304Red Thread Ch. 36: A Study Of Reverberations
"You are a ghost. Filled with stardust, wearing the bones as the shield and the skin as the cape. Fighting every day and opening up for the new wounds in the hustle of hiding the old scars."
― Akshay Vasu
Hinata
A mix of iron and bile swim and mix in the back of her throat. The urge to scream rises up like a flame, but all that escapes her lips is a warbled gasp and cry.
'Neji!'
Mamiko freezes in place, nails digging into earth seeing his body sway. A wound like that to his chest is fatal, his major organs pierced and shredded.
"Wait, it isn't safe for us to get close!" She warns to Hinata.
But Hinata hops off her back ignoring her command, Mamiko grabbing her by the teeth to keep her in place as the ground continues to rumble. Summon or not, she won't have Hinata injuring herself despite what she wants to do.
"Hold on, you must at least wait until the earth stops crackling."
She sends her a glare, channels lightning in her fingers only for Neji to hold up a hand to them both, ground surrounding them quaking the most further keeping him at bay. A cough erupts out of him and more of the White Zetsu circle him like vultures ready to pounce, ghostly and silver-white apparitions ready to drag him down.
A river dark as night pours out from a wound to his face and chest, soaks his vest in shades of deep scarlets to maroon.
Obito stands over him, teeth set in rage.
"An eye of an eye, huh? You may have slowed me down, but this is the end for you."
Neji glances up at him slowly, chuckles softly.
"I didn't just slow you down. That slab of wood currently embedded in your eye? It's layered with the Aburame clan's insects that are now inside of you, multiplying. You'll...You'll be joining me in an hour at most, maybe less."
Obito rips the jagged piece of wood away, tears flesh and bone in the process.
Fire melts at the bugs crawling across his nose and lips, but they rise up again and again.
A swarm growing inside and out.
He pants, spits a glob of black out, twisting his attention to the rest of the battlefield.
"I...I don't have time to deal with a dying man. You, none of you are stopping my plans for the Infinite Tsukiyomi!" Obito growls.
Curses tumble from his lips at his vision blurs, insides burning and itching all at once.
'There must be a way to remove these insects! Stop them from destroying my major organs!' He thinks quickly, but everything Madara taught him even from his youth doesn't have a countermeasure for this.
He flicks his remaining eye back in Konoha's direction, to the main HQ that's been feeding every shinobi force here information.
If he must go out, he'll be taking others with him.
Madara advised him long ago that peace amongst the nations seems only possible through force, measures that didn't even work as they planned back then...
"Cast your hate of losing your loved one, red thread or not, upon the world! War has shown us Obito to be an endless cycle and only the Infinite Tsukiyomi can bring an end to that."
Obito half looks to him, onyx eyes dull; listless.
Bodies lay crumpled at his feet, Rin's body frozen and quiet in his arms.
Madara only lives and breathes war, the rush of a challenge in crushing his enemies in blazes of firestorms. Old age has only made such desires fester like an old wound that never fully healed, passion to start more fights even if the Warring States era ended decades ago now.
It seems...he's right. Forced control is the only option now.
"And if all our plans fail? Nothing is foolproof?" Obito ventures to ask.
Madara taps his cane to earth.
"Then give them hell on the way out."
Obito nods to himself.
'It's time.'
Wood spikes turn away from the Allied Forces, Obito shouting out a command to both Zetsu and the undead.
"Direct all your attacks to the HQ!"
Mamiko meanwhile clears a path for them, crushes and rips apart Zetsu until they reach Neji's slumped form.
"Neji, why?! Sacrificing yourself isn't what Uncle or Father would've wanted-" Hinata cries, lightly jabbing at his arms when they finally reach him.
Her knees dig into a mix of dried blood and earth, eyes focused on the worst of his wounds.
Neji grabs her hands midway before they can fall to his lap, squeezes them gently.
"You would've never accepted this plan if you'd known about it from the beginning. You've been on Obito's and the Akatsuki's radar ever since they found out you're Naruto's red thread. That's...That's why I formed this plan with your team. That if a scenario happened where one of them got too close, I could initiate this tactic. It worked out even better that Obito took the most damage."
