Naruto: God of Shinobi

Chapter 35: Curse Mark Activates

Zaku raised his hand.

Sakura could see it from where she stood, or stood was close enough, her legs locked beneath her by nothing more than refusal, her arm useless at her side, her vision moving in slow pulses that matched her heartbeat. She could not dodge. There was nowhere for her body to go that her body was currently willing to take her.

She looked at the cave of roots. The darkness between them. The shapes inside it that were Naruto and Sasuke.

She had done everything she could. She had fought. She had not run. She had not given up the scroll and she had not given up the cave and she had not given up. The ground under her feet was proof of that, the blood on the leaves and the cracked earth where her fist had landed and the shallow gouges where she had pushed herself up three times and once more.

It was not enough.

Zaku smiled. "Die."

Then the air changed.

Not the temperature. Not the light. The quality of the air itself, the way it pressed against the skin, the way it carried information. Something had added itself to the clearing. Something that had not been there before was there now, coming from the direction of the cave, spreading outward from between the roots in a way that was not sound and was not light but was present in the way those things were present.

Zaku’s hand stopped.

"What…?"

The chakra came through the roots like smoke moving through gaps, purple and black, not the warm pressing mass of the Fox that Sakura had felt from Naruto in the Land of Waves but something colder. Something that had a direction. Something that wanted.

She felt it on her skin. Like cold water. Like something drawn across the surface of her without touching it.

She turned.

Sasuke was standing.

He had come out of the cave. She had not heard him. His feet were silent on the root-covered ground and his eyes were open and the Sharingan was active. She had seen his Sharingan before. One tomoe, the red of it deep and spinning. Now there were two, and the red was darker than she remembered, deeper, the color of something that had been red for a long time. The Curse Mark had spread. The black lines were past his jaw now, reaching his cheek, touching the outer edge of his eye.

His face was empty. Not the blank of sleep, not the blank of exhaustion. The blank of something that had been subtracted.

The dark chakra moved around him. It did not radiate outward the way normal chakra radiated. It curled. It circled. Like something orbiting a center it could not leave.

Sasuke walked past Sakura.

He did not look at her.

His eyes were on Zaku.

Zaku took a step back. Then another. His broken-edged confidence had become something else, something with a different quality. He turned his head toward Dosu. "Dosu. What is happening?"

Dosu’s bandaged face turned toward Sasuke. The metallic sleeve at his side hummed. "The Curse Mark," he said. "It is activating."

Sasuke moved.

The speed was wrong. It was not Sasuke’s speed. Sasuke was fast. This was past fast. This was the speed of something that was not negotiating with the distance between itself and where it was going. He crossed the clearing in a fraction of the time the clearing should have required and his hand closed around Zaku’s wrist before Zaku had completed the backward step he had been taking.

Zaku tried to pull away. His arm did not move.

Sasuke twisted.

The sound was the sound of a branch breaking. Specific. Loud. The kind of sound that arrived before the pain did and told the listener what the pain was going to be.

Zaku screamed. He went to his knees. His arm was at an angle it had not been at before and would not be at again.

Sasuke reached for the other wrist.

He twisted.

The second crack was louder than the first. Zaku’s scream became something that was not a sound anymore, a total exhalation that took everything with it and left silence behind. He went down onto his face. His arms were wrong in both directions. He was not moving.

Sasuke looked down at him. The red eyes held nothing. No satisfaction. No anger. The calculation of something that had completed one task and was identifying the next.

He raised his foot.

Sakura ran.

Her ankle was not a running ankle anymore and her arm was not an arm that wanted to move and none of that was relevant. She ran because she was the only one who could and because she had looked at Sasuke’s eyes and recognized what was missing from them and understood that the foot coming down was not going to stop on its own.

She threw herself between him and Zaku.

Her arms went around Sasuke’s chest. She pressed her face against his shoulder. She could feel the dark chakra moving against her skin. Cold. Continuous. Wrong in a way she could feel in her teeth.

"Sasuke. Stop."

He did not move. His foot was still raised. The red eyes had not changed.

"Sasuke. Please."

She held him tighter. Her broken fingers found the fabric of his shirt and held it. Her blood was smearing on his collar, a dark stain spreading across the cloth, and she did not care. She pressed her face harder against his shoulder.

"You are not this. You are not him. Please. Come back."

The chakra flickered.

