Title: And Let the Will of Fire Consume You (Part Two)
Rating: PG-13
Summary: The confrontation does not go down how Kakashi thought it would.
Warnings: Nothing significant. Death. Slight language.
Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto, Masashi Kishimoto does.
Author Note: Just a quick reference, I haven't read much past when Naruto starts making Chakra-hands, so this is obviously AU and as for canon mistakes, just go with them :D And now the conclusion of the fight and the fic! See? And I didn't even make you wait three days for it, much less... oh Jesus. 6 and a half months for Part Two. Sorry 'bout that. I knew it'd been a while, but not that long. I just couldn't get anything to paper and RL is distracting. Obviously. Anyway. Yeah. Here you go!
***xxXXxx**
"I see you haven't changed in the last three years, Naruto-kun," The masked man, Madara, sounded amused and Kakashi scowled heavily. Where did this man get off, saying he'd known Naruto for years?
But he could see from Naruto's expression that he did know this man. Kakashi was sure that Sasuke and Sakura also knew him, as the three of them shared everything together. Anger coursed through Kakashi's veins as he watched the confrontation. He didn't like being in the dark about things that had to do with his students and he was as far in the dark as anyone could be. He knew nothing about this man and his relationship with his students.
"Actually," Naruto smirked, holding up a kunai, "I have."
There was a flash as the sun glinted over the blade and Kakashi could have sworn that he'd seen markings etched into it before the kunai few through the air and embedded in the ground a foot behind Madara.
A cruel sounding laugh came from the masked man and he shook his head, "Still having problems with aim, Naruto-kun?" The kunai had passed through the man's knee like he was still a spectre.
With an air of finality, Naruto blinked and raised a hand in an unfamiliar position, a smirk twisting at his lips. "Fuuinjutsu!"
Kakashi couldn't see Madara's face due to his mask, but he could sense the man's forced calmness.
"And just what was that supposed to do, Naruto-kun? You aren't the Sealing Master that your father was."
"No," Naruto nodded sagely, "No, I'm not." Kakashi blinked in shock as he felt a surge of chakra, greater than anything he'd ever felt before. It was definitely different as well. Kakashi was sure that he'd felt that kind of chakra before though, but he couldn't remember where, or when.
"We are to fight then?" Madara's voice held a mocking tone to it, but he still shifted into a battle stance, "As we have done before?"
"I think it'll be a little different this time," Naruto responded. Kakashi took up a position behind Naruto, kunai in one hand and the other raising to his hitai-ite to uncover his sharingan eye. Naruto's hand on his knee stopped him. "Don't look at him with your sharingan, Kakashi-sensei," Naruto commanded. Naruto hadn't even looked at him to see that he was preparing to bear the eye, but that didn't bother Kakashi. It was only natural to bring out your strongest weapons in a fight you know would be difficult.
"Aw," Madara cocked his head to the side, but other than that, didn't move, "You aren't going to let your Sensei fight with you, Naruto-kun? That's not very sporting. For you."
"I don't need Kakashi's help for this one, Madara," Naruto whispered. The feeling of that strange chakra was rising again and something shifted in the boy. Though Kakashi could only see the back of Naruto, he knew that his student had changed in some manner. "Wind: Rasenshuriken."
The very name of the attack made Kakashi pause momentarily as he considered the implications of the it. Rasenshuriken. Had Naruto's attack been fashioned after his father's famed Rasengan? Was this attack as destructive as Minato's Rasengan?
A four point shuriken of chakra appeared in Naruto's hand and Madara - who was so powerful that his brilliant students were scared of him - took a step backwards
"Trying that old trick again, Naruto-kun?" Madara tried to scoff it off, but Kakashi could see that the man was apprehensive of this new technique. Kakashi had no clear idea what it did, but from the name, style, and shape of the jutsu, it looked like it would do some serious cutting damage; as it's predecessor, the Rasengan, did.
"I've improved it," Naruto boasted, before he pulled his arm back and threw the whirling chakra at the figure that was facing them.
Madara tried to dodge it but immediately bounced off an invisible barrier. "Wha-" Madara's head whipped around just as the shuriken shaped technique hit him in the chest and there was an explosion at the site of impact that engulfed the man in smoke and fire.
