aFireFist
A Life in the Hidden Leaf
Chapter 16 - Part 4
Yasuo was already moving people. A pair of genin had frozen staring at the cloak. He grabbed both by the vests and threw them toward the slug line.
"Move. Don't watch. Run."
Wind sheared a collapsing awning off a civilian cluster before the timber finished them. Lightning popped a chunin who broke toward Naruto with a kunai and the wrong idea of help — a short burst to the nerves, enough to drop him without cooking him. The man hit the stone stunned. Yasuo dragged him by the harness and shoved him after the genin.
"Back. You don't go near that. You hear me? You run."
The first tail whipped through a building that had been standing a minute ago. The whole front came down in a sheet of brick and dust. The block vanished behind grey.
***
On the command roof Tsunade's seal burned hotter. She poured more of herself into Katsuyu and felt the drain like a hole opening under her feet, chakra ripping out of the diamond on her forehead and into every slug segment still covering the living. Her knees dipped. She locked them.
Milk leaked through the robe in fresh dark patches, soaking the cloth over her heavy tits, nipples stiff from strain and leftover need. The load Yasuo had just put in her shifted when she jumped to the next vantage, warm and filthy down her thigh, still leaking into the ruined pants with every landing. She felt it. She did not have time to care. She kept shouting people off the kill zone.
"West line, collapse to the inner wall! Do not look at him! If you can carry a wounded man, you carry him now!"
Shizune's voice cracked back across the channel. "The field's stretching too thin—"
"Then stretch it. I am not losing the west side to a tail."
***
Naruto rose inside the cloak. Red. Wrong. Aimed straight at Deva Path.
The real fight had just changed shape.
The cloak finished knitting while people were still running. Red chakra stood off his skin in a violent sheet, heat rolling off it in waves. Bone-white ribs locked over his chest. Tails tore out of his back one after another — two, three, four — and hit the street hard enough to split stone down to the pipes. The air around him went hot and wrong, the kind of pressure that made ears pop and teeth ache.
Deva Path put a hand up. Shinra Tensei rolled out at full force, the same push that had thrown Naruto off roofs all afternoon.
It moved the cloak. It did not stop it.
Naruto walked through the repulsion. The red ate the force and kept coming, feet gouging the street. Asura Path fired what it had left from the good arm, missiles screaming out of the broken casing. They vanished into the chakra. Preta Path reached for the cloak with both palms, looking for a jutsu to swallow, and jerked his hands back burned. There was nothing clean to absorb. It was not a technique. It was a flood.
Naruto did not talk. His mouth was open on a sound that was not words. The thing wearing him was aimed at the orange-haired body in front of him and at everything that body had done. Jiraiya in the rain. Fukasaku on the stone. Hinata with a hole in her and her hand still reaching. The village flattened behind them.
A tail whipped sideways and took a storefront off its foundations. The building came down in a sheet of dust and timber. Another tail smashed the street open, cobbles flying. Deva Path flashed back, cloak snapping, and lifted both hands. The next Shinra Tensei was wider. Whole blocks leaned. What was still standing on the east edge went over in a long, ugly collapse.
It still was not enough.
"Off that street!" Tsunade's voice tore across the seals. "North and west, pull now! Do not approach him! If you can hear me, you run!"
She was on the next roof over, boots cracking tiles, seal burning a hard light on her forehead. The robe was a wreck, open down the front, stiff with dust and sweat. Heavy tits sat flushed and leaking through the cloth, the soft weight shifting every time she shouted, milk stains spreading in fresh dark patches across the fabric. Dark nipples showed through the wet. Between her thighs Yasuo's last load had gone thin and warm from the running. It shifted when she landed, a filthy slick reminder that she had been full behind a slug twenty minutes ago and was still walking around with it. She felt it. She kept moving.
"Shizune, I want every mobile unit off the east line. I don't care what they're carrying. Drop it and run."
Shizune's voice came back raw. "Katsuyu can't cover that radius if you keep expanding. You're going to empty the seal—"
"Then we expand anyway." Tsunade slammed more chakra into the slug network. Green fields stretched across wreckage, thin and wide. The drain opened under her like a hole. Her knees dipped. She locked them until the shake stopped showing. Milk ran down the underside of one tit and soaked another patch into the robe. "Medics, take anyone in the collapse line. Leave the jinchūriki alone. If you go near that cloak, I will have you dragged back by the vest."
"Acknowledged," Shizune said, and the channel filled with people actually moving.
***
Yasuo worked the edge of the red.
He did not go near the cloak. There was nothing useful he could do inside that radius except die and add another body to Naruto's count. He dragged a woman out from under a fallen beam before a tail turned the beam into splinters. She coughed dust into his collar. He shoved her toward the green and did not wait for thanks.
Wind sheared a wall out, away from a knot of chunin who had frozen watching Naruto like the red was a spectacle. The wall dropped short of their heads. "Move," Yasuo said. "If you're staring, you're already late."
Lightning dropped a genin who broke toward the fight with a kunai in his hand and the wrong idea of help. A short burst. Nerves, not a kill. The kid hit the stone twitching. Yasuo hauled him by the vest and threw him at the slug line.
"You don't go near that. You hear me? You run. There is no helping him from inside that."
The genin swore and crawled. Another tail hit. The shockwave knocked Yasuo into a half-wall hard enough to rattle his teeth. He got up, ears ringing, and kept pulling people. A civilian kid was standing in the open staring at the red mouth open, feet planted.
