There was still a slight haze over my physical body's sight. Blood had been trickling down some wound in my head and straight into my eye, but that did little to impair my sight. I was watching through my startlingly clear specter sight. My heart was beating rapidly through my chest as adrenaline pumped into my veins, priming me to move at any moment. My invisible eyes gave me an overhead view on the entire field, and the three enemies cautiously shuffling towards me. They saw me as a threat still, but they were most likely underestimating me due to my age combined with how easy it was to take me out at first. My abilities were unknown, and that had costed them dearly. The most injured of the trio seemed to be able to find me despite no longer having viable sight, too. Was it enhanced senses? Did Chakra do that or is it a technique? I had no idea what jutsu they might use, but I had to be ready. Though, that didn't stop me from floating my specter closer to the most injured of them. If I was going to take them out, it would be better to reduce their numbers as fast as possible. The slow paced stalemate lasted until the uninjured brown eyed Shinobi shot towards me. This time I was ready. My specter could easily see him even if my physical eyes couldn't. The moment was barely a snapshot with how quick everything happened. I had long crouched to the ground before he had even began his assault, grabbing the closest kunai I could find. Then I waited up until right before he reached me before disappearing. My vision was blurry from blood and pain. I didn't need my specter sight to know what I needed to do. In fact, it might've been better that I didn't see anything. I had teleported in the motion of my required movements, my target was too injured to respond fast enough, everyone had underestimated me, and opening up his neck was disgustingly easy. Arterial spray and discordant choking were all the sounds in the area for a second. Hurriedly, I split again before anyone had the time to react. I had to duck behind my first victim as a barrage of shuriken were sent hurtling in my direction. The star shaped projectiles thudded into my dying human shield just as I got behind him. "You bastard! You little shit! I'm going to kill you!" The other injured Shinobi screamed in rage, trails of liquid pooling out of the corners of his eyes. Was he crying? What for? Most of me wanted to yell back at him as he was being unfair. The man had tried to kidnap me and, just recently, try to kill me. I wasn't just supposed to take it. Still, another part of me was sickened to my core. I had just taken a man away from his family and friends. Hell, one of his friends was probably the man crying over his death. It didn't help that he wasn't the most upstanding man of moral character, and the idea that taking a life was easy sickened me. Even if it was true. The brown eyed Shinobi stared at me and the cooling corpse. His only reaction to his comrade's death was a slight raise of an eyebrow. Then his face fell flat, his posture strangely relaxed. "Cover range." He ordered, stopping the wounded ranter from continuing to speak. The other Shinobi looked affronted by the sudden command, his face turning an interesting shade of red. "It's just a brat! Killing him should be easy!" Not even bothering to explain, the calmer of the two had already flashed through a series of hand signs faster than I think hands were meant to go. He had started to get serious, and that was definitely not good. Electricity bubbled into life around him, forming makeshift humanoids before coloring over into his own form. Suddenly the kunai ladden field was filled with tens of brown eyed kidnappers. "Cover range." One clone, or was it the actual guy, commanded again as I was assaulted by the sudden army. I was given no time to complain or quip as the first clone swung at me. It was much slower than I had first seen him move. Was it weaker, too? A sort of compounding weakness generated by more clones, or a flat drop in ability? I processed the information as I dodged the telegraphed attack, my body screaming out in protest to me movements. Pain wanted me to stop, lay down and call it a day. I couldn't care about that right now; just hope my regeneration would kick in faster. This was crunch time. The next attacks came in pairs, one clone sweeping low while the other punched high. I kicked a kunai at the one going low, and watched as its body evaporated into smoke and lines of hot air. I ducked into the cloud to dodge the rest of the follow up attacks. I was lucky that my spectral eyes didn't really need to blink as some of the smoke had irritated my physical ones enough that I had to flinch. The clones showed no signs of letting up, and capitalized on my sudden perceived blindness. It was only out of quick thinking, and reasonable logic, that I threw my body out of the path of several kunai and shuriken that were suddenly thrown my way. "Lightning release: Lightning Beam Jutsu!