Naruto: The Unwoven Threads of Fate

"Which testicle do you like better?"

"Don't. Please don't." The man softly whimpers out in total defeat. "Please don't make me answer."

"Both it is." The black threads snake beneath the man's belt. "I have to say this was the outcome I was hoping for."

"That's enough." Ino finally calls or for the Torturer's punishment to halt and miraculously Alvarcus and the Jiongu pause. But they don't move away from the man, Alvarcus simply looks over at her.

"It's not enough." Alvarcus says back to her with conviction. "He deserves so much more for what he was going to do to you."

"I don't care!" Ino snarls at him, all of her pent up rage at Alvarcus and the last week is slowly bleeding over. "I'm cold and chained to a post and hungry and Choji and Shikamaru are still chained too and you're completely ignoring us all and I'm basically naked and I want down! Now!"

"Fine." Alvarcus retracts the Jiongu and moves over to her. With a quick swipe of a kunai the bonds on Ino's wrists and ankles are broken. With a delicate and precise burst of chakra the seal on her collar is dismantled and removed. Alvarcus slides out of his long green coat and holds it out to the shivering kunoichi as she covers herself with her arms.

"Something clean please." Ino turns her head up at the coat in disgust. There has to be six liters of blood soaked into it.

"It shouldn't matter, you're filthy." Alvarcus bluntly points out.

"Clean clothes! NOW!" Ino shouts at him.

"Summoning Jutsu: Care Package." Alvarcus says with narrowed eyes as a ball of webs appear in his hands. "There. Another clean coat of mine I had on standby. Here's a kunai. Go free Shikamaru and Choji. I have unfinished business that requires my immediate attention."

"Do y…" Ino pauses as she considers her next words but she doesn't shove the kunai back to Alvarcus. She's holding onto it. "I can't swing the kunai hard enough to break the cuffs. I was just starved for a week."

Alvarcus literally growls at her for keeping him from his prize for even longer and stomps his way over to Shikamaru.

"Alvarcus how did-" Shikamaru starts to speak.

"Shut up." Alvarcus snarls at the Nara and violently rips the bonds off him with his two hands. "I am not in the Goddamn mood for your questions. The only thing I want to hear out of your mouth is thank you for saving your sorry-pathetic-excuse-for-a-shinobi's ass. For the second damn time too!"

"Thank you for saving me for the second time." Shikamaru monotonously drones out as he heaves himself off the table and sways on his feet. "Asshole."

"I heard that." Alvarcus nastily says over his shoulder as he moves over to Choji. "Choji."

"Alvarcus." The Akimichi smiles at his friend, despite his hostile actions and frankly pissed off mood, as Alvarcus rips off his bonds. He's just happy they all got out of this. "I have no idea how you knew we were here but thanks… for… coming? Ino?"

All three of the boys turn towards Ino. She's standing over the still trapped man - who has pissed himself in fear from Alvarcus - and buries the kunai up to the hilt in his gut. She yanks it out and it is accompanied by a squirt of blood that stains her recently acquired coat. She buries it again. And again. Over and over she stabs the kunai down into her would be rapist. Every time she yanks the blood coated blade out her arms shake in exhaustion but that doesn't stop her. She fights through her weakened state to keep impaling him.

The three boys are rendered speechless by her actions. All three of them simply don't know if they should intervene or not. Two because they're worried about their teammate and the other because he likes seeing this side of her.

Eventually she gets too tired though and her heyday of stabbing is drawn to a close. With her final stab she plunges the kunai into the side of his throat. He lets out a wet gurgle as she slowly drags the kunai through his neck until it's fully split open. Rich red blood pours out of the lethal wound with each beat of his heart.

"What the fuck Ino I wasn't done!" Alvarcus stomps over to the bleeding man with his trusty black threads at the ready to stitch the wound closed. "I don't even know if I can stop him from dying now!"

"No one will save him." Ino puts her foot down. Literally, she's place a bare foot on the chest of her Torturer and is grinding it into the wounds she greatly enjoyed causing. "He tortured me for a week! He whipped me! He laughed as he ate food in front of us! He giggled as he poured out our water before our very eyes! He's the one who almost raped me so that means he's mine to kill! I don't care what anyone else thinks, I get to be the one to kill him!"

The cave somehow goes even more quiet at her declaration. Two of the boys are simply shocked into silence, they had no idea their delicate teammate was capable of such atrocities. But the third boy…

"Anyone else strangely turned on right now?"

"Huh?" For all of his mighty intelligence, Shikamaru simply has no other sound to make for this.

"Oh shit was that out loud?" Alvarcus sputters out. "Whoops. Anyways, I get what you're saying Ino but I still am not done. You can kill him yourself but he still has hours of more suffering to go through."

