CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Dark. That's what this new chakra felt like, and it was massive. Naruto's chakra spiked momentarily, so I could pinpoint it a lot better, so Sasuke and I took off running to get to him faster in case he was in trouble, but that was just a second ago, until I stopped running because of this sheer power that I felt.
"Why'd you stop?" Sasuke asks as he takes a step closer to me, his sharingan eyes frantically scanning the area. I hold one arm out in front of him and move the other up higher, placing my finger against my lips.
"Shhh. Listen, expand your senses and tell me what you feel." I whisper and let my eyes scan around once more. It's much closer. Sasuke exhales heavily, then stiffens and his eyes snap open.
"What the hell is that?" Sasuke asks shakily. I take a defensive stance in front of him as the bushes begin to rustle. I never got the chance to reply to Sasuke, for the something, rather someone did it for me.
"It's just little old me, now where are your scrolls, I know you've got two, I've been watching." The woman says. It was the same woman that Anko cut when she threw her kunai at Naruto.
"You're not getting our- GAAAAAHHHHHH!" Sasuke begins, but stops mid sentence when the grass ninja casts a genjutsu upon him, but it doesn't affect me for obvious reasons.
"Sasuke, get a grip, it's not- what the hell did you do to me?!?" I start to run, but my limbs lock mid-step and feel as if they're on fire.
"Since it seems that my genjutsu doesn't work on you, I've got you in a temporary paralysis jutsu. Do tell me dear, what clan are you from that you can resist genjutsu without even trying?" The grass ninja says. I flinch as her voice grows slightly deeper and she takes a step forward, flicking her tongue at me.
"None of your fucking business." I growl and my eyes blaze a bright blue color as I activate my Daku. I then start concentrating my chakra, limb by limb, breaking the jutsu, but I stayed in the same position to show that I wasn't doing such things.
"Those eyes, I know those eyes. You're a Daku. Well, I'll just kill your friend and you can come with me." She says. My breathing hitches in my throat. I don't even have control of my arms yet, I really need to stall her.
"Don't you dare." I growl as I try to push my chakra faster, but it's taking a lot longer. This can't be a genin level ninja to preform such a sophisticated jutsu. The grass ninja takes out another kunai and starts walking towards Sasuke, whose crying and panting, still in the genjutsu. She stops and circles him and stared at the Uchiha symbol on his back. I mentally praise myself as I finish both of my arms and one set of fingers, now just my other hand to do.
"Hmmmmm. That's interesting. So he's the Uchiha. How nice. I'll get two in one run." The grass ninja says just as I finish unlocking my other hand. I do a quick ice jutsu and it hits as I grab Sasuke and drag him up a tree, away from the grass ninja. I then pry Sasuke's eyes open and place him under my jutsu and try to push him out of the grass ninja's genjutsu.
Sasuke suddenly starts blinking rapidly, becoming aware of his surroundings, but draws into himself in fear. Just as he does that, kunai knives come flying in our direction, but Sasuke doesn't move an inch. My eyes widen as I dive for him, pushing the both of us off of our current branch, then falling to one further away. I wrap my body around the trembling boy and flip him around. He lands on top of me as I land on the rough bark of the branch below. I gasp as the breath is knocked from me and shove him off of me as I massage my now sore back.
"Sasuke, Sasuke get up you idiot! It wasn't real!" I scream at him. The grass ninja jumps down onto the same branch that we are currently on and smirks maliciously. She begins to close in on us as I once more stand in front of Sasuke to protect him, but what I wasn't expecting was for a giant snake to come and sink its fangs into the spot where Sasuke and I both were just seconds before. I leap onto a different branch as the large snake darts for Sasuke. His eyes widen once more in fear and he pulls out several shuriken.
"AHHH! No, stay away!" Sasuke screams as he throws the weapons at the snake, driving it into a tree, and ultimately killing it. Sasuke lands on another branch and pants heavily in attempts to catch his breath while I stare at the snake with narrowed eyes. The snake begins to crack open, and the grass ninja hatched from it with a broad smirk on her face.