(Raiton: Raikou Kousen no Jutsu)." I heard someone scream out loud before the technique hit me. Idly, I consider telling them that they sound like an idiot yelling out the name of their attack. Sadly, I wasn't given the chance to when a beam of pure electricity brushed past my body and sent painful tendrils of coiling shock into my system, I had little to say except for a scream. The main beam had been off by a bit, and I could say I was lucky. However, just being close to it was enough to send my young body into violent twitches as I crashed into the ground. "Eat that you god damned brat! I'm gonna rip out your-" whatever nonsense that he was about to say was cut off by me transporting my still limp body right next to him. He had been so into his speech, and the clones had covered most of his vision if me, that he didn't even know I had appeared right next to him before my electrocuted arm slid a kunai into his throat, assisted by my fall. I was lucky that the electricity had actually helped my arm be forced straight so that the kunai had a wonderful opening on his carotid arteries. Though, flopping limply onto him after was not really that graceful, in my opinion. My muscles kept chattering and twitching as the electricity had not gone away yet. "I see, blonde hair, blue eyes, you're the son of the famed Yellow Flash. I guess I have been taking the child of that monster too lightly. Your lesson has taught me well." I listened to one of the clones nearby exposition, and I was quite fed up with the situation. I wanted to rest. I never wanted to be kidnapped, or fight so desperately. I wanted to have an easy time as I cruised on by with stolen awesome jutsu. I was probably tunnel visioning when all I could think of was how to kill this last one as fast as possible. There wasn't even a shred of mercy left in me, even as one part of me curled into a dark corner and cried at the brutality of my recent combat. It hadn't even been five minutes yet, and there was already two cooling corpses across the field of scattered metal. What was I becoming? I was briefly taken out of my reverie when yells and battlecries shook the field. The clone closest to me had then tried to reach for me as fast as possible, but I had already regained control over my muscles. It didn't even notice the kunai I had embedded into its foot till it turned into gas and hot air. Luckily, the rest of its constituents were preoccupied with the invading force of sudden samurai. It certainly gave me enough breathing room to actually catch my breath. I was exhausted. I stumbled through the process of putting my knife into my mouth and splitting. My specter took me to the back lines of my samurai companions, and a quiet Gensei stilled as I suddenly appeared. He paused to look at me for a moment before grinning a rougish grin. For some reason it was rather comforting. "How many did you get, Shinobi-chan? You save any for us?" I idly noticed that the samurai up front were having no problems dealing with the large number of lightning clones as I flopped down, exhaustion taking over. "Enough." I finally answered. I felt not quite myself at the moment. "He's the last." "Hmm? Guess we saved the lass for no reason then." Gensei said as I took out some of the larger splinters in my sides. Dabbing my tender ribs, I knew I had broken at least two. Then I turned my attention back to Gensei, he hadn't moved to help his men. Feeling the need, I asked, "Is she okay?" He nodded. "Yeah, whatever stuff they put her on is fairly strong, so I don't expect her to wake up anytime soon. I have a couple of my best men guarding her, too. No chance anything will get by them." I could see him glancing at me after he spoke, then sending concern of equal to the samurai that were currently fighting the lightning Shinobi. "You think you'll be okay here?" "I think so," I answered trying to smile only to wince as my body ached all over. "Can you take him?" Gensei laughed, mirth filling his eyes. "You should just sit back and lick your wounds, Shinobi-chan." I accepted his words, and then finally did I relax. Tension drained out of me in equal to the blood that I had probably spilt. I looked over to the piece of wood still jammed into my shoulder, and decided that needed to go. I located some gauze and tape before promptly ripping out the jagged stake. It probably should've dawned on me that ripping things out of my body wasn't a very healthy thing to do when you had little medical experience. My incident with the needle should have clued my in on it, but I guess second time's the charm. Of course, groaning in self-induced pain was all a lesson I needed to learn. Same with patching up my wound and wrapping it in a bundle of too much cloth. If I didn't have some healing factor I think I would've been screwed. Still, with that headache out of the way, I could patiently watch the samurai deal with the brown eyed Shinobi. They were definitely doing a better job than my desperate fumbling. If I had to compare them to something it would be a well oiled machine. When one man struck, they all struck, and when one man defended, they all defended. When it was time for one side