Kakashi's fingers twisted together, calling up an earthen wall between them to protect Naruto from the flying debris. His ears rang with the force of the sound and looked to Naruto. "Naruto- what was that?"
"No time, Sensei." Naruto gasped for breath and finally Kakashi caught a glimpse of his face. His eyes were yellow and his pupils were horizontal slits. The top of his eyelids were orange and suddenly Kakashi connected the chakra that he could feel from Naruto with the name. He had seen Jiraiya use this kind of chakra.
"Sage?" His voice was just a whisper that trailed off as Naruto ran up the wall he'd created.
"How'd'ya like them apples!" Naruto yelled from the top of the wall and Kakashi goggled at his student. What was Naruto doing, egging on someone that powerful? There had been so much sharp chakra in that attack that even if a person was able to survive it, they had to be one of the most powerful people in the entire Elemental Nations! Wind chakra alone was sharp enough to cut through most defencive techniques; wind chakra powered by a Sage had to be even more deadly.
Quickly following Naruto up to the top of the wall, Kakashi crouched beside his favourite blond and looked down at the six foot radius damage that had cracked the earth open when the Rasenshuriken hit Madara and the ground.
"You-" Some of the smoke cleared out from the impact point and Kakashi was stunned to see Madara still standing there, a burn mark on his chest from both Naruto's attack and Kakashi's Raikiri and debris in his black hair. "What have you done?" Fury emanated from the man and Naruto smirked in a disturbing way.
"You've never been caught before, have you?" Naruto taunted the man. Waves of killing intent burst from Madara and Kakashi managed to weather the storm. He wasn't quite sure how Naruto was doing under the massive pressure, but if he'd met the man in battle before, he had probably built up an immunity to his KI.
"Boy!" Madara growled and thrust a hand forward, obviously intending to charge for Kakashi and Naruto, only to be caught again by the barrier that no one could see. "What. Have. You. Done?"
"I've done the impossible before, Madara. You know me, I'll just keep doing that."
A flash of pink from the corner of Kakashi's eye made the man glance in that direction, only to see Sakura holding Itachi immobile, Itachi's arms bent behind his back. Sakura whispered something to him, something that calmed him slightly, but seemingly not enough that Sakura was willing to risk letting the boy go.
Kakashi took a moment to wonder where everyone else was; no other shinobi had come racing at the sounds and feel of battle in the air and that was about as strange as it got in Konoha.
But then he remembered the black cloaked, grey faced strangers that had been hovering around the Uchiha compound and wondered if that was what Sasuke and the team had used them for: Uchiha crowd control. If Madara was after every Uchiha in Konoha, it wasn't a surprise that Sasuke wouldn't let any of the intended targets come close to this battle.
"Madara," Sasuke's vehement hiss of anger was barely audible, but all five people in the battle area heard him and turned to look.
Kakashi had never before seen such hate and animosity on that little face, not ever. It almost scared him to think that his cute little students could feel emotions like that.
"Sasuke-kun," Madara crooned and rested a hand against the barrier. "I see that you've come to join us. Tell me," Madara shifted subtly and Kakashi felt a upwell of revulsion for Madara in himself. He looked as though he was trying to seduce Sasuke with his words and Kakashi didn't like that. Didn't like that at all. "Are you here for your precious Naruto, or are you here-" He paused again and Kakashi got the sense that the man was grinning under his mask, "-for me?"
Itachi visibly flinched away, his eyes wide at the suggestion that his little brother was in league with this strange, crazy, murderous man. He wasn't the only one, Kakashi's eyes widened as well. The two other people on the battleground were as steady as rocks though, with observable complete trust in their teammate.
"I'm here for you," Sasuke's words were like a battering ram to Kakashi and the silver haired shinobi gaped for a moment, before he heard Sasuke continue. "I'm here for you, to kill you, Madara."
"And you think that just because the Uchiha have become close with the rest of Konoha-" Madara spat the name of the village out and Kakashi's hackles rose at that. No one insulted his village, especially not bastards like this man, "-that someone won't be ordered to do what was done before?"