Hinata's expression hardens. "A suicide attack?!"
Neji shakes his head, takes her anger in stride. "No, a surefire way to protect both you and Naruto. Obito will die shortly from the insect infiltration and if things are going properly on Naruto's end and the other shinobi divisions...then soon all of the resurrected shinobi will fall apart too. The war will be over then."
Hinata hushes him as his chest wound oozes blood faster, starts medical ninjutsu to where his arteries are the most torn.
Neji's breathing stops and starts, hugging her close.
"Stop moving, you're opening back up your wounds!" Hinata declares, blinking back tears.
"-I've lost too much blood already Lady Hinata. We both know this. Listen to me, this isn't your fault. This isn't Naruto's fault either when he eventually gets here. I chose to do this not only to help stop the war, but because I care about you. Heh, for once I wasn't restricted to the main branch's rules." Neji smiles.
Hinata moves her head back slightly to look at him properly, wipe away blood from his face and cheeks. Pearl eyes are glassy, one eye wrenched shut.
The brightest grin marks his lips, one she hasn't seen in years since Hizashi's death.
"Free. You're free now Neji." She whispers.
And all she can do is watch as the Hyūga branch seal slowly fades from his forehead, body slumping against her as her tears fully erupt.
Naruto
"I have to go to the battlefield now y'know! Just kill Kabuto and get this over with!" Naruto explodes impatiently.
'Hinata. Hinata's aching and I can't even be close by to help her with whatever's going on there!'
He barely notes Sasuke's point of his sword at him, fire and lightning crackling across the blade's tip.
"Nobody's leaving this cave until I get answers."
Naruto's look turns venomous, crimson washing away azure.
"I don't give a damn about your issues with your brother Sasuke and neither does B. Move before I force you." He states point blank.
Killer B chuckles his agreement. "Yo, I don't have any problems mopping and slopping you about again kid, ya dig! Plus, this time you won't have your teammates around to heal you up once I've stabbed, ya. Anyways, you best step aside before Naruto here blows his top!"
And to prove his point, Naruto channels a ball of purple black, points it right at Sasuke's chest when he dares to take a step closer to them.
Itachi clears his throat at the rage threatening to boil over across the cave. "Naruto, please refrain from attacking my little brother just yet, especially not in this confined space where such a move will trigger a rockslide or cave collapse. Sasuke, I will explain everything to you regarding our clan if you can just channel a bit more patience."
He turns his attention back to Kabuto's form, eyes clouding over staring into crimson.
"Create the hand seals that will undo this reincarnation." He commands.
Itachi turns back to them all, but his gaze is focused on Sasuke alone.
"Everything about the night of the massacre. The truth." Sasuke pushes.
Itachi smiles wanly and Naruto notes the brief twinge of his shoulders, a sadness in his features his dark eyes betray.
'That's right, he was there when he first died.' Naruto recalls.
And now he must watch him die again in a sense.
"The truth is I hid my illness from you for years, hid the reason of our clan's planned coup. Your red thread Sakura is the only reason why you found out earlier than I wanted." Itachi begins.
Sasuke clicks his tongue, ignores the clamp on his heart hearing that name.
"You loved the village so much despite what they put you through?! Forcing your hand to ensure loyalty?"
Itachi hums quietly. "I can admit my plans were faulty. But I wanted you to get stronger Sasuke, skilled and strong enough to be the one to kill me for my actions to our parents and clan. After that night, I purposely stopped taking my cardiac and respiratory drugs, allowed the virus to slowly spread to the point any antibiotics or countermeasures would be of little help."
"...The coup was going to come to fruition eventually. Our clan had been pushed into hiding since the 2nd Hokage's tenure. Too many members were frustrated they weren't allowed into higher positions of power in Konoha's government or even being assigned higher ranked missions." Sasuke blows out a breath.
Itachi nods slowly at what he's already gathered. "The coup would've failed, at least I strongly guessed it would knowing the available jonin on Konoha's active roster from back then and now."
B nudges Naruto discreetly.