to defend, they would, and the other side would curl around to strike from the back. As if they had had enough, the clones, at one point, even began to violently explode into massive blasts of lightning. Instances of heavenly judgement burst into being as danger and pain radiated from their bodies. Each explosion was like a lightning bolt had decided to strike several times in the area. The samurai either pushed themselves out of the blast, or carried themselves away. It was actually rather impressive on the Shinobi's part as he had effectively suppressed an entire squadron of trained warriors. Though, he was quickly tiring, and I think that the last minute exploding clones was his last ditch effort to destroy his opposition. I couldn't see who was still alive at this point of view, but I was sure that there had to be some casualties in the clash. Thinking so, I sent my spectral self out to scout, and found who I was looking for. Ten samurai. That's how many I had led to their death. That thought struck me a little too close to home. I really was beginning to hate when people died because of me. They had finally corralled the Shinobi, and struck as one again. Three swords sunk into a wooden stump instead of flesh. When had he used that? Suddenly, I felt a cool chill place itself under my chin. A dribble of blood trickled down my neck from the sharp edge. When had he gotten behind me? I didn't see him with my specter. "Call off your attack dogs." A tired voice growled behind me. Of course, it had come to the old hostage situation again. Why hadn't I seen it coming? "You heard him." I spoke, eying a frowning Gensei. He looked about ready to leap out and chop off brown eye's head. Still, I kept my voice level as I unknowingly grinned. "Attack." I had transported myself away from him a second later, appearing next to grinning samurai. Then the Shinobi was split from head to groin, entrails, blood, and grey, gooie brain matter slushed onto the ground. Everyone stilled at the gory sight. I couldn't hold back the urge to vomit, and hacked up burning stomach acid out my coughing mouth. Then there was utter silence. No one had moved when the Shinobi had been killed. "You know, I hadn't expected these halfwits to actually succeed in anything." A voice drawled from the shadows of a nearby treeline. It was behind the now dead Shinobi. "Then again, when they had succeeded, I knew I shouldn't have left everything up to them. It appears… I was right." There was an unparalleled confidence in the voice as a man stepped out from the trees to face us. I had to admit, he was as imposing as his voice foreshadowed. The first thing I noticed was his height, easily broaching seven feet tall. His longish black hair extended to his lower neck, and parted around his face to reveal skin marred with jagged scars. One eye had been set with an eyepatch while his other was a dull blue. On his forehead was a headband with a shiny strip of metal; three disjointed lines formed the shape of a cloud. The most striking thing, however, was the huge ōdachi that innocently hung in his palm. A blade as tall as he and glimmering in speckled red, blood. In his other hand was a crying child, the Hyūga girl. I had thought she was supposed to be still asleep? I looked closer and found a couple of welts on her cheeks, blood dribbled from her mouth a little. Ah, that's why. Her dull, white eyes were darting to and fro as the probably new environment had sufficiently scared her. Briefly, her gaze met mine, and I could almost see as her eyes widened and trailed over my injuries. Tears were welling up in her puffy sockets, again. Geez, did she have to cry? Wait, this is a traumatic event for any normal three year old. I keep forgetting that it's me who's the weird one. Nevermind, it's okay to cry. "Lookie here, a bunch of no good samurai and a brat. Seriously, who trains Chūnin these days, am I right?" The man laughed. Then his face turned to me, a grin playing his lips. "Hey kid, no hard feelings. All we wanted was little princess Hyūga here, but I'm extending an offer to officially join Kumogakure. I'm fairly high up as Jōnin go, so I can probably get the Raikage to let you in. What do you say?" I paused, not really considering it, but just to allow me more time to heal. "Why me?" "You need to ask?" The Jōnin laughed, erratically moving the Hyūga girl around as he gesticulated. "I'm impressed by your jutsu! Kumo always is looking for more war potential, you know. Or was it a bloodline, perhaps?" "No," I answered as slow as possible. "But I can show you if you promise to let the girl go." "Oi, oi, oi, Shinobi-chan, I get that you're a cutthroat badass and all, but this guy's bad news." Gensei whispered beside me, and I forced myself to not make it obvious that I was listening. Instead of answering, though, I summoned my knife hopefully just outside the Jōnin's line of sight where Gensei could also see. I caught him widen his eyes while muttering about 'damn Shinobi' before the Jōnin spoke again. "Hmm, I don't think I can give away the girl. She is going