Naruto: Dreaming of Sunshine

The castle walls were crawling with guards.

I breathed quietly, steadily, and made myself focus on the task at hand. I needed to get in there. I needed to get the gauntlet. I needed to find out if there was a way to reverse the transformation.

In and out. In and out. Distractions melted away. My worries were put aside, at least for now. Out of sight, out of mind. All that mattered was the fight ahead. I was injured. I was alone and outnumbered. They were stronger than me. Faster than me. They'd already kicked our asses twice.

They are in so much trouble.

The corner of my mouth lifted in a small smirk.

Too flippant to be completely true, of course, but it was nice to think so. It helped.

I'd taken a moment on the trip here to pull the knife from my back and patch it as best I could for a spot I couldn't reach, and to re-tie the necklace around my neck. I was as prepared as I was going to get.

"Stealth or not stealth," I murmured to myself, considering the wall and the people I could sense beyond it. The guards weren't ninja, and I knew exactly where the two shinobi I wanted were. I could get past everyone else if I tried hard enough, probably, but it would be difficult. I'd risk a lot if I was seen and it would take time and energy.

I nodded. "Both. Both is good."

I pulled my chakra in tight and invisible, and used all the tricks Kakashi-sensei had taught me to ghost up to the exterior wall. I travelled a stretch of it, one hand outstretched to brush against it and leave ink marks behind as I moved.

I circled around, found a perch in the trees with a good view over the wall and pulled out a stack of flashbangs. I linked them together with a cascade seal and a stretch of ninja wire, and bundled the whole thing into a ball.

Down below, the scene was peaceful. The guards were alert and prepared, but not prepared enough.

I drew a line of shadow sight across my eyes, used chakra to muffle my hearing and set off my touch blasts. The outer wall exploded into shrapnel, the guards sending up an alarm and spilling out into the night air in preparation for an attack.

Wait for it…

Chakra blazed as one of the ninja dropped down from the palace balcony to the ground – it was Karenbana, out for blood.

Perfect.

I lobbed the ball of tags over the fence, towards her, and set it off.

I couldn't see it, from behind the safety of shadow sight, and the blasts were muffled thrums of more vibration than sound, but I could sure as hell see the way that the guards staggered and stumbled, trying to shield their eyes, dropping weapons, mouths gaping and screaming. I feel the pulses of the tags going off, one after the other, providing a constant barrage of light and noise.

Disco inferno.

Karenbana was on the ground. Flashbangs wouldn't keep a ninja down for long, but this was the opening I needed.

I moved away from it, further around side of the castle where I eased my way over the wall. There were less guards here now – they weren't all gone, of course, that would have been bad management, but less. It was easy enough to spot a clear path and make a run for the castle. A body flicker let me clear the distance in less than a heartbeat, and the hardest part of that was doing the jutsu without the accompanying flare of chakra.

I scaled the wall of the palace and shimmied one of the top windows open to get inside.

Piece of cake.

I strode through the halls. I could have created a path, used jutsu to burst my ways through the walls to get where I was going, but the door would work just as well. This gave me time to plant ink as I went, just in case, circling the room where Ishidate was holed up. There were two spots of Sai's chakra that had to be the ink clones and a handful of civilians.

Hah, I thought. They hadn't even realized that the clones were clones yet.

I'd thought that deception would have barely lasted the fight, let alone for hours afterwards. Maybe they just didn't care.

There were two guards on the door and I didn't even hesitate, knocking them out and stepping over their unconscious bodies on my way.

Then I kicked the door in.

It felt really satisfying.

Everyone turned to look at me. I walked in, head held high, steps even, until I was right in the middle of the room. The two clones, bundled on the floor. The minister, sitting on an elaborate throne with an assistant behind him. Ishidate, leaning against the far wall, shielded from the flashbangs – no, the flashbangs had run out, they were only flares now – going on outside.

"You," Ishidate said, with only a fraction of surprise, "really are an idiot, aren't you?" I could read his lips, but I loosened the chakra around my ears enough to hear him. Part of this involved talking, and if I was really, really lucky it would only involve talking.