"Yo, let's get out now so these brothers can have one final talk."
Naruto nods, neither Sasuke or Itachi are fully focused on them.
"I'll find you, even if you leave Naruto. I'm sure you won't just standby once I destroy the village." Ensure nobody escapes out of Konoha's borders." Sasuke mentions without looking at him.
Naruto snorts though allows B to push him along faster.
"You'd kill Sakura, innocent civilians, children who had no part in Old Man Third's or Danzo's plans from back then y'know?!" He yells back.
Sasuke says nothing in return and Naruto's expression darkens.
"Even if it hurts Sakura, I can do what she could never fathom and kill you before you kill me."
And with that, he races away for the battlefield.
A glow of white takes over Itachi's form, skin peeling away revealing black earth.
Itachi sighs, considers his next words.
"Konoha. You want to destroy the village even with your red thread there? The scars of killing Izumi didn't fade even years later you must know."
Fury slips out like poison Sasuke doesn't bother hiding, each word cementing what Itachi never fully considered in life.
Sasuke won't be protecting the village, is now on the warpath for revenge.
He presses their foreheads together, feels his soul slipping away.
"Equals. I acknowledge your power and strength Sasuke. I won't be surprised if in just a few years you surpass me in skill." Itachi smiles.
Sasuke freezes, heat of the cave closing up his throat, pushing down the swirl of memories.
"No matter what choices you make moving forward with this knowledge, know that you're loved. From not just me as your big brother or your teammates, but from Sakura as well."
Sasuke nods, voice hoarse.
"Goodbye." He murmurs before steeling himself.
He needs to give chase to Naruto and B, follow their steps before they fully mask it.
"...I'll ensure nobody desecrates your body or uses your soul like this ever again. Sasuke assures.
Itachi nods thankfully. "Until then Sasuke. Don't try to join me too soon."
Obsidian turns then to Kabuto's still form as Itachi fully fades, flicks out his blade cleanly slicing through his neck.
Kabuto's head topples at his feet, blood mixing with fire as he ignites the rest of his body.
"Starting with you."
Sakura
'It's a different kind of ache when you recognize the deceased.'
Sakura frowns, tightens her mask to her lips and nose.
Blood. Vomit. Wounds as big as her fist.
Even torn limbs with phantom pains are easy compared to dealing with the necrosis, mottled skin, and unending grays of fresh corpses.
'Everyone needs to take a turn there; don't forget that Sakura.' Shizune's order comes to mind.
The latest corpse brought to their makeshift morgue of already far too many bodies has glazed over lavender eyes, painfully familiar chestnut hair.
A Hyūga.
Neji.
"Hey, does anyone know who brought this body in?" Sakura calls out.
Someone from his team Gai? A member of the sealing squad?
A mix of shrugs and shakes of heads greet her in return, everyone too focused on the remaining bodies that need tagging, have yet to be properly identified. Blood coats his chest cavity as she pulls back the zipper of the body bag, Sayuki, her operating aid, shakes her head sadly.
"A Hyūga clan member by the looks of it, so young too." She sighs.
Young, yes. Just a year older than her.
And that is enough to make her hands tremble, nausea chill and burn her stomach all at once.
Sayuki pauses in passing her a scalpel seeing her expression.
"Sakura, you alright?"
Sakura shakes away the dizzy spell, eyes probably that hazy viridian that she's always been terrible at hiding from anybody.
"I, It's nothing. Well, no, not nothing. I know the deceased or knew him. Neji Hyūga."
'Did Hinata witness this?' A bite of worry claws up.
She needs to find her to get assessed, get word out before things turn from bad to worse.
Because if Hinata knows about this, then surely, it's affecting Naruto in a way too.
Sakura pushes the colliding worries away, sharpens her expression to be one of cool resolve.
But Sayuki moves the scalpel away from her, holds up a hand.
"No, we're not starting the dissection until you take a 5- or 10-minute walk around the camp. Clear your thoughts so we can do proper justice and cleaning to his body so it will be ready when a Hyūga clan member comes to retrieve his body for their funeral rites when this is all said and done."