She felt it in the air around her first. The cold pressure pulsed once, twice, an uneven rhythm like something trying to maintain a state it was losing the energy for. Then it began to pull back. Not outward. Inward. Like smoke being drawn back through the gap it had come from.

Sasuke’s foot came down. Not on Zaku. On the ground.

His hand came up. It found the back of her shirt. Not gripping. Not pushing. Just present, the flat of his palm against the fabric, the weight of his hand there and not doing anything else.

"Sakura?"

The voice was confused. The voice of someone waking up in a place they did not remember lying down in.

The red was fading. The Sharingan deactivated slowly, the tomoe losing their sharpness, the red softening back to black. The lines on his neck had stopped where they were. They had not retreated, but they had stopped.

"I am here," she said. "I have you."

His weight shifted. His knees were going. She caught him, both arms around him now, her broken fingers holding regardless, and she held him up the way she had held him up in the bowl after the tornado, except now there was no bowl and no tornado and there was just the two of them in the middle of a clearing at sunset with blood on the ground.

She held him up.

Dosu stood at the edge of the clearing. His hands were still. His metallic sleeve had stopped humming. He was looking at Sasuke. At the Curse Mark. At the particular shape of what Orochimaru had left inside the boy.

"He knew," Dosu said. Quiet. Not to Kin. Not to Zaku. To the clearing. To the fact of it. "He sent us here. He told us to kill Sasuke Uchiha. But he knew about the Curse Mark. He placed it himself. He knew what would happen when we attacked."

Kin looked at him. "Dosu?"

"We were sent to test it," Dosu said. "To see what the Mark would do when the boy was threatened. To see how it activated." He looked at Zaku’s broken arms. At the ground. "We were tools. Sent to be broken so he could measure the result."

Kin said nothing. Her face was pale. Her eyes moved from Dosu to Zaku to the ground.

"We are nothing to him," Dosu said.

He said it the way you said something that you had suspected for a long time and had just received confirmation of, without surprise, without anger, with only the flat weight of a thing that was now known.

Naruto opened his eyes.

The cave of roots was dark. He was on a bed of leaves. He knew this because he could feel the leaves, the individual stems of them pressing through his shirt, the damp of the ground beneath them. His body was heavy in the specific way of a body that had been emptied and had not yet refilled. His chakra moved slowly, scraping the bottom, the seal on his stomach warm and present and blocking.

He heard breathing. Heavy. Wet. Close.

He sat up. His head had opinions. He noted them and cleared his vision through force of habit, the same method he had been using since the head injury, pushing through the grey until the grey became the room.

He saw Sakura.

She was kneeling in the clearing outside the cave, both arms around Sasuke, her face pressed against his shoulder. Her pink hair was matted with blood. Her face was bruised on both sides. Her lip was split in two places. One arm held Sasuke and moved correctly. The other held Sasuke and hung at an angle that arms were not supposed to sustain. Her ankle on the right side was wrong, the swelling visible from here, the joint enlarged past its natural profile. Her clothes were torn at the shoulder, at the knee, at the sleeve where she had cut strips from it for whatever purpose the strips had served.

There was blood on the ground between the clearing and the cave.

Her blood. Too much of it. A trail of it, actually, leading back from the clearing to the cave entrance, droplets and smears on the leaves, the evidence of someone who had been hurt and had moved anyway.

"Sakura?"

She looked up. Her eyes were red. The kind of red that came after crying, not during. She had finished. She was done with it. She was looking at him now with the steady look of someone who had been frightened and was no longer frightened and was ready for whatever came next.

"Naruto. You are awake."

He looked past her. The Sound Genin. He catalogued them the way he catalogued everything, fast and without ceremony. Zaku on the ground, both arms at wrong angles, face white, not a threat. Kin behind him, holding him up, pale, hands shaking, not a threat. Dosu in front of them, metallic sleeve raised and not attacking, watching him.

Sasuke in Sakura’s arms. The Curse Mark dark on his neck. Eyes closed. Breathing.

Alive.

Naruto stood up.

The killing intent came the way breathing came. Not a decision. A condition. It went out from him into the clearing the way the killing intent he had used before went out, but this was not the broad dispersal of the Hokage’s office or the hallway. This was a line. Narrow. Specific. It went from him to Dosu and it said one thing with great precision.

