Ascension of the Kitsune by Wandering Maverick

Chapter 19: Chuunin Exams (FINAL)

"Ne Yugito-chan...how are your hands?" He asked in concern during a pause in the conversation.

His question caught her off guard until she noticed what she had been doing and looked down in slight shame, as the memory of what had happened to her during the month hiatus flashed through her mind.

-FLASHBACK-

"Dammit...these guys are relentless!" A weary and severely beaten-looking Yugito huffed out, while she ran from two shadowy figures behind her gripping her right arm in pain trying to stop the wound from bleeding. "These guys, they know I'm a jinchuuriki...but what the hell do they want from me!?" She questioned. "I suppose it doesn't matter at the moment, all I need to do is get them cornered and then they are all mine! That old council room should be around here, thats my best bet." She concluded remembering the mental 'blueprints' of the old buildings she had been escaping through.

It had only been two weeks since the preliminary matches had ended, and Yugito had just finished her daily training outside the boarders of Kumo. She was heading back to rest up for the next day, when a pair of odd looking men in black cloaks with red clouds appeared before her. There wasn't much of a conversation, they simply demanded she go with them, she refused, and after that all hell broke loose. She had no idea who these guys were, but after only a minute fighting them she knew they were no amateurs. Both of these men were oddities to her, each having strange but very powerful abilities.

The first was a tan-skinned man with a bandana-like headband rest against a grey coif, that showed him as a nuke-nin from the recently created hidden waterfall village. He had green pupil-less irises with the rest of the eye being red. He wore a black mask leaving only a small section of his cheeks and eyes visible. But the oddest thing were the four masks attached to his body. If the masks themselves weren't odd enough, the man was able to use an odd technique that allow the masks to come off his body and actually come to life and even fight. Making it in reality a six-on-one fight, instead of two-on-one.

If the first man was strange the second man took the cake. While looking more normal then the first man, in actuality he was far stranger. During their fight Yugito had been able to severely injure him, and yet he seemed to be unfazed. He explained that because of his zealot-like activism, his god (Jashin) favored him with immortality.

His religious beliefs were later proven to be more then just bravado, when he used a technique in conjunction with large symbol on the ground and her own blood. While using this jutsu it changed his appearance, making his skin turn completely black with a white exoskeleton appearing over it. Once standing on the symbol, he used the large three-bladed red scythe he lugged around slashed his own arm. And much to her surprise she felt the same injury he inflicted on himself. She quickly put the pieces together and figured out that he was able to injure whose ever blood he consumed as long as he was within the symbol. She was able to get the man out of the symbol and cause it's ruin before she was able to escape into nearby ruins.

Yugito maneuvered through the building, and finally found herself in a large room that she was hoping to find.

"Perfect! There is only one way out of this room...you're both mine!" She mentally thought, letting some of Izanami's chakra accelerate her healing.

"Where are you kitty kitty kitty!" The scythe wielding man joked, as he and his partner casually walked through the building following the small trail of blood.

"Hidan...she is still a jinchuuriki so don't let down your guard. And despite how much I would like to kill you, I know Leader-sama would never allow it." The red eyed man said in a gruff voice.

Hidan waved off his warning. "Maa maa you worry too much Kakuzu...you need to use some of that money we get from bounties on other things then just the Akatsuki. Like say booze and hookers perhaps?"