"I sense your fear and desperation, it's only natural. The prey must never let down its guard, not even for a moment, in the presence of its predator." That snake lady says sadistically as she chuckles and then lunges for Sasuke once more, her body wrapping around the tree for leverage.
"AHHHH!" Sasuke screams in fear. This rattles me out of my trance. I act quickly and throw some kunai, stopping her in her tracks, causing her to gasp and snap her glare to me.
"Listen, you crazy ass snake thing, I don't know who in the hell you think you are, but you need to get the hell out of here before I kill you. Understand?" I growl at the woman as I get into a full standing position. The woman goes to speak, but what neither of us expect is for Sasuke to speak up.
"Here you can have our scrolls!" Sasuke yells as he gets ready to throw them to the lady. I snap my glare over to Sasuke and in one quick movement, my body is in front of his, standing in between him and the snake. I grit my teeth and clench my hand around his throat and shove my hand in his weapons pouch, taking the scrolls from him.
"I'll kill you, you-" I begin, but the sound of loud shuffling and some creaking cause me to turn around quickly, just to see another massive summoning snake shooting toward us. I gasp and hold my hands up, completely off guard, but bright orange floods my vision.
"HAAAAAAA!" Naruto screams as he shoves himself in front of Sasuke and I, stopping the snake at the nose, digging two kunai into the snakes scales. Naruto pants with his head lowered as I look at the boy wide eyed. He'd just returned my favor. He saved my life.
"Na-Naruto." I whisper as I look at him in his first stage nine tails form. A big grin plasters itself on his face as he looks at me, but when he looks to Sasuke, it drops.
"Hey kid, you're not hurt are you? You scaredy cat." Naruto all but growls at Sasuke. Sasuke slightly gasps and stiffens completely, and a smirk plasters onto my face, causing Naruto to chuckle lightly before growling one more at Sasuke. All of the sudden, the snake lady wraps her tongue around Naruto and performs a five pronged seal, causing Naruto to go limp. The snake lady then slings him, making him free fall. A small gasp escapes my lips as I quickly pull a kunai from my pouch and fling it, pinning him to a tree, then turn my attention back to the woman.
"You've done it lady. You've officially pissed me off. I offered to let you leave, but now, I'm going to fight you." I say as I stand up and throw a glare behind me at Sasuke. His face turns apologetic, but he quickly faces the tree trunk.
"Not exactly what I was waiting for, but you'll suffice for the time being I suppose. You see, I've come for that Uchiha boy over there. I plan on giving him unimaginable power, for he will be my underling, but what I was not expecting was you, you amazing little power house." The snake woman says as she chuckles lightly. I unsheathed my katana and pointed it at her before charging at full force, swinging at her until I felt as though my arm was going to fall off. All swings had been misses, until I'd made a massive gash on the woman's cheek. She gasps as the skin starts falling away, and underneath appeared to be a whole new face.
"What in the hell are you?" I ask, more like thinking aloud. The woman's shock is quickly replaced with a chuckle as she runs at me again, but fire crosses her path. She stops in place and the both of our heads snap to the right to see Sasuke.
"Oh, so now you decide to grow a pair of balls." I seethe sarcastically. Sasuke rolls his red eyes at me as the woman smirks. She stands straight up and brushes the dirt from her clothing.
"I would have never though a mere genin could pull such a fire jutsu. You will do quite nicely." She hisses, sounding exactly like a snake. I begin to formulate a plan in my head as I descretely pull some wire from my weapons pouch and flick my wrists while she's still looking at Sasuke, causing the wire to swing around the tree and come back to me. I catch it and jerk it tightly, causing the woman's body to slam up against the massive tree trunk.