Sakura nearly bites back that she has no right to talk to her that way as her subordinate, but the flames sizzle out peeking to Neji's body again.
Sayuki's amber eyes soften with warmth. "I know a good thing or two on how to attack with water and earth related jutsu should one of those Zetsu things come in. I can hold down the fort in this section."
She knows she can, though that does little to calm her.
Sakura's shoulders slacken.
"Fine. But don't start without me."
Mamiko waves her off with a nod, attention turning back to Neji's remains.
Humid air drifts all around outside the tent, just as stiflingly warm as it was when she first arrived to the unit in the early morning hours.
The sky is still that sickly brownish orange, an ugly mix of grays and reds in the distance.
It won't bode well for trying to preserve the bodies, shutting her eyes at the knowing of the pained expressions to come when the living see the amount of decay to their perished loved ones when this war is said and done.
Her eyes twist to her hands then, without the concentration of working on cases, the throbbing returns at full force. She shakes them out to no avail, stinging like tiny pinpricks.
One of her spy yellowjackets lands on her neck, a buzz of signals that tightens her chest.
"What?! How much longer do we have?" Sakura questions.
Jade eyes turn towards the Intelligence Division sector, breaking into a jog.
A chunin notes her distress and Sakura points north.
"Evacuate all civilian in and around HQ!"
But as soon as the words fall from her lips the explosion lands, burst of reds and blacks. Sakura crouches low to the ground, a hand launches forward out of the smog, curls around her arm like a spring.
Tight. Viciously digging in.
And she half turns to see dark sclera, mottled gray-blue skin around the man's torn vest.
'No, not another familiar face.' She grits her teeth.
Takita.
He snickers at her annoyance and surprise. "Oh, don't look at me like that! You're used to dealing with the dead; aren't you Haruno?"
Now one of the many reanimations.
"Get. Off!" She rips his arm away, startling when a light envelops him.
Even as his soul breaks free, Takita studies her emptily before it fades into a sad smile.
Sakura finds her voice, speaks quickly and quietly.
"I'm sorry for everything from before, using your memories for my selfish gain."
Takita simply nods, says nothing more on the topic but what they both know already.
"I rejoined the allied forces knowing I could be of help, you can't ignore your call to duty when you're not retired or injured after all..."
Dark eyes bore into green.
"And now I'm just another life lost."
Shikamaru
"Shikamaru? Ino? What...just happened?" Choji whispers.
The battlefield becomes unsettlingly quiet, aftershocks rumbling through the area. He follows their gaze to Konoha's HQ, the thick blast of ink black smoke piercing the sky like arrows.
His heart sinks as the realization comes.
'No. Not Uncle Shikaku and Inoichi...'
Ino wipes away a splotch of tears and dirt, glances to Shikamaru who's features are carefully blank.
"We're going to carry out our father's duties where they left off and not be distractions to our red threads still fighting." She answers for them both.
Sai nods in her direction, ink tigers circling the trio for protection. Temari too far away, but not far enough for Shikamaru not to sense the scorch of pain running through her body same as him. Perhaps she's dealing with her undead Father while he's just lost his own...
"The time for grieving can come later." Shikamaru finally adds, steeling himself for what remains of this war.
Choji nods, not wanting to dampen the mood any further.
He catches his Father's pained look meters away, now the last remaining member of the 15th generation of Ino-Shika-Cho.
"Right! Let's finish this!" He declares activating his butterfly mode.
Choji pushes down a ball of coming Zetsu, punch launching them hundreds of meters into the air.
"The undead, their bodies are starting to slow." Shikamaru notes at their sluggish movements and patterns.
Enough for them to become more on the offensive than defensive.
Strange. But good news for them.
"Heads up; there's two people approaching from the northwest." Ino announces, changing her stance.
His eyes track to where she's looking, seeing in the distance two approaching glows of red.
'Naruto?'
He barely has time to register his approach before he's upon them, body coated in a mix of vermilion and orange flames.
"You guys okay? I'll give you a boost with my chakra then I'm heading in Hinata's direction y'know!"