to be the bloodline bank for the future Kumogakure Hyūga clan. How about you get the first turns?" It took me a bit before all the words clicked, and I had to forcefully stop myself from throwing up again. They wanted to what?! I could contain my impulse to curse and scream. I could handle my moral revulsion to commit murder. My anger, however, was palpable. Briefly, I felt warmth travel up and down my limbs, pooling out from my stomach through some kind of pathways. It burned. My body burned. My rage wasn't a cold one, and I felt like I could take on the world right now. "Gensei," I intoned, my voice a barely contain growl as I didn't even care for an honorific. "I'll distract him; you get the girl." "Hey what do you-" I was off before he could finish his sentence. The ground exploded with my dash, sending clumps of rock, soil and earth through the air. In one part of my mind I wondered if this was how all Shinobi felt whenever they used Chakra. A sort of burning oil that boiled through your veins. It was so painful, but I never felt so fast, could never see so much, or feel so powerful. The rest of my mind was a haze of bloodlust. I think I had effectively lost it at that point, shunting all my anger and rage towards this one man. It actually felt rather good. The foot that collided with my stomach didn't. I had even saw him raise his leg while I was mid-jump. His foot slammed into my stomach a second later, and I swore I heard something snap within my ribcage. My breathing was cut out from under me as I slammed through a solid tree trunk, bursting from the other side with a pained groan. My lungs burned as they tried to suck in air as I attempted to put my feet under me. Pained gasps racked my body as I had half a mind to summon my specter half. The split occurred, and suddenly I felt much weaker. It was like I was trying to hold onto a liquid that just couldn't fit into the container that was me, or like I was no longer compatible with whatever had empowered me. Still, now that I had my specter out, I could finally see through the veil of rage that had sent me into a rather dangerous tunnel vision. I had thought I could fight on an equal ground with a trained Jōnin! Empowerment or not, I was just three! Sure, I'm probably the most badass three year old out there, but what had I thought I would accomplish? What kind of madness was I under? Footfalls alerted me of my advancing opponent, and I spread out my senses through both of my selves. I found the man lumbering towards me with disappointment clear in his eyes. "I'm rather disappointed in you, kid. However, I don't think it'll affect me too much. Just what was that berserker rage before? Your Chakra was clearly different; could you be… Oh, oh, you are! Well, this just got a lot more interesting wouldn't you say, little fox." "Step away from the kid, monster." Gensei stepped in between us, the rest of the samurai surrounding him in a circle of unsheathed katanas. The Jōnin just laughed, long and hard. The Hyuga girl cried out as she was dragged roughly by her hair. Then he swung his sword. I wasn't really able to actually see the blade, but I didn't need to as there was a sharp crack almost like a whip that traveled as he completed his motion. The samurai directly in the path of the blade twisted in half as a they were cleanly bisected. Blood and entrails spilled like horrifying piñatas. I was shocked into stillness. Did he just make the tip of his sword reach supersonic? Shinobi can do that?! "Oh, I think I like you even more now, little fox." The monster stepped through his created opening, the pieces of human at his feet still trailing warmth. "You can truly see the beauty of my technique. Let me tell you, it took me years to actually get it right; had to even mix a Twitching Limb Jutsu(Hikuhiku Eda no Jutsu) with a Current Transfer Jutsu(Nagare Isou no Jutsu)." He pointed to his blade, completely at ease with the situation. "If you look closely enough you can see the very thin coat of Lightning Chakra I have grafted to the edge. Makes it flow really nicely in the air. Now, Kumo-nin don't really think of the Twitching Limb Jutsu other than as a capturing Jutsu. Idiots, I say. If applied to yourself, sure it'll cause pain and maybe a lapse in nerve action, but for a brief second you can-" He cut his own teaching off as suddenly another whip crack lanced into the air, his arm visibly burst into a motion that wouldn't look out of place on anything but human. The Hyūga girl in his hands didn't even move with his sudden movements, probably frozen with fear. Five more samurai were cut down without knowing what had even happened. "See, sometimes Shinobi get all caught up in their fancy Jutsu, but sometimes it's just the fastest blade that cuts them down." "Hey, Shinobi-chan, you got any flashy Jutsu to shut this guy up?" Gensei ground out beside me. I looked over and trembled as I saw that he was suddenly down an arm. "Gensei-san…" I stared at the dismemberment. I had caused this as well. This was my fault. I had to fix this. "Hey, don't let it worry you