"No!" Ino snaps at Alvarcus as the Torturer finally dies beneath her feet. For the second time. "I'll say this as simple as possible. I. Want. To. Go. Home."

"'I want to go home' she says." Alvarcus mutters to himself as he rifles through the coat he pulled off himself. There's no hope of getting it back on, not with all the now dried blood. He finds what he's looking for, all three of them. "Big words from someone just wearing a fucking coat and panties."

With a resounding thud Alvarcus slams three scrolls onto the table Shikamaru recently vacated.

"One has basic medical supplies. Bandages and antibacterial cream and that shit. I've never really had a need for it so sort it out on your own. One has rations for two weeks. You should be back in Konoha in a week at the most so splurge to get your energy back. The last one has very important shinobi tools, you know like kunai and shit, and a map that is marked with all of your friendly nin's border patrols. Meet up with one of them and when you tell them what happened leave me out."

"You're not coming with?" Choji asks in surprise as he throws one of Shikamaru's arms over his shoulder. "At least until we meet up with the border patrol?"

"I have other things to do." Alvarcus half answers as he turns away from the recently liberated trio and starts making his way out of the cave system.

"Where are you going?" Shikamaru calls after him.

"I'm going for a walk." Alvarcus says as his fists clench again. He's unsatisfied still.

"Wait!" Ino shouts out and struggles to catch up to Alvarcus who, surprisingly enough, stopped for her as she asked.

"For someone who shouldn't be able to speak to me you're doing a damn good job of speaking to me." Alvarcus mutters just loud enough for her to hear.

"I just have a question." Ino huffs out between labored breaths. Usually such a short distance is even lower than child's play, but for someone in her situation it's a challenge. "Showing up. All... that. Back there with the Torturer. Was it because it was me?"

Alvarcus stares into her eyes, looking for something. What is he looking for? Is it disgust? Perhaps he's trying to judge her anger at him? Maybe he's searching for a fleeting glance of forgiveness? He doesn't even know what he's searching for.

"Don't ask questions you already know the answer to."

One Week Later

"Tsunade." Asuma Sarutobi bursts into the Hokage's office with a vengeance. "Permission for an extended leave of absence."

"Denied." She instantly turns him down. "I know what you want to do and it won't happen. Stay with your team, they need someone to act as a rock. Someone to give them a sense of normalcy. Someone they trust to protect them."

"You and I both know those three are fine, you're the one who treated them. Don't make baseless excuses. Let me go." Asuma storms up to her desk and boldly places his hands on it and looks down at his Hokage. "They hurt my team. I'll tear down their entire operation. They will all die and I'll do it myself. They'll learn the error of their ways."

"It'll never happen." Tsunade sighs out. "I didn't want you to find out till later - I had hopes that you'd put revenge aside for the sake of your team - but they're already dead."

"What?" Asuma forces out through clenched teeth.

"The human trafficking ring known as the Five Tigers is no more. In the last week they've been systematically destroyed. All their hideouts were burned. All their members were slaughtered. Their entire operation that spanned a third of the Elemental Nations has been torn down. The organization's head was nailed to the side of his own warehouse and had forty seven different kunai stabbed into his major organs in alphabetical order. I'm morbidly impressed to be honest."

"Who did it?" Asuma angrily growls out.

"No one has claimed responsibility."

Otogakure

"Where have you been?" Orochimaru asks me as I shut the front gate behind me. "What could have pulled you away so suddenly for a week that you didn't even have time to tell me where you were going?"

"I went for a walk." Alvarcus mechanically says to the Snake Sannin. He's acting exclusively on autopilot. Probably because he hasn't slept for over seven days.

"And all the blood?" Orochimaru asks.

Alvarcus looks at him, then down at his blood covered self, then back to Orochimaru.

"It was a very enthusiastic walk."

Otogakure

"Well this is a really weird hole I've dug myself into." I awkwardly fumble around the deep hole that was made by a seal backfiring. "How the hell am I going to get out of this one?"

"I can throw you down a ladder?" Sasuke's head pokes over the rim of the hole. "Wait a moment, you can wall walk. Why is this an issue?"

"Oh." I start to make my way up the wall. "I meant more metaphorically. That was a really low point, arguably the lowest I've been and now I've got to get out of it somehow and keep moving forward. It's just so awkward to try and follow that up. Like am I just supposed to pretend that nothing happened? On one hand I like experimenting and trying new things - it really tests my skill and I wanted to do it for a while and I personally like it no matter how fucked up it got - but on the other hand I know what's considered 'socially acceptable.' Such pesky things, morals. Do I stay true to me and say 'fuck off this is mine I'll do what I want' or just roll over and conform to the masses? But really though, how the hell do I keep going after something like that? Do I just jump into the next thing with gusto?"