The temperature in the clearing dropped. The fading light seemed to pull back further. The shadows deepened.

Dosu took a step back. His hand went to his sleeve. But the sleeve did not come up and he did not attack. His body had made a decision that his mind had not fully ratified yet.

Behind him, Kin’s knees buckled. She caught herself on a root. Her face had gone past pale into something else.

Sakura looked at Naruto. She had felt his killing intent before. In the Land of Waves when he fought against that red haired girl and the other pretty boy. She had felt it then as a pressure, a thing that touched her without touching her. This was that thing with the unfocused parts removed. All of it going one direction. She did not flinch.

Dosu raised his hands. Both of them. Palms out.

"Wait wait wait!! We don’t have to go that far kid!"

"You attacked my team."

"We were following orders."

"Whose orders."

Dosu did not answer. His hands were shaking. He was trying not to show that they were shaking and he was not entirely succeeding.

Naruto took a step forward. His hands came together. The hand signs were slow, his chakra working against the seal’s resistance. The killing intent did not change.

"Whose orders."

Kin spoke. Her voice was small. The voice of someone who had decided that the thing she was afraid of in front of her was less dangerous than the thing she was afraid of behind her.

"Orochimaru. He wanted us to kill Sasuke Uchiha. He said… he said we would be rewarded."

Naruto looked at Sasuke. At the black lines on his neck. They had not retreated. They sat on his skin and they were Orochimaru’s work and Naruto did not know exactly what they were but he knew enough. He had stood in the clearing and watched the yellow eyes move from him to Sasuke and back.

Orochimaru had not been trying to kill Sasuke. He had been claiming him. The bite was not an attack. It was a signature.

He lowered his hands. The killing intent remained.

Dosu reached into his robe. Slow. Deliberate. His hands visible the entire time, the motion performed in the specific way of someone who understood that ambiguity was not available to him right now. He withdrew a scroll. He placed it on the ground between them. He took two steps back.

"The Heaven scroll," Dosu said. "Take it and let us go."

Naruto looked at the scroll. He looked at Sakura. He looked at the blood on the ground between them.

He walked to the scroll and picked it up. He did not look at Dosu. He did not speak.

Dosu nodded. He reached back and took Zaku by the back of his jacket and pulled him up. Zaku screamed. The sound was sharp and brief and Dosu did not acknowledge it. He dragged him toward the trees. Kin followed without being told to, her eyes on Naruto until the foliage closed behind her and then they were gone.

The killing intent faded.

Naruto stood in the center of the clearing. He held both scrolls. He looked at them. He looked at Sakura.

"What happened?"

Sakura looked up at him. Her face was bruised. Her lip was split. Her arm hung wrong and her ankle was wrong and she was holding Sasuke with the arm that still worked and she was smiling. Small. Tired. The smile of someone who had arrived somewhere they were not certain they would arrive.

"I did not let them die," she said.

She said it quietly. Not to him. The way you said something that had been a question for a long time and had just become an answer.

---

Lee’s hands were still on the branch.

His knuckles were white. He had been holding the bark since Zaku raised his arm for the first time and he had not let go. He had wanted to jump down. He had wanted to be in the clearing and standing between the Sound ninja and the girl with the pink hair and he had wanted to do it from the moment Zaku’s first blast hit the ground.

He had not jumped down.

Because she had not needed him to. Not because she had won. Because she had stood. Over and over, after each time the ground came up, she had stood again. And each time she stood again it was clearer that the standing was not coincidence and was not luck. It was a decision she was making continuously, the same decision remade after each impact, the refusal re-chosen each time the alternative became available.

He understood that decision. He had made it himself, in the rain, in the mud outside the training ground, when Gai-sensei had walked away and the only person left to push him past where he was was himself. He knew what that decision felt like from the inside.

He had recognized it in her.

"She stood," he said. "Even when she could not fight. She stood."

Tenten looked at him from the adjacent branch. She had seen the same clearing. She had her own thoughts about it. "Lee?"

"That is youth," Lee said. "True youth. Not the youth of winning. The youth of refusal. The part of it that does not ask whether winning is possible."

Tenten looked at the clearing. Sakura was holding Sasuke. Naruto was standing with two scrolls. The blood on the ground was catching what was left of the sunset light.

Neji stood above them. His arms were crossed. His pale eyes had been on Naruto since Naruto stood up in the cave entrance.

