The Kyubi felt the attempts to contain it, to command it, and to suppress it. However, it was like trying to use a heat transfer system on a high voltage powerline. It took less than a moment to find a weak point and break free.
They thought they were ready for anything. They had taken precautions. They had double-checked everything prior to beginning. Every contingency had been prepared for.
They didn't survive the first second of the Kyubi's release.
The containments were powerful enough that had they managed to get a prince among the generals of the dark forces captive, they could have held it.
But they had made a vital error in assuming its demonic energy functioned according to the laws they knew for the demons whith which they were already familiar.
They were wrong.
Dead wrong.
M'kraw the orc Warlock never even knew what killed him. One second everything was going according to plan, the next a tail-shaped spear of energy had penetrated every layer of the containment matrix, gone right through his chest, and vaporized him. His body did not fall to form a corpse so much as disintegrated to ash where it stood.
Nerten, the goblin Shaman, survived him by a matter of picoseconds, as the growing demon completely obliterated the containment building without even seeming to notice.
As the Kyubi broke free, nine tails rose up, then turned and pointed down, spearing all together into the mighty rock foundations of the city. For a fraction of a second the ground flexed, then bowed, then shattered, exploding in all directions in time to be transformed into shrapnel as the demon lit off a massive Beast Ball in the center of the devastation, transforming everything, buildings, houses, into just more shrapnel as Ogimmar met its fate and consumed itself as one, mighty grenade.
A pillar of fire as large as the city rose up as a plume from a signal flare.
And that signal was the city's funeral pyre.
Naruto did not have the experience to know it, but he was in shock.
As long as he'd lived he had to deal with neglect and indifference, even downright hatred. In his worst moments he'd felt that neglect and indifference was the cruelest thing that could ever happen to anybody.
He'd been wrong.
He hadn't even known how wrong he'd been until now. In an idle, far off corner of the lad's mind he confirmed to himself, "So this is what gramps was always protecting me against."
In truth, he didn't have time for much thinking, as no sooner had the awful realization of his situtation made itself plain than his limbs were off and he was tied down in a ritual containment seal, or something.
And then the Kyubi was free.
And suddenly everything about the hatred the citizens of Konoha had given him was suddenly clear.
Although Naruto had no possible way of knowing it, on some level he intuitively understood when the containment was breached and the building exploded, why when everyone else present was vaporized into so much dust, he alone remained alive. When the tails rose, then speared down into the rock and the city died, he survived, and he knew why.
The prison on his chest was still there, and it was open, a gaping hole meant to contain the Kyubi, and the fox demon was avoiding touching Naruto with so much as a shred of his energy, actively holding back from contact with any part of him, to avoid any chance of being caught back in that hole.
When the ground exploded Naruto got flung upwards along with thousands of tons of debris. Boulders of every shape and size flew up around him into the air, yet his shocked mind had siezed on that empty prison on his chest, how it felt like he'd just taken the world's most enormous pooh and didn't know how to deal with the emptyness that followed.
One second he was flying, about to fall to his doom. The next he was in Jiraiya's arms, having been switched out by a clone doing Kawarimi on him, on the back of some flying thing, while behind them the world burned.
All Naruto could do was blink out at the devastation and think, "Yeah, if that happened to Konoha I'd be upset too."
He didn't even hear the cheers as the Alliance forces retreated, as the crater that was once the city of Ogrimmar burned, it's citizens drowning in flames as lakes of lava engulfed their homes. The Alliance forces on wing had to fight the worst air currents any of them had every experienced as they fell back, whipped and buffeted by the air itself, some riders disappearing around them as even at this great distance giant boulders fell and knocked them out of the sky, yet still they cheered as the heart of the horde got annihilated. Even the best and brightest of the orcs and trolls caught unbuffed and unprepared for the massive volume of energy and violence that had transformed their fortress into a wasteland of bubbling lava pits in a mere handful of heartbeats.
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(Posted Sat, 25 May 2013 02:27)
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