I didn't expect to be that lucky. I wasn't sure I wanted to be.

"No more than you," I said, levelly. "You really shouldn't have hurt my brother."

He laughed, spreading his hands out. "So this is your big plan? Walk straight in here and challenge me to a fight? You couldn't win when there were four of you."

"Well," I said, with a flat smile that had nothing to do with amusement. "First I was going to ask how you reverse the stone transformation."

"This old thing?" Ishidate said, extending one arm and firing up the glove. He admired it. I felt the air shiver, the way it drew in the natural energy around it. The lines on the glove formed something that almost looked like an eye. "You know, I don't feel like telling you."

"Too bad," I said. "That would have been the easy way."

I crossed my arms.

Across the room, Ishidate did the same.

I'd had a stupid plan, yes. But not that stupid. My Shadow Sight kept the flares from hurting me, but that didn't mean they weren't there at all – strobing bright lights did great things for shadows. I'd primed it full of chakra before I'd stepped into the room, and woven it over the ceiling between the hanging chandeliers unnoticed.

Watch what the right hand is doing, not the left. Watch me, standing here bold and unprepared, not my shadow.

I wasn't sure he'd even known that I used shadow jutsu too – the darkness of the beach hadn't made it a great choice and the initial confrontation could just as easily have been attributed to Shikamaru.

Either way, I didn't care.

Ishidate's eyes went wide as his glove pressed against his own arm, the strange cracking noise filling the air as it transformed.

And then it reversed, undoing itself, and returning to smooth flesh and blood.

"Ah," I said, lifting my hand before the reversal was complete, leaving his hand made of stone. "You can undo it."

Then I made a fist and slammed it down, a hammerblow to the back of my other hand. It hurt, but not nearly as much as it hurt him.

His hand shattered.

Just like Shikamaru's.

The Minister gave a shrill scream. Both of us ignored it. As long as he didn't try and attack, I didn't care what he did. I just. Did not care.

"But can you fix it now?" I wondered out loud, eyes locked onto my enemy. Because this was the critical part. This was the part that mattered.

Could he fix it now.

Could I fix-

Ishidate's gauntlet hummed with energy.

I dropped and rolled to the side. The floor I had been standing on erupted into a messy pile of spikes. And kept erupting, following me as I moved. Ishidate was moving with me, but it clearly wasn't enough to distract him from causing it. I ran him into a table, into the wall, trying to dodge and dive and take him out at the same time.

It didn't work.

"Explode!" I commanded. The wall behind him burst inwards, huge chunks of stone pelting through the room. Dust hazed the air. The Minister and attendants vanished from sight, screaming.

But that just gave Ishidate more ammunition, apparently. The loose rocks moved through the air, unnaturally, flinging themselves at me. Targeting me.

I let go of the Shadow Possession and used a replacement jutsu, landing behind him. I lit my lightsaber, raising it high for a swing. My chakra hummed, circulating through the Gelel stone around my neck.

He twisted, faster than me, gauntlet ringing with energy –

- And it passed harmlessly through my chest, like grabbing smoke. Like grabbing shadow.

I pinned him in place and brought down my sword, sheering his arm off at the shoulder. The stink of burning flesh filled the room.

Now it's a real lightsaber, I thought, almost mockingly. It's cut an arm off and everything.

Ishidate stumbled backwards, collapsing to the ground, face white with horror. The rocks fell to the ground, under control of gravity once more, his control over them completely gone.

I pulled the disembodied arm out of my chest. Spun it over my hands and vanished it into hammerspace. A risk, if it had seals that would react to being in a storage seal, but better than trying to hang onto it during fighting.

"Thanks," I said, and this time it was definitely mocking. "That'll come in handy."

Outside, Karenbana seemed to have shaken off the effects of multiple flashbangs to the face. Which was a shame, but I'd had more time than expected, given the fight that had happened and the sheer amount of destruction that we'd packed into it.

Well, I guess that was the nice thing about working alone. You didn't have to worry about causing friendly fire.

I turned, slightly, towards the balcony so that when Karenbana hurtled up it I was looking straight at her.