"My bro might've been right Naruto that we missed out on all the main action due to all those earlier distractions!" B proclaims, moving on ahead to check on the other divisions.
"Distractions?" Shikamaru ventures to ask, but Naruto only shakes his head and he instantly knows what held the pair up.
Sasuke.
He clicks his tongue. 'Dealing with him could potentially be even just as troublesome as this war.'
"Have any of you seen Hinata?! I mean I'm sure she's fine, though I want to see for myself-"
Ino rolls her eyes despite their situation. "Ugh, calm down and think by using your red thread! Geez, that's the obvious way!"
Naruto huffs. "You don't have to be that harsh! You've been spending too much time around Sai that he's rubbed off on you!"
Ino merely shrugs, lowering her voice as her focus goes back to the divisions to update them of Naruto and B's arrival. "Well, he's proving himself correct in some of his remarks."
Shikamaru looks to Naruto, dryly laughs shaking out the tension in his shoulders.
'We're going to finish this war Dad. You and Uncle Inoichi's deaths won't be in vain.'
He pats a hand to Naruto's shoulder, gesturing to where he last saw Team 8.
"About time you got here."
Hinata
"Don't think about Neji's body any longer; the recovery team took him away where he can't be tampered with any further outside of for investigation/autopsy measures." Mamiko gently orders. Still, the spot they left behind holds an outline where his body once was, blood now dried to a copper brown along the dirt.
Her teeth tear into the flesh of her back when Hinata doesn't immediately answer, jolting from her bite.
'The war is still happening. Focus on the here and now.'
Because Obito still stands, remaining eye locked on her.
He grins as their gazes meet, flames growing to a blaze that encompasses his arms.
"When Naruto gets here, he'll see only your corpse. That should be enough to truly throw him into despair and rage."
Hinata channels lightning to her fingertips.
Stall. She can do that until Naruto gets here, feeling her fingers thrum with a familiar heat.
She doesn't need to look to her thread to know he's approaching.
All she needs is a minute or two more.
Naruto & Hinata
"None of you understand the Tsukiyomi's purpose. If you're truly sick of wars, famine, and death, then wouldn't you want to live in a peaceful world where none of those concerns would be an issue?" Obito spits out.
Hinata jabs a palm into his coming arm, slides under the swing of his coming fist, fingers still scraping against her rib cage as he easily twists himself.
"Huh, guess you aren't as terrible in your clan's jutsu as I first read about." He coldly muses.
Pain ripples out in a shockwave and Obito smirks, swiftly stabs into her ankle next. The crunch of bone and muscle singes in her ears, blood evading her nose.
But still she stays in place, refuses to let him get any closer to her at Naruto's coming presence.
"Give up." Obito orders.
His hand grasps her arm, twisting it and Hinata holds in a scream even as her lightning wrap around his arms, paralysis doing little.
"No. Let go!" Hinata hisses, spit landing in his remaining eye.
A second hand breaks his hold before he can fully break or tear her arm, a flash of yellows and reds.
Naruto.
Crimson shines in his eyes, crack of bone ringing out as he turns and bends Obito's hands until they hang limply at his sides. Death surrounds them, shinobi surrounding him lips frozen mid-scream, fingers pressed against wounds they couldn't stop from bleeding out, glassy eyes peering vacantly towards the hazy sky.
"You heard her. Enough."
-x-
I hope this gives a better feeling of justice for Neji compared to how he died in canon lol.
The war arc is not fun for me to write, I have to be honest ha ha. So I plan to wrap it up next chapter and start on the final showdown of Naruto and Sasuke with deviations from canon. No Madara (but I do plan for him to appear in my other stories), no Kaguya. It would drag things out including either of them especially when I'm really trying to avoid completely just copying canon.
While writing these fights and battles is a bit of slog with some fun parts, I need these scenes for the epilogue parts of Post-War and the beginnings of Boruto's era that I've had in mind since I started this story that I know I will enjoy writing out.
As always, pa-tre-ons get early access to chapters, NSFW goodies, and my original content. I go by TheLovelyMidnightWriter there!
Check out my Insta by the same name for book reviews, my anime pencil drawings, and travel pics!
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