Soul of Fire

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Hinata swore as she dodged another shadow-shinobi. Unlike living opponents, who avoided attacks, the shadows preferred to be struck. She had wasted several concentrated bursts of chakra trying to seal theoretical chakra points before it became obvious that each hit was making them stronger, deepening their color. She could see her own chakra draining away whenever she touched one. She resorted to dodging and encouraged everyone she passed on their ink-finding mission to do the same.

The biggest problem was that the Uzumaki hadn't stopped attacking just because the shadows were attacking too. Sometimes countering an attack from one of Naruto's relatives meant unintentionally entering the range of one of the shadows. While the Hyuuga clan's techniques did work on the Uzumaki, they were frustratingly hard to approach and, like Naruto, had so much excess chakra that sealing one or two tenketsu wasn't enough to slow them down. The seals they used didn't require much chakra to activate either and occasionally a hit by Hinata set the damn things off.

The absolute worst part of it all was that the Uzumaki she encountered didn't want to attack her. Whenever Hinata landed a solid hit or managed a successful evasion, they cheered her on. It was simultaneously uplifting and demoralizing at the same time.

"Good job, fighting boy!" shouted an enthusiastic teenage Uzumaki as he flew into one of his older female relatives, knocking them both off their feet.

That was directed at Lee, who was pretty amazing at dodging the shadows and had no compunctions about kicking the Uzumaki as hard as he could as soon as they were in range. There was no time for introductions, so their opponents called her, Hyuuga-girl, and Lee,1 fighting boy, even though they were both clearly adults.

With both the Uzumaki temporarily down, Hinata took a moment to breathe and reassess her options. She and Lee had stumbled upon each other in the chaos after separating from their respective teams and decided to stick together. They had found another ink cache to bring to Naruto—there really was ink stored all over the place along with the remnants of sealing paper and brushes that had fared less well than the compressed bricks—and were trying to reach the town square, but they kept falling into clusters of enemies. Unfortunately the twist of chakra coils that prevented Lee from using ninjutsu did not make him immune to chakra drain by the shadows. What they had hoped would be a quick run back to the center square had instead been a slow slog of constant fighting.

Hinata glanced up. She had been so afraid. She had been using the byakugan to keep an eye on Naruto and Ichigo. She had watched them age in reverse, watched Naruto fall out of the sky, and watched a series of should-be fatal injuries bloom across Ichigo's body. (She couldn't stop herself from screaming at the fist-sized hole straight through his chest. They had only barely managed one date. She wanted so much more.) But somehow he had survived the experience, and now he was back to fighting. Even without her dōjutsu active, she could see the distortion of illusion hovering above the ruined village. It was a smokescreen hiding the work that they were all doing to defeat Hantokei. It was absolutely insane. No one cast a genjutsu over an entire village or held it throughout an entire battle. But despite the impossibility, it was working.

Hinata looked at the shadows in front of her. Everything about this battle was crazy and backwards and impossible. So maybe she needed to be too? The basis of the Hyuuga technique was inserting chakra into a body, so she should try to remove it instead. Sealing a chakra point properly required needle-like precision, but grabbing chakra from the inside would need a hook. She imagined spinning her chakra on the tip of her finger as it sunk into the shadow-figures. Then she shook her head. Everything was backwards. Her hook would need to spin to the left to tighten up.

Her head felt dizzy like she was learning eight trigrams, sixty-four palms all over again. She really wished Neji or Hanabi were the ones trying this. They were both geniuses with excellent chakra control while Hinata was average for a Hyuuga.

Hinata approached one of the shadows—it practically leaned into her—and stabbed forward with her modified chakra hook. There was a surprisingly meaty thunk as Hinata connected. Up until now she hadn't felt any sort of physical resistance from the shadows. She ignored the sensation and leaped back trying to maintain her experimental chakra technique. A long string of chakra unwound from the shadow. It pulsed uncannily as if she had managed to pull out an artery attached to a still beating heart.

Hinata's concentration slipped at the thought and she stopped pulling. The shadow immediately attempted to reabsorb the chakra she had removed. Hinata flicked her hand and the string of chakra detached completely from the shadow. Then it exploded.

Hinata blinked back pain at the unexpected burst of chakra. As her vision cleared, she saw the shadow she had drawn chakra from was significantly paler than before.

"It worked!" she shouted.

"What happened?" demanded Lee. "What was that explosion?"