"Here's a little something you don't know, you dick," Sakura spoke up, making everyone look at her. "The man that ordered that?" She smirked like a shark. "We own him. And he wouldn't dare go behind the Hokage's back ever again."
With confusion, Kakashi wondered what his students were talking about. Nothing bad had happened to the Uchiha clan and there hadn't been a shift in the village politics to make Sarutobi stronger in any way. If Sarutobi wasn't the Hokage they were talking about, who was?
"I don't need him to do it," Madara scoffed, but Kakashi could hear the tremor in his voice, see the whiteness of the fingers that were pressed against that barrier around him. "This won't hold me for long." Madara turned back to Sasuke and tapped the barrier with his index finger. "What do you think you can do to me when it goes down? I've already drained your little leader of half his chakra. How much time do you have left?"
Sasuke didn't look at Naruto, but Sakura glanced back and Kakashi whipped his head to the right to look at his blond student. Naruto's face was pale and he was sweating, but he was still standing and paying attention. Kakashi frowned when he realized that it was indeed Naruto that was powering the barrier. But what kind of barrier could possibly drain that much chakra in that little of time? Naruto had a chakra store that was nigh on ridicules for an adult, never mind a child his age.
"What makes you think the barrier is two-way?" Sasuke asked with a lilting tone as Sakura dropped Itachi's arms and lunged for the barrier. She flew through it with no trouble and clamped her arms around the man claiming to be Madara, pinning his limbs to his torso. Her legs twinged around his, making it impossible for him to escape. Kakashi knew how strong his girl was, and wouldn't be surprised to find that the man would have several broken bones when someone got around to examining the body after his team killed him.
At the same time that Sakura lunged for the man in the barrier, Sasuke also did so, drawing his Shadow Cutter one swift movement and aiming precisely. He reached the man milliseconds after Sakura, and the sword flashed as Sasuke swung, still flying through the air.
Sasuke blinked rapidly from where he had landed in a crouched position on the ground, Shadow Cutter in hand, blood dripping from the blade. Kakashi stared at the scene and managed to stumble to Sakura, prying her off the man's torso, whispering to her that it was okay, that the man was dead, she could let go. He had not predicted this as the outcome of the confrontation. He didn't know what he had been expecting, but this had not been it.
"Check it," Sasuke's voice was hoarse and barely audible over Kakashi's reassurances to Sakura.
"Check it?" Kakashi repeated, looking at his Uchiha student, "Check what?"
"The head-" Sasuke still hadn't moved out of his position, "Check the head! Tell me who it really is!" Kakashi could hear rising hysteria in the boy's high pitched voice, and so he let go of the girl on his team and as he made his way gingerly to the still masked head that had rolled a bit away he neatly sidestepped most of the bloody patches on the ground.
Naruto and Sakura watched him so intently he thought for a moment that they would light him on fire with their gazes alone. Sasuke still hadn't moved, though Sakura had started to move over to the crouching figure, looking like she was waiting to catch Sasuke when he let himself relax once again. Sasuke's muscles had to have been killing him, stuck in the position he was in.
Moving slowly, Kakashi toed the masked head and rolled it face up.
"Check the face!" Sasuke all but screeched at him and Kakashi bent down, laying a finger on the mask. "Please-" Sasuke moaned softly, "Check it, tell me-"
The mask moved away from the man's face without trouble and Kakashi found himself staring into wide black eyes on a face that looked startlingly like Sasuke and Itachi's.
Madara looked like a Uchiha.
"Sensei?" Naruto's tiny voice reached Kakashi's ears and the leader of Team Tensai shook his head.
"I don't know what you want me to confirm. It looks like an Uchiha." If this was an Uchiha, what did that mean? Why would an Uchiha turn against other Uchiha? Why would Sasuke be so desperate to kill a member of his family? What had this Uchiha been planning? What had his team prevented? And what the hell had they been talking about before Sasuke and Sakura had launched their combined attack?
"Naruto?" Sasuke whined in the back of his throat like a wounded puppy, "Is it- Is he really-? Was it him?"
