"They died?!" asked an aghast Naruto. "Sasuke killed them?!"
"Death is part of being a ninja," grumbled Zabuza as he used his sword to block a wing that had morphed into a spiked tentacle. "The biggest part in fact."
"Hah," said the Succubus Queen, making a dramatic gesture. "Arise now as my minions!"
An aura of light surrounded both corpses as they floated to an upright position. Their bodies shifted as the glow intensified. When it cut off they were still recognizable, but dressed differently and looked fairly odd to Naruto.
"Oh come on, they're stacked even more than my centerfold jutsu!" complained Naruto.
Kakashi and Zabuza BOTH looked.
"Can I cook, or can't I?" asked Succubus Queen Delilah.
Rin stretched out as if awakening, her white latex nurse uniform moving like a second skin. The huge syringe that she twirled like an overly thick bo staff a moment later managed an evil gleam as she posed. "Naughty Nurse. I think my patient needs restraints and a full proctology workup!"
"WHA?!" asked Kakashi as he was suddenly bound in leather straps to a bed. His eye bulged a bit as he saw the way Rin was bump-and-grinding towards his position with that syringe held up.
Sakura smirked and licked her lips. "Sadomasochist Schoolgirl. Oh, my poor boyfriend needs a -"
"FIREBALL JUTSU!"
"Oh that was cold," said Delilah. "You didn't even let her finish her opening statement."
"Actually, that wasn't cold at all," said the blackened and smouldering Sakura. "I feel the burn."
Sasuke threw shuriken at Sakura.
"WAIT!" yelled Naruto, throwing kunai himself in an attempt to hit Sasuke's shuriken with his own. His aim wasn't as good as Sasuke's though.
"Ooooh, it just makes me more hot for you, Sasuke-kun," crooned the stabbed and burned Sakura.
"Pikachu! Thundershock!"
"Pikapi!" agreed Pikachu as he sent an arc of electricity to wash over the busty Sakura as she shambled forward.
Sakura went down.
Naruto was about to say that that was the wrong target and he'd wanted to zap Sasuke, but Sakura was down now.
"Pika," said a tired-looking pikachu.
"Okay," said Naruto absently, seeing how Rin was pulling one of the kunai he'd missed Sasuke's shuriken with out of one leg. "Pikachu, you did good! Rest now! Heracross, I summon you! Tackle Rin!"
"Wha?!" yelped Rin before an extremely large rhinocerous beetle smashed into her.
Kakashi landed on his back as the restraints and bed vanished. "Good thinking, Naruto. How'd you know those would dispel when she was knocked out?"
"Uhm. I'm getting better at this?" tried Naruto rather than admit it was just a lucky guess.
"Such ruthlessness," said the Succubus Queen. "No hesitation in striking down your comrades."
"Ninja," pointed out Sasuke.
"Well, there's that," admitted Succubus Queen Delilah. "So we go back to the stalemate."
"Heracross dismiss, summoning-" Naruto paused as he went down the list and spotted something that looked new. "Foxgirl Kunoichi."
FWAM! a pressure wave went out centered on Naruto.
The torches which had been evenly spaced and glowing at a set radiance since entering the dungeon proper all dimmed and shifted to a reddish glow.
Th-thump! was a sound that would have been like a heartbeat except it was way too loud.
Naruto dropped to his knees, clutching his head, as a circle of red formed in front of him like a pool of blood.
Something came out of that pool.
At first he'd thought that the Kyubi was getting loose. No, there was rage here to be sure. But it wasn't an unfocussed rage.
Kakashi knew he'd be exhausted later, but moved his eyepatch upward to more properly see what he thought he saw rising up out of that pool of blood that Naruto had just vomitted up.
With the Sharingan, he could see that the blood had spread in a perfect circle. Kakashi could also see exactly what he thought he was seeing and that this was NOT a genjutsu.
"Kushina," breathed Kakashi as the woman stood there, looking around her. Though the clothes were odd. Some sort of kimono mixed with something else. And the fox ears and lashing four tails behind her were also new.
"WHAT THE HELL IS THIS?!" asked Succubus Queen Delilah, transforming her wings into tentacles which she lashed out with.
Kushina made a slashing motion with one hand and both tentacles burned with crimson flames so intense he felt the heat rolling over him where he lay and he was a little surprised his hair hadn't caught fire.
"What the hell are you?!" screeched the Succubus Queen, her wings now ragged stumps.
Kushina raised her hand, pointing her right palm at the Queen. Red chains appeared around her, lashing out to wrap around the Succubus Queen.
The Queen thrashed a moment as flames erupted from the chains, then died.
"Kakashi Hatake," grumbled Zabuza as he slowly got up from where he'd been tossed earlier. "What exactly is that?"
Kakashi gave an honest guess, but then again he WAS pretty rattled by this. "That's Naruto's mother, back from the dead to protect her son."
Zabuza flinched as that woman's gaze passed over him, the look she gave him giving the swordsman the impression he was an insect and she just wasn't motivated to squish him at the moment.
Then Kakashi found himself the recipient of a gaze from that woman. "Uhm. Hi, Kushina. Looking good. Well, better than you did when you died at least. Did I mention that I'm Naruto's beloved sensei?"
Zabuza made a choked noise that might have indicated something of his opinion towards Kakashi's statement.
She walked past the two fallen women, glancing once down at Sasuke and looking puzzled for just a moment. She stopped in front of Naruto, placed one hand on his head, and then faded out again.
"So," said Zabuza, putting out a fire that had started near his foot, "that fox-spirit was the boy's mother. That explains the whisker marks. Who died and apparently came back as a spirit of vengeance when her son was endangered."
"Something vaguely sort of like that I suppose," said Kakashi, feeling winded.
"I never thought I'd say this, Kakashi Hatake," said Zabuza. "But I think I'm getting too old for this. And I pity you if she ever decides you are slacking in her son's training."
"Sometimes I'm feeling a bit old myself," admitted Kakashi, not wanting to contemplate the second part of this statement.
A piece of ceiling came down.
Sakura startled awake, then began clutching herself. "I'm alive?! I'm alive! ALIVE!!!"
"Yeah, we noticed," said Naruto, holding his hands near his ears. "Rin's been awake for about fifteen minutes."
"Dying in the dungeon is apparently NOT permanent," said Kakashi.
"I kind of figured that when both Sakura and myself were disembodied and floating around near our corpses," said Rin. "So, do we know what's going on with the swordsman? He'd left before I woke up."
"Just that he had a lot of things to think over and that he considered the truce to still be active until he'd finished thinking things over," said Kakashi.
"You let him go?!" asked Sakura.
"Meh, I have a lot of things to think over too," said Kakashi, waiting for it.
"That was Naruto's mom?!" asked Sakura.
"Ah, so you DID see all that," noted Kakashi.
"I wish I'd seen all that," said a seemingly-depressed Naruto.
"Your mother seems... formidable," noted Sasuke.
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(Posted Thu, 03 Oct 2013 17:02)
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