"I pulled chakra from a shadow!" said Hinata.

"Congratulations!" shouted Lee, shooting her a thumbs up while dodging a grab from a different shadow. "But why did it explode?"

"Probably because it was inside one of Hantokei's followers. The world itself rejects their existence including their poisoned chakra," said the female Uzumaki from the ground.

She and the teenager were slowly untangling themselves from each other. They kept getting in each other's way and knocking themselves over as they tried to stand, a tiny rebellion in the face of Hantokei's control. "Good job, Hyuuga-girl."

"I'm a woman!" snapped Hinata.

"And I've been dead since the first shinobi war," said the woman.

"Me too!" added the Uzumaki boy. "We're your seniors, Hyuuga-girl. Show some respect."

The Uzumaki woman rolled her eyes and swatted the teenager on the back of the head. They both dropped back to the ground and he let out a playful whine that made him sound distressingly similar to Naruto. Hinata blanched. She didn't want to think of a boy like Naruto dead in a shinobi war.

"Hinata," Lee's urgent tone was a welcome distraction. "Can you do it again? At speed?"

He wasn't looking at her but toward the square. There were dozens of black shadows between them and Naruto. Hinata raised her hands. She wasn't a Hyuuga genius like her cousin or her sister. But Hinata could out stubborn the both of them.

"You've got the ink stones?" asked Hinata.

"Yes," confirmed Lee.

"Let's go," ordered Hinata and launched herself at the next shadow. They would get to the square, give Naruto their supplies, and help save the world. She believed it.

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Kurosaki Karin stared out at the roaring waves and wondered what the hell she was doing here. She was in a line with the Mizukage, the Tsuchikage, the Kazekage, and Yamato, the ANBU captain who was training Ichigo to use his super-rare wood release. She was holding Isobu, the Three-Tailed Beast, so he could get a look at what they were working with. The only person less qualified to be here was Kon, and he was already racing off to evacuate more shinobi suffering from chakra exhaustion. Karin hated feeling useless. At least at the medical tent she could have performed some basic first-aid.

"That's a big hole. Not too wide, all things considered but longer than I'd like," rumbled Isobu at last. "If it collapses when I pull the water out, it will ruin Naruto's work."

If anything, this was a relatively precise blow from Ichigo's bankai. But Karin bit back her knee-jerk defense of Ichigo. Everyone knew they would be dead already if her brother hadn't freed the assembled shinobi and samurai from Hantokei's chakra trap. They didn't need to worry about the damage he could have done. People in power worrying about Ichigo's destructive potential was what had driven her family to the Elemental Countries in the first place.

"I can reinforce the ground with wood release," offered Yamato. "But it will probably burn when it comes in contact with lava. I don't have enough chakra to reinforce an area that large against a kage-level assault."

The two female kages grimaced at each other.

"To fill a large space quickly, lava release is preferable to earth release," said the Tsuchikage. She stamped her on the newly formed ground beneath their feet. "Only bothered up here because it would be too hot otherwise. And Mei helped keep the water down while I did it."

"I wouldn't be much help moving pure earth, and I don't have the strength to hold back the ocean," added the Mizukage.

"Let Karin and I worry about the ocean," said Isobu. Karin's eyes widened involuntarily in quiet panic. Just because Ichigo could split the sea in half didn't mean she could!

"Shukaku and I could cover and reinforce the wooden supports with sand," offered the Kazekage.

"Agreed," said Shukaku. His tiny body produced a voice as loud as Isobu's to no one's surprise.

"Begin growing your roots, Captain Yamato," ordered Isobu.

The ANBU captain startled at being addressed by name, but he quickly dropped onto the ground in a meditative pose. Karin wasn't a specialized sensor like her Uzumaki cousin, but she didn't miss the surge of chakra beneath their feet as he began to shore up the cavern beneath Uzushiogakure.

"What do you want me to do?" asked Karin the turtle resting in her hands.

"When I pull the seawater back, I need you to start freezing it," explained Isobu.

"I'm not Ichigo," protested Karin. "I can't freeze the whole ocean!"

Isobu chuckled. "And I can't hold the ocean back forever. I won't have the concentration to hold back the water and to freeze it at the same time. But if you start building an ice wall, then I can help reinforce it."

"Okay," said Karin. She steeled herself. "Okay."

After a few tense minutes, Yamato looked up. He was pale from effort but his gaze remained steady. "That's covered it."