Naruto scrambled quickly to Kakashi's side, collapsing to his knees with exhaustion as the strange markings on his face vanished as though never there in the first place. He stared down at the face that had been hidden under the mask and there was a low hiss from the boy that turned into two words: "Mission complete." Kakashi was both shocked and entirely unsurprised to see tears in Naruto's eyes.
Sakura caught Sasuke as the other boy collapsed, sobbing. His sword hit the ground with a faint noise as it bounced against the hard earth. Sakura cuddled his face to her neck even as she stared at nothing, pupils blown and face as pale as Kakashi had ever seen it.
A hand touched Kakashi's elbow and he looked away from his crying children to see Itachi, pale faced and shocked, standing between him and the thirteen year old's parents. Kakashi could read the expressions on Fugaku and Mikoto's faces and it was obvious that they were just as scared and confused as he was. He didn't know where they had come from or how they'd gotten past the unknown ANBU forces that had been keeping everyone away, but he was glad they were here now, even though they were seeing something that no parent should ever have to see.
They were seeing Sasuke in his friend's arms after killing a man, sobbing. They'd apparently never seen Sasuke cry so hard before. Perhaps not even the summer before the children had joined the Academy.
"Sasuke-kun?" Mikoto's soft questioning voice carried over the mostly silent area and Sasuke sniffled as he raised his head from Sakura's neck and looked to his mother. "Sasuke-kun, what- who is that?"
"A murderer," Sasuke's voice was scratchy and he pushed away from Sakura, stumbling over to his mother. Mikoto took him into her arms and held him tight as Fugaku gathered his wife and Itachi together into a family group hug. "He was going to kill you- kill everyone."
No one asked the question that was on Kakashi's mind. 'Why?'.
But now was not the time. Now was time for Sasuke and his family.
Naruto wavered and Kakashi was there, holding the boy gently in his arms. Sakura hopped over, her hands already glowing green. Naruto waved her off, though clung to Kakashi's vest with one hand, "No, it's just chakra exhaustion, Sakura-chan."
"What is going on here?" The stern voice of Hiruzen Sarutobi cut through everything; the crying, the talking, the crumbling of the earth wall, and the still hissing fire at the base of the Rasenshuriken strike in the ground.
"Jii-san," Naruto wheezed and Kakashi stood up, carrying Naruto with ease. "Good to see yah."
"Naruto-kun. Sakura-chan." Kakashi felt the girl stand up beside him and shuffled closer to her. He wasn't going to leave any of his kids to weather this storm alone. He hadn't let them go through this alone, he wasn't going to abandon them in the aftermath. "Sasuke-kun."
"Hokage-sama," Kakashi murmured, drawing Sarutobi's attention to himself, "I am the leader of this team."
"And you take responsibility?" Sarutobi asked, raising an eyebrow, "For a murder of a Uchiha in the Uchiha compound?"
"No!" Sasuke pulled himself from his family's arms, "No, Kakashi-sensei is not responsible. I held the blade."
"I- I planned it," Naruto's voice wavered as he spoke.
"I restrained him!" Sakura grabbed Sasuke's hand, as well as Naruto's.
Sarutobi took all four of them in quietly; at the decapitated body on the ground, the bloody little girl, the shell-shocked Uchiha and exhausted Container. Then he turned to Fugaku.
"Uchiha-san, as the head of the Military and Civilian Police Force, what is your opinion of this debacle?"
Fugaku stepped forward and gave a deeper bow to the Hokage than he'd probably ever done before in his life, "I must investigate to be certain, Hokage-sama."
Sarutobi once again looked around at the damage and the people involved. As much as Kakashi knew that his team was a favourite of the old man's, that didn't mean that they would get away with this. As Sarutobi had said, it had been murder. Assassination. With no orders, or mission.
"Scr'll-" Naruto poked Kakashi lightly and he looked down to the child in his arms, "I'va scroll-" He gestured to his pockets and Sakura brightened considerably at that, turning to face then, and pulling Sasuke into stumbling around her body in a half circle, and digging though Naruto's pockets.
"Aha!" She pulled a scroll out that look positively ancient and carefully unrolled it. She perused it quickly and then approached the Hokage after gracing the man with a bow. "This is a mission scroll for the termination of the life of one Uchiha Madara. Betrayer and traitor of Konoha and his clan." She passed it to Sarutobi, who took it with a look of disbelief on his face. "It's signed with the blood seals of the Shodai, Nidaime, Yondaime, and yourself, Hokage-sama."