He had felt the killing intent. Even from here, even filtered through the foliage, he had felt it. It had moved through the clearing like a physical thing and it had moved with precision and it had been controlled in a way that killing intent was not usually controlled. Most killing intent was weather. Ambient. Undirected. It filled a space and everything in the space felt it equally.

This had been a line. A directed instrument. A thing aimed by someone who knew how to aim it.

"The dead last huh?" Neji asked.

Lee looked up at him. "Neji?"

"Naruto Uzumaki," Neji said. "He has killed before. The killing intent was not a threat. A threat is potential. That was a promise. From someone who has made that promise before and has kept it."

Tenten frowned. "From the killing intent? You can tell that from the killing intent?"

"From the control," Neji said. "An outburst is uncontrolled. What he released was not an outburst. It was a tool. You do not use a tool that way without practice."

Lee looked at Naruto. The blond boy standing in the clearing with the scrolls in his hands and the seal on his stomach and the blood on the ground around him that was not his blood.

"He is my rival," Lee said.

Neji looked at him. "He is stronger than you, possibly stronger than even me, it is likely that we have just witnessed is the strongest genin in this whole examination."

"I know," Lee said. "That is why he is my rival."

Neji looked at Lee for a moment. Then he looked back at the clearing. He said nothing else. He did not need to.

---

Shikamaru had been following the Sound Genin.

He had picked up their trail an hour ago, tracking by the displacement of undergrowth and the specific way people who were confident they were not being followed moved through forest. He had followed them here because following them somewhere was the most efficient use of the information they represented. He had not expected to find Team 7. He had not expected to find what he found.

He sat in the canopy above the clearing and he watched and he thought. The thoughts were not coming together the way they usually came together. Usually there was a shape to it, a direction, the problem resolving into something that could be mapped. This was not mapping.

Beside him, Choji had his hand in his chip bag. The hand was still. It had been still since Naruto’s killing intent went into the clearing. The chips were halfway raised and had been halfway raised for several minutes.

"Shikamaru," Choji said.

"I know."

"That… that was Naruto."

"I know."

"The Naruto who sat behind us in class? Who use to goof off with us?"

"Yes."

"The Naruto who used to eat ramen at lunch and fall asleep during the practical exams."

"Yes."

Choji put the chips down. He looked at his hand. He looked at the bag. He put the bag away.

"That was not the same person," Choji said.

Shikamaru did not answer immediately. He was looking at the clearing. At Naruto. At the way Naruto stood with the scrolls, not triumphant, not relieved, just present in the clearing and already thinking about the next thing. The posture of someone for whom this had been a task and the task was now complete and there were other tasks.

"No," Shikamaru said. "It was not."

Behind them, Ino was not looking at Naruto.

She was looking at Sakura.

Sakura’s hair was cut in places where Kin’s nails had taken it. Her face was bruised on both sides. Her arm was broken. Her ankle was swollen to twice its size. She was covered in blood and she was kneeling in it and she was holding Sasuke and she was smiling the small tired smile of someone who had done the thing they needed to do.

Ino had competed with Sakura since they were children. For grades. For attention. For Sasuke. She had considered them equals. She had considered herself slightly ahead, most of the time, though she would not have said so to Sakura’s face.

She was not looking at someone she was slightly ahead of.

She was looking at someone who had stood alone against three enemy ninja and had not been broken by it. Had been hurt by it, badly, the evidence of that hurt written on her body in specific and legible terms. But not broken.

The thing Ino felt in her chest was not admiration. Admiration was too simple and too clean and did not have the complicated texture of what was actually there. It was the feeling of looking at someone who had become something you had not and understanding that the gap between you was not about talent or potential. It was about choices made and not made. Training done and not done. Decisions repeated until they changed the shape of you.

She looked at Naruto. The boy with the killing intent. The boy who had looked at the Sound ninja and released a line of focused intent so sharp that Ino had felt it from thirty meters away through dense canopy.

"Is that what she wants?" Ino said. Quiet. Mostly to herself.

Shikamaru looked at her. "What?"

Ino did not answer. She was watching Sakura. She was watching Naruto. She was watching the way Sakura looked at Naruto when he was not looking at her, the way you looked at something that was both the reason and the answer.

She understood.

She was not sure how she felt about understanding.

---

Next time: The Return of Kabuto – Passing the Second Stage.

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