"Karin, toss me in the water. After I grow, everyone climb on my back," ordered Isobu.

Karin wasn't the only one to exchange wide glances with the other shinobi. Tailed-Beasts were not regular animals. They didn't do passengers.

"How generous brother," teased Shukaku.

"It is a matter of practicality," rumbled Isobu. "Now, Karin. And do not kick me, who knows how far I'd go."

Karin, who had been about to drop the turtle and kick him into the water like a misshapen soccer ball out of sheer habit, nodded quickly. She shifted to an underhand throw and tossed the turtle in a gentle curve instead. He landed with a barely noticeable plop.

A minute later the water churned as a tortoise the size of a small island emerged from the waves.

"Wow," said the Tsuchikage. "I forgot how big the Tailed-Beasts can be."

"I can't believe you fit in our apartment," said Karin, impressed despite herself.

"Everybody on the turtle," snapped Shukaku. "You can be amazed later."

"Come on, Yamato," said the Mizukage. "We shouldn't leave you alone up here if any of those shadows come this way."

Karin jumped onto Isobu's back and immediately dropped into a crouch to keep her balance. The shell wasn't exactly even and he bobbed like a boat in the water. When she glanced over her shoulder, she saw the other, more experienced shinobi were doing the same thing.

"All aboard," called Shukaku.

Nothing seemed to happen for a long moment. Then the water level, which had already been surging violently at the addition of a gigantic turtle, began to sink dramatically. The waves rose above their heads forming walls of water that twisted into a funnel. Karin felt like she was riding the back of a soap bubble stuck in a massive tub as the bathwater drained away. It would be pretty if it didn't make her life feel fragile.

They hit the bottom of the seabed with a solid thump. They hadn't gone down that far, only 50 feet or so, but the amount of water Isobu had to displace was still staggering. There was a loud sucking sound as the Three-Tails began to pull water out of the fissure beneath Uzushiogakure. It flowed over and around their little bubble of air and crashed back into the ocean.

"Now, Karin," hissed Isobu.

Karin lurched to her feet and staggered forward as the rest of the shinobi moved toward the turtle's tail. Karin slid down the edge of his shell, grateful for her reinforced clothing, and dropped to the ocean floor. She gazed up at the wall of sea water.

There was so much water.

Karin took a steadying breath and raised her hands to hold an invisible bow. None of the jutsu she had learned would be enough to freeze even a small portion of the wall. She didn't have a limitless well of power like her brother and she didn't have decades of experience commanding ice like Hitsugaya or Rukia. She had a few months of studying ninjutsu, a natural affinity for ice release, and almost a decade of practice with her Quincy powers.

Running on instinct, Karin fired an ice arrow.

The arrow pierced the wall of seawater with a sound like shattering glass. A long barrel of ice followed the path of her arrow and floated in the wall of water. She fired another and another, filling her vision with ice.

When the wall in front of her was almost solid, Isobu laughed. "Excellent, a thick shell is better protection than a flimsy hide."

A twist of chakra from the Tailed-Beast froze the tubes of ice in place so that the wall looked like silver honeycomb. Another twist of chakra split their ice-creation in two. The halves floated away from each other, one to each side like a pair of sliding doors, to serve as bulwarks against the grinding pressure of the waves and allowing Isobu to concentrate on the water immediately in front of them.

Karin glanced back. The Tsuchikage and Mizukage were pouring lava into the cave. Shukaku and the Kazekage were throwing sand in after them. Every so often one of the kages would end their jutsu and drag heat away from the cave or punch the lava back further into the gap. Slowly the ground was filling up.

"Are you ready to begin again?" asked Isobu.

Karin looked at the swirling wall of seawater before her. It was angrier now, being forced between the two massive blocks of ice she and Isobu had already made. And it was saltier too, which made it harder to freeze. Any other day, going forward would be impossible. But now, they had to fill in the ground so when Naruto resealed Hantokei, the bastard couldn't pull on the chakra of the sea in order to escape. Karin wasn't about to give up when hope was on the horizon.

Karin fired another ice arrow. "Are you kidding? I'm just getting started."

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End of chapter.

I have never regretted so much in my life not giving these chapters titles and subtitles.

I dropped a few scenes in exchange for motivation to finish writing. I maintain my estimate of 2-3 more chapters.

Thank you for sticking with me for so long!