too much; was thinking of retiring soon anyways." Gensei shot me a bloody grin as he caught me staring. "Are you done strategizing over there, little fox?" The Jōnin asked, clearly waiting for some challenge. He walked forwards briefly before slowly halting his steps, his single eye locking on me. "What the hell? Where is your-" He paused for the first time in the fight, seeing some invisible sight. "What are you, kid?" I didn't respond to him, and that seemed to set him off. However, instead of attacking us outright he just stood there, tauntingly. I was about to shoot him a glare when my spectral self caught something that I hadn't noticed at first. A bluish white, translucent eye hovered just in front of his eyepatch. I lowered my spectral self to get a closer look and I found something rather confusing. A series of disgusting pulsating veins were almost completely covered by the eyepatch, but they were very similar to ones I had seen up close before. Those were the same eyes of a Hyuga. How did he get them? He doesn't look like he would be part of their clan. Was it transplanted? Right, didn't that Kakashi guy have a transplanted Sharingan? I'll have to look further into that, but first, why it the eye look similar to my spectral state? It was almost as if I could reach out and touch- I could hold onto it… My specter body never could interact with anything. What changed? I felt a little resistance as I tugged slightly on the spectral eye, and suddenly I noticed as the veins around the Jonin's eye flexed harder. Testing it a little bit more carefully, I found that he seemed to be twitching whenever I pulled; it looked like he was in pain, but it seemed that he was trying to keep a facade of invulnerability. "Gensei-san, how fast do you think you are?" I asked, my eyes staying on the Jonin. He could hear us too, but I don't think he really cared. In fact, he seemed rather excited to see us challenging him. I laughed a bit in my head as the man wasn't following his own creed. He was the one with the flashy Jutsu in this case while I had a well placed knife. "Probably faster now that I've had some unexpected weight loss." Gensei quipped, his voice seemed to be getting harsher as I noticed that he was still losing blood. The makeshift tourniquet he had put together didn't look like it helped completely. "Can you rush in when you hear the signal and take the girl away?" I asked. Gensei raised an eyebrow, but didn't argue. Instead, he adjusted the blade in his hand. "Alright, Shinobi-chan, what's the singal this time?" I like to think my grin was rather vicious at this point. "Screaming." Then I yanked the spectral eye, and felt a satisfying pop as suddenly the eye was held firmly in my invisible palm. The effect was instantaneous. The Jōnin howled in horrifying agony as blood burst forth from underneath his eyepatch. Gensei hadn't questioned anything that just happened, and rushed forwards as soon as the screaming started. The Hyūga girl screamed as she was suddenly being flung around by the pained Jōnin. It seemed like he wasn't expecting that as Gensei had quickly reached the arm that held the screaming child, and delivered his own sort of revenge. Gensei didn't just free the Hyūga girl, he took the Jōnin's arm off as well. Whether the one-armed samurai was strong enough to cut through any protection the Jōnin had put up, or if the Jōnin was so assured of his ultimate attack, I didn't know. Still, I don't think it mattered in the grand scheme of things. If the pain from sudden explosive eyeball syndrome didn't cause a wail like a possessed banshee, then losing one arm certainly did the job. The Jōnin screamed and hollered as he started to send off panicked swipes everywhere. His accuracy had noticably decreased sharply. "I'll kill you! You damned little shit! I'll kill you!" The Jōnin's monologues and bragging had turned into inarticulate curses rather quickly. I found that rather funny now that he was actually wounded his real nature revealed itself. Not really thinking of it, I taunted back, "Yeah, what was that about flashy jutsu again?" The man just screamed further, his one working eye locked onto me. The one thing I hadn't expected was that the injured Shinobi would still be so fast. He hadn't been moving fast at all as he probably didn't think we were threats, so when he suddenly blinked past everyone with speed impossible for any organism I ever learned about in biology, I was reasonably terrified. Everything happened in slow motion as I caught the movement of his raised sword. It descended with that very same impossible speed, but I was already moving out of the way. Though, not by my own power. Gensei had arrived behind the Shinobi and shoved both the Hyūga girl and I away long before the blade even began its drop. He had a smile on his face while a damning whip crack echoed out. I stood there, dumbly watching as a righteous man died right in front of me. The disjointed halves of his body flopping uselessly to the floor like a puppet that had lost its strings. I half expected for the playful