"I think that your seals have enough gusto the way it is." Sasuke snarkily says as I join him back topside.

"I acknowledge your argument and counter it with one of my own: fuck off they're mine." I dust myself off and go back to what I was doing. "Well right back at it again. Here goes nothing."

Somewhere in the Land of Tea

Two men are leisurely strolling back to a very grand and lavish office. They both just attended the opening night for their latest and by far greatest venture in the wonderful world of cinematography.

"Jura. We're taking the next six months off." One of the men speaks to the other. He sounds satisfied, tonight was perfect. The movie was ridiculously well received by both civilian and shinobi alike. The civilians loved the dramatic backstory of Koyuki while the shinobi appreciated real life combat. After all those that live a life of a shinobi are intimately familiar with combat, they know when something is faked.

"Are you sure that's long enough?" Jura asks while idly swishing his cocktail. "We've worked night and day on this movie for so long. I think it should be a year at least."

"A year." The Director repeats back as he unlocks the door to his office. He's stashed a celebratory bottle of very expensive champagne for Jura and him to enjoy. They were by far the two hardest workers so they deserve a special little treat. "I think that sounds nice."

The two men enter the office and flick the lights on.

"You know what else sounds nice?" A foreign voice, that's surprisingly smooth and haughty, calls out to the two men. "Not being in a movie."

Both men freeze and their eyes dart to the extremely dangerous individual they both know. There's no way that they could forget that voice. That face. After all they've spent countless hours staring at him for editing in the movie. They've spent a solid week and a half with him. They watched eagerly as he absolutely destroyed everything that got in his way with petty ease.

He's made the Director's desk his own. He's sitting behind it with his elbows placed on the table and his fingers laced together before him. He's dramatically leaning forwards and staring down at the men in unmasked distaste. On the desk to his right is the bottle of champagne sitting in a bucket of ice and three glasses. The bottle has already been opened and all three glasses poured.

"Al-Al-Al-Alvarcus-sama!" The Director stutters out in fear. The night of triumph has suddenly changed to one of terror. "Y-y-you're here! I-I mean-"

"Shut up and sit down." Alvarcus sharply nods his head towards the two chairs before his commandeered desk. "We have business to discuss."

"Yes sir!" Both Jura and the Director all but sprint to take a seat and appease the threat in the room.

Alvarcus doesn't say anything immediately. Instead he simply sits there are stares at the men. He looks directly into their eyes unflinchingly. His face doesn't give his thoughts away, he's just staring without end.

"Did you think I forgot about you?" Alvarcus says after tormenting the men with his gaze alone got boring.

"I mean… well… it's just that… uh…" Jura can't even form a single sentence. "No?"

"Idiots." Alvarcus scoffs out with a roll of his eyes. He reaches over and grabs a flute of champagne and sips it. Both other sets of eyes dart towards the other two filled glasses but Alvarcus makes no move to pass them out. Neither of the men are brave enough to reach for one. "You should both know better than to cross a shinobi, especially me. Did you honestly think I wouldn't catch wind of my face being on a fucking thirty meter screen!"

"N-now if you'll just let us explain-" The Director attempts to intervene but he gets cut off.

"No." Alvarcus growls out at a low volume. He downs the rest of the bubbly champagne and throws the now empty flute against the wall. The glass shatters into millions of pieces and the sharp noise causes both men to flinch back in fear. "You think that any excuse you will give me will be satisfactory? Think again you bumbling morons. As of this moment I'm getting ten percent of all revenue that this movie generates."

"WHAT!" Both the Director and Jura shout out. It's an outrageous figure, this movie is supposed to be the biggest hit of the year. "Ten percent!"

"Oh I'm sorry." Alvarcus picks up the second flute of champagne and starts to idly sip it. "You must have misheard me. I said fifteen."

"But but but that's…" The Director trails off as Alvarcus glares at him over the rim of his beverage. "... that's completely reasonable."

"Good." Alvarcus smirks in victory as he swirls his drink. "I'm so glad we could handle this like adults instead of the other way."

"The other way?" Jura can't stop himself from asking even though he immediately regretted opening his mouth.

"Ah yes, I had another course of action I could have taken." Alvarcus rises up, tosses back the rest of the champagne as if it was some cheap alcohol, and sets the glass down on the desk. "I could have handled this the shinobi way."

"I'm very glad you didn't." The Director meekly squeaks out.

"You know," Alvarcus completely ignores the other man's words as he scoops up the last flute of champagne. He holds it up to the light to watch the bubbles rise to the surface. "This is pretty good."

He picks the bottle up and walks out of the office, flute in one hand and bottle in the other.

"Jura."

"Yes Director?"

"Cancel the sequel."