She looked awful. Her eyes were squinting and her face was smeared with tears. Her wig had come loose, slightly cooked across her forehead. But she looked furious. "I will kill you," she rasped. "You are going to pay for that."

"I'm sure you said that before," I said, an unpleasant smirk kicking at my mouth.

And then I focused my chakra through my Gelel stone and dissolved, losing human shape totally and becoming part of the shadows on the floor. Unnoticeable.

It was a strange feeling, to be bodiless and formless. Uncomfortable. I could see, but it was limited. Hearing was easier.

Karenbana swore. "Sh-she's gone-ne," she said, the sound echoing to me as the sound reached different shadows at different times, slightly delayed. "I-I'm going to-to… Ishidate!"

I felt the vibrations as she ran towards him, even though her footsteps were silent.

"Karen," Ishidate said, voice low and tight with pain. "You have to leave."

I focused my attention in, trying to stop the annoying echo. I needed to listen to what they were saying. This was the important part. This was why I was here.

"She took the gauntlet," he said. "But she's gone. This is your chance to run, Karen. Before they come back for the prince."

"She took more than the bloody gauntlet," Karenbana snarled. "I'll go after her. I'll get it back."

"And then what?" Ishidate snapped back. "If you haven't noticed, I don't have any hands." He sounded like he was verging on hysterical. "What do you think we'd do then? Kongo's dead. I'm next to useless. You think you can do the work of three of us all alone?"

That didn't sound like they knew any way to fix it. Didn't sound like they had a plan.

I didn't have teeth to grind together, but the feeling remained the same. Frustration. Irritation. The creeping, dawning horror that this was reality, now. There was no way to undo it. No magical fix-it button.

"I'll get the gauntlet back," Karenbana insisted. "Your arm. There's supposed to be some kind of wandering medical ninja on the mainland. We'll find her and then. And then."

"Don't," he said. "Don't risk it. If they kill you too-" he cut himself off, with a pained gasp. "You can still make it out of this. Get off the island. I can hold the royals hostage a bit longer. Give you time to escape."

"You aren't making some kind of bullshit last stand," Karenbana said furiously. "Not here. Not like this."

They didn't have a way to fix it. They didn't know how to undo the damage they had done. Not even with the gauntlet. They didn't know.

Maybe Tsunade, I thought desperately. I had the gauntlet now. It could undo the petrification. Maybe Tsunade could put the pieces back together. Maybe she had some other solution. Something that would make this okay.

But I thought about how many pieces there had been, how tiny and crumbled and, deep in my heart, and doubted it. Even Tsunade had limits.

Footsteps vibrated against the floor. Karenbana, standing and leaving. Trying to go after me. Which meant she would go after my team.

No.

I reformed, rose out of shadow behind Ishidate, becoming myself once more. I grabbed his head, one hand on either side and twisted.

The snap should have been louder. It should have echoed.

It didn't. But Karenbana still turned around, slowly, like she knew what she was going to see and didn't want to see it.

"Explode," I commanded, and the corridor detonated around her. I could still sense her chakra – it hadn't killed her – but when I moved closer it was clear that it had been a near thing.

She glared at me, the last vestiges of her fighting spirit, struggling to stand.

"Run," I suggested, softly, dangerously.

She looked at me, expression a mask of loathing. But there was fear, too. I could kill her and she knew it.

She stumbled backwards, eyes flicking to the body on the floor, then back to me.

And ran.

My muscles tensed with the instinctive desire to chase. To hunt her down and kill her. Not because I had to, or needed to. But because I wanted to.

But Karenbana wasn't why I was here. She was irrelevant. I had the gauntlet now. Had the only information there had been to acquire. The only plan that remained to fix things – get to Tsunade.

Behind me, stone shifted, and there was a soft whimpering sound.

I turned to watch Michiru – Sai's ink clone – drag the minister out of the rubble. Alive, if not unharmed.

Oh right. The mission.

Well. That took care of that, didn't it?

A bird landed on the balcony rail – white and black and made of ink. I gave it a steady look. In another situation, I might have been able to summon amusement at how well Sai had learnt to bend around orders.

"Tell them to come back," I said. "We need to go home."