samurai to jump up any second now, and laugh it all off like it was the funniest joke in the world. He didn't. There was laughing above us. Scratchy, bone-chilling, and disgusting laughter. I was too shocked to even move. There was another whip crack and a burning pain shot through my right arm. I didn't really do much other than stare at the large gash that had suddenly appeared lengthwise on my broken right arm. My arm should have burned more than it did. Someone was pulling me away. Away from the demented laughter. Screams and cries that were not my own hung hollow in to air. I stared at whoever was pulling me away, vision blurry. Why was my vision blurry? My cheeks were warm, liquid pouring from my eyes. Oh… I was crying. I'm in shock. Why am I in shock? I saw other samurai die in front of me. Was Gensei any different? Blankly, I found myself realizing that yes, I had thought of Gensei differently than other samurai. He was a good man. I couldn't accept that a good man had just died. Couldn't accept that I couldn't fix death. I was beginning to hate death in general, as well. Someone slapped my face. My vision was clearing up, and I could finally look up at my carrier. Their pale face red with tears, snot and exhaustion. The Hyūga girl, I realized. "Thank you." I mumbled, standing on my own trembling feet. Her eyes teared up at my speech, and she buried her head into my shoulder. Tears clinging to my clothes. "You weren't responding… I had thought… They had thought… I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. This… this is all my fault." "No," I answered, my head was feeling light. I don't think I could form one coherent thought right now. "W, what?" The girl stuttered, her tears had stopped as confusion filled her features. "I said no." I repeated. My specter floated above us as the girl waited for my answer. We both flinched as screams rang out from somewhere behind us. Belatedly, I felt an odd itch, but when I had looked at my physical palm there wasn't even a wound there. I realized the itch was coming from my intangible body, and nearly doubled over as suddenly I could see everything. Well, not really everything, but I had suddenly vision that expanded much further from what I would normally consider physical limits. My specter body looked at its palm as I tried to school my features. Sitting within the right hand of my specter was a glossy, white eye, veins pulsing around it. Huh, neat. "What's your name?" I suddenly asked the Hyuga girl, my mind was beginning to become too clouded to understand anything that was happening. If I survived then I would certainly understand better, but right now the blood loss was getting to my head. When was my healing going to kick in? The Hyuga girl looked a little taken back by my sudden question, but still answered with only a slight stutter, "Hyu, Hyuga H, Hinata." Huh, so this is Hinata as a child. The novelty of the thought passed a second later in a wave of stars that crossed my vision. "Can you throw kunai?" I asked back before tacking on my name as I forgot it, "My name's Uzumaki Naruto, by the way." "Um, it's nice to meet you?" She looked a little confused at my questions, but looked over to where occasional screams echoed out. They were getting less and less pronounced. "But, um, I'm not really good at much. I'm, I'm sorry!" I sighed, a headache was beginning to build up in my skull, and I wasn't sure if it was the sensory increase putting a stress on my mind or blood loss. "Hinata, listen to me. I just need you to throw kunai. You don't need to be on target, or hit him or anything. Just throwing kunai in his general direction. Can you do that?" The shy heiress nodded meekly as I had unknowingly summoned my knife into right hand, my blood seeping into the white wood of the hilt. The pain from having out my specter had been getting increasingly difficult to think through, so I decided that I needed to be resourceful with it now. I had also noticed that the wound wasn't closing. A limit to my healing? No matter, I couldn't really think straight enough to make any conjectures. Blood loss was a pain; I do not recommend in high quantities. "Um, U, Uzumaki-san, what are we going to do?" Hinata stumbled over her words as I already had an answer prepared. "We won't be able to make it if that Jonin breaks through those samurai; it would be more advantageous if we fought with more people and us." I answered easily. Then I paused as a few of Gensei's words echoed in my head. "But it's more me being stupid." It was hypocritical of me, and I'm not really cut out to be a hero or anything. However, I think it was a fundamental part of me when I say one thing but do the other. I marched forwards towards the screams, my knife humming in my palm as blood continued to dribble into it. A fretful Hinata followed closely behind. I felt something flip like a switch had been flipped. My line of sight seemed to rise, and suddenly I could see the world around me as if I had eyes on the back of my head. Then my world slowed. Time ticking into agonizingly long seconds.