Sarutobi looked to the bottom of the scroll and from his expression, did indeed see the signatures that Sakura had pointed out. Kakashi didn't let his shock about four Hokage's signatures on a mission scroll show. Everyone within hearing range was as professional as himself as well, and though they didn't discuss it or seemed amazed by this apparent mission, he was sure there would be a lot of very furious discussions about it once everyone was away from the battlefield.
Kakashi wondered absently how it was possible that the Hokage had forgotten an execution mission he'd signed with every other Hokage that had ruled Konoha. And he then wondered how Naruto had gotten hold of the mission scroll. He might have to have the talk about not stealing from comrades with Naruto again.
"This is indeed a valid Unranked mission," Sarutobi murmured as he read it. "-if the body can be confirmed as Uchiha Madara."
Sasuke scowled. "We have a family registry you may use, Hokage-sama, for a visual confirmation."
A white eyebrow rose again and Sarutobi looked from Sasuke to Fugaku, "With, of course, the approval of the Head of the Clan." He didn't look like he expected to get that, but Kakashi knew Fugaku better than Sarutobi did now. Fugaku would do anything for his youngest son. Anything at all.
"If you wish access to our Family Registry," Fugaku barely even winced, "You need only to ask, Hokage-sama, and it will be provided to you."
"I see." Sarutobi rolled the ancient scroll up and turned back to Sasuke and the rest of Kakashi's team. "I will take the body and verify the completion of the mission, Team Kakashi. If this murder was indeed an execution that was assigned as an ongoing mission, pay will be proved and you will be allowed back onto duty." His voice hardened and his eyes were like steel, "You are dismissed from your duties until such a time as I recall you." There was silence for a moment as Team Kakashi digested the announcement.
A white masked ANBU swooped down and gathered the head and body of the dead man on the ground and took off. Sarutobi looked around the gathered people in front of him, nodded, and vanished.
Sasuke was immediately dragged back into a hug by his mother and Kakashi shook Naruto once, gently. "Why didn't you show me the mission scroll, Naruto-kun?"
"Uhm," Naruto murmured contentedly, dozing off due to his exhaustion. Sakura grinned up at him with a happy relief of the recently cleared convicted.
"I think he stole it, actually, Kakashi-sensei," She told him brightly. "I mean, Unranked missions don't generally get picked up by chuunin teams, do they?"
"And why would you guys steal that mission?"
"Because it was a Uchiha," Sasuke spoke, dragging his parents closer to Kakashi as they wouldn't let him go. "We made the mess, we cleaned it up. If I had a little help, no one is going to begrudge me. Besides, I had reliable information that he was planning on massacring the rest of the Clan."
Fugaku frowned. "When would you have gotten that kind of information, Sasuke-kun?"
"A couple of months ago on that mission where we ran into Momochi and his group." Sakura interjected. "Naruto and Sasuke had a big fight at the same time and Naruto wanted to prove that Sasuke wasn't as bad as he thought he was and so he stole that mission from the Missions office and we came up with a plan."
Kakashi looked at his team with a bit of disapproval in his eye. "If you had shown me the mission scroll, I would have been a much greater help."
"No one got hurt, Sensei," Sakura pointed out, "And Naruto just got a little tired." She looked pleased with herself, "I think we did quite good, altogether."
"Other than scaring me stupid!" A frazzled looking Iruka stormed across the torn up ground, only glancing at the damage that had occurred, mostly from Naruto's Sage technique, "I felt Naruto's chakra twist and I freaked out! What happened here?"
"That, Iruka-san, is a long story," Kakashi nudged Sasuke closer to his parents with his hip and passed Naruto off to Iruka, picking the blood soaked Sakura up and putting her on his shoulders. "I'll explain at your place after you put Naruto to bed and we get Sakura in some clean clothes."
***xx*The End*xx***
Thank you to everyone that stuck through to the very end! I know that there was long periods were this seemed dead, but I treasured each and every review that I got from all of you. Again, thank you.