Yasuo scooped him under one arm, shoved him into his mother's arms, and pointed them north. "Don't stop until you see green. Don't look back. Go."
The east side was becoming a pit. That was the point. Keep the pit from eating the rest.
***
Deva Path rose higher. Black rods bristled out of the cloak. The air over the open ground started to pull inward, a deep ugly suck that made the fires lean. Stone lifted off the street. Rubble rose in a slow spiral, boards and tile and a broken cart turning in the air. Chibaku Tensei. A black sphere forming overhead, packing the wreckage into itself, growing heavier with every piece it ate.
"He's pulling the block," someone shouted on the rim.
"Then get off the block," Yasuo said, and pushed the last cluster through a gap.
Naruto went up after it.
The cloak's tails drove him into the sky, red ripping a hole through the dust. He hit the sphere like he wanted to break the world with his face. Red exploded across the black. For a second the two forces just tore at each other — gravity packing in, chakra tearing out. The sound of it sat in the chest more than the ears. Then the sphere cracked. A line of light split the dark. Chunks of it rained back down on a village that had already been flattened once, stone falling into streets that did not have streets left.
Deva Path came out of the dust still standing. Barely. The orange hair was filthy. The Rinnegan still empty. One rod in his side sat crooked. He raised a hand again.
Naruto hit him first.
The cloak's fist put Deva Path through the last standing wall on that block. Brick blew out the far side. The body tumbled, rods scraping stone, and tried to rise. A tail pinned it to the rubble, red grinding down on the cloak. Naruto's clawed hand closed on the front of it.
He still did not talk. He squeezed.
The Deva Path's head turned, not in panic, just tracking. Somewhere behind those eyes the caster was already making a different calculation. The puppet stopped trying to win the street. It started trying to leave it.
The red around Naruto shuddered. For a moment the bone ribs flared brighter, tails lashing hard enough to gouge another trench in the stone. Then they flickered. The cloak was eating him too. There was only so long a body could run like that before the thing inside him finished the work the Paths had started.
Tsunade felt the change from the roof, the signature thinning under the red. "He's going to burn himself out. Yasuo—if that cloak drops, the Paths will still be on him. Get the last civilians off the east line. Now."
"Already moving," Yasuo said into the seal, and meant it.
He pushed the last cluster through a gap in the rubble and into Katsuyu's glow — two chunin, a civilian with a bleeding scalp, a medic who had stayed too long. When he looked back, the red was thinning. Not gone. Thinner. Naruto's shape showed through it in ugly pieces. Skin. Whisker marks. The hole in the vest. A boy under a monster that was running out of fuel.
The Deva Path's body stopped fighting.
Not because it was finished. Because the chakra running it had turned elsewhere. The other remaining Paths froze with it, Preta's hands dropping, Asura's ruined frame locking mid-twitch. Then they started falling back in a line that was not retreat so much as recall, puppets called home by the hand that had been moving them.
Naruto dropped to one knee as the cloak peeled off him in shreds of red. The bone was gone. The tails were gone. He was shaking, skin raw, eyes barely focusing. Blood ran from his mouth and his nose and the hole in his vest. Steam came off him in the cooling air.
He got up anyway.
He did not go after the falling puppets. He turned toward the pull behind them, the thing Jiraiya had died to name without naming it. The real one was not among them. He had known that when he walked into this village in Sage Mode. He knew it now with nothing left on his face but blood.
"Don't—" Tsunade started, then stopped. There was no order that would hold him.
He ran.
***
The place was a ruined hall half-buried under what used to be the village edge. Paper tags on the remaining posts. Stale air under the smoke. A man on a mechanical stand, orange hair dull, black rods thick through his back and legs. The legs did not work. The Rinnegan in his face were the same as the puppets and older than them, worn into a living head instead of worn onto a corpse. Konan stood off to his side, wings of paper folded tight against her back, watching Naruto come in.
Yasuo did not follow him in. There was nothing in that room a medic could fix that would change the choice about to get made. He stayed on the street with the wounded and the fires, hands still green from the last seal, eyes on the hall only long enough to confirm Naruto had gone through the gap.
Naruto stopped in front of the stand. His hands were fists. They were also empty. No Rasengan. No cloak. Just a shaking boy in a ruined vest.
"You're the one," he said. His voice was wrecked, scraped raw. "Jiraiya-sensei died because of you. Fukasaku died because of you. Hinata—" He swallowed. "You're the one behind all of it. Not the orange-haired one. You."
Nagato looked at him for a long time. When he spoke it was tired, not holy. No god in it. Just a man on a stand who had already spent a village.
"You are Jiraiya-sensei's other student. I thought he would send a weapon. He sent a boy who still thinks talk can undo a village."
"He sent me because he believed I wouldn't turn into you." Blood on Naruto's mouth. "He taught you too. He taught you peace. You used it to flatten my home. You used his face on a corpse and walked it through my streets."
"Your home flattened mine first." Nagato's hands rested on the arms of the stand. "Hanzo. Danzo. The Leaf's peace has always been someone else's grave. Yahiko died for a better answer than that. I buried that answer and built this one. Pain large enough to make the next war afraid of itself."
Konan's paper shifted once and went still. She did not draw.
Naruto did not throw the jutsu in his hand. The chakra was there. The hate was there. He kept both of them down.
"I can't forgive you," he said. "I want to. I can't. You killed him. You put a rod through Hinata and made me watch. Half this village would cheer if I ended you."
He dragged a breath in through his teeth. It hurt.
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