugito shouts at me in fear, revulsion and terror.

"A really stupid way for me to ruin a scarf." I roll my head around for added effect and to creep her out more. "You'd think I would be more considerate to them because of the scar and all, but I have like thirty stuffed into a scroll somewhere. Shit did I bring that scroll? No idea. Oh sorry I'm off topic! Shall we contin- what the fuck lady!"

"Like you said earlier, misdirection is one hell of a tool." Yugito chuckles to herself at my new situation. "Hope you didn't need this?"

She's holding my left arm. She ripped it off. While she was 'freaking out' she had her tail stab into the ground and move beneath me. It burst forth with a vengeance and took my arm off my shoulder and tossed it to her.

"Oi! I want that back eventually don't destroy it!" I call out to her as she's swinging it around in mock boredom. I wish I had a heart in it, that would be so nice. Then it could smack her around from over there!

"Hey. Noise boys. Hold that." She throws my arm to the Sound Three.

"Noise boys?" Kidomaru asks in confusion as he catches my limb. "Did she mean us?"

"Well she did throw it at us, so probably?" Jirobo shrugs. "Not like we haven't been called worse."

"Where the hell was that mentality when the Kumo shinobi brought up Orochimaru?!" I shout at them. "Would have made my life so much easier but no! No one thinks about me!"

"Don't worry, I'm thinking about you." Yugito promises me as I topple to the ground.

"Dammit woman I need that! Give my leg back!" I awkwardly flail on the ground. "Have you ever tried to move with only half of your limbs? It's fucking impossible."

"This is hands down the weirdest conversation I've ever had." Yugito shakes her head as she mutters to herself. "No. I won't give it back."

"Fine!" I point at my leg and in my best regal voice I call out, "Leg! I demand that you kick her in the face! Do your master's bidding and I will greatly reward you with a wonderful hot springs bath and a slightly unethical amount of lotions and other skincare products!"

The clearing goes silent at my outlandish statement. The Kumo shinobi are looking at me as if I'm crazy, the Sound Three are just really confused and Yugito I can't read. Pity, I wanted to see her reaction to that.

"Wow you really are insane, aren't y-"

SMACK

My foot meets Yugito's face and she drops it more in shock than because of the blow.

"HAHAHAHAHA! OH YOU SHOULD HAVE SEEN YOUR FACE THAT WAS FUCKING HILARIOUS!" I'm smacking the ground because I'm laughing so hard. "Oh man that was priceless! Hate to break it to you, dear jinchuuriki, but shit like that only works once on me."

Yugito glares at the offending limb which is flopping around on the ground like a fish out of water.

"Fire Release." She says while continuing to glare at the limb.

"Shit Yugito no! Don't do it!" Fuck fuck fuck! This is bad! Really bad!

Luckily for me, well everyone really, she punts my leg in the air before releasing her jutsu. "Pillar of Flame!"

A blue tower of fire surges upwards and envelopes my leg completely, turning it to ashes in an instant. But that's not where it ends, out of nowhere a black sphere expands out of where my leg used to be. It grows to be five meters wide in an instant and overtakes the top half of a nearby tree. It stays at that size for a fleeting second, the sphere of blackness, before collapsing on itself. The top half of the tree is completely gone. The only thing left is a human heart that wetly splatters onto the ground below.

Present

"Ah, so she did claim a heart." Orochimaru sagely says with a nod of his head. "It does make sense, she's quite the kunoichi."

"OI!" I berate him. "I'm in the middle of a good part you can't just jump in like that! Totally kills the vibe."

"Then by all means please continue."

"The fuck is wrong with you?!" I shout at her. "You turned my leg to ashes!"

"What's wrong with me? What the fuck is wrong with you!" Yugito aggressively turns to face me. "You're lying on the ground and you're taunting me?! ME?! The one who took off those limbs! Not to mention whatever the hell that black sphere was! Was that a fucking heart?! You shouldn't be able to do anything! How did you do all that?"

"Fuck you that's how." I growl out in anger. She destroyed my earth heart along with my leg. "I'm not going to let this slide."

"Please, you're beaten." She condescendingly says from a good distance away from me. "You don't have an arm. You don't have a leg. You can't walk. You can't use jutsu. I've won."

"Yet you're still way over there." I sassily say to her as a thick fog starts to waft out from under my coat - courtesy of the water mask stitched onto my back - and it quickly shields me from view and rapidly expands to encompass the whole clearing.