"Guess what lady, you can't have him, he's already got someone." I growl as I quickly attach the ends of the wires to some kunai and dig them into the bark of the tree. The snake woman releases a deadly chuckle, then everything goes silent momentarily.
"But who? All of his family is dead." The woman seethes as she snaps her head to Sasuke, who looks like he's about to explode in a fit of rage.
"He's got me. And Naruto for that matter. Now Sasuke!" I reply, then turn my head to Sasuke. Sasuke gets the plan and performs another fire jutsu, burning straight through the tree, but something still didn't feel right. After Sasuke's fire jutsu stopped, the woman slumped momentarily before snapping the wires and began to walk forward.
"Who are you, what do you want?!?" Sasuke yells in a panicked tone. The woman chuckles, but as she continues, her voice changes and goes several octaves deeper. This wasn't a woman at all, and there was in fact, a whole new person underneath.
"My name is Orochimaru, and I want the two of you, and we will discuss it more when we meet again. But first, you've both got to pass this test with the highest scores of all." The man, now named as Orochimaru says. Sasuke growls and balls his fists up tightly.
"Why don't you just leave?!? If we never meet again, it'll be too soon!" Sasuke yells. Orochimaru chuckles and cracks his knuckles. He's getting ready to do something.
"Oh, we will meet again." Orochimaru hisses. He does a quick hand sign and before we can even blink, Orochimaru's neck elongates and he comes rushing over toward me, and in the next second, his teeth are in my neck. My body tenses as fire washes over me, pain coursing through every ounce of tissue, cell, and muscle. He pulls his head away, but I can't feel anything but this searing pain.
"GAH!" I scream as I clutch the wound with my hand and fall to my knees, a fever and a cold sweat already rising inside of me. Sasuke rushes to my side and inspects the three thin lines that appear on my neck, just above where Orochimaru had bitten. Sasuke gasps and his head snaps back up to Orochimaru.
"(Y/n)?!? What've you done to her?!?" Sasuke screams. He holds my hair with one hand allowing air to hit my neck, and massages my back with the other. I forcefully push my head up to see what Orochimaru was doing, because I knew he wasn't done here.
"The same thing that I'm about to do to you." Orochimaru growls. He produces the same singular hand sign and his head shoots toward Sasuke this time. My eyes widen and I push myself off of the ground and knock Sasuke out of the way, and for the second time that day, Orochimaru had bitten me. The pain increased ten fold as I dropped to floor once more and screamed even louder, which woke Naruto up.
"Oh dear. This could be a problem. I hope you know you just doubled your chances of dying. With only one curse mark, the odds were against you one in ten, but now, mathematically, I guess you could say one in one hundred or so." Orochimaru says as he watches me wither in pain. My breathing became harder by the second and it was hard to keep my eyes open.
"I'LL KILL YOU!" Sasuke growls at Orochimaru, who was about to retaliate, but Naruto was fully awake by now, and had seen what was happening, so he obviously had to speak, but I interrupted him.
"GAH! SASUKE!" I screamed again as a shockwave of pain coursed through me once more. My grip on the sides of my neck tightened as I rolled over.
"Hey! What'd you do to (Y/n) and Sasuke you freak?!?" Naruto yells, probably throwing his body around, but I couldn't tell, because my vision was gone. My breathing remained heavy, but I felt like I hadn't slept in a lifetime, which just continued to make me drowsy.
"I'm afraid I'll have to visit you later Sasuke, I don't have enough venom to produce another mark. And as for the girl, if she lives, very soon she will seek me out for my power. So long." Orochimaru presumably left by now, judging by his words. All was quite, but I felt footsteps thundering towards me. Sasuke picked my body up and attempted to set me in a sitting position, but it wasn't working.
"(Y/n), (Y/n)!" Sasuke yells as I collapse forward onto him, my full body weight holding him down slightly.
"(Y/n), hold on, I'm gonna make you better, it'll all be okay. Naruto, she's hurt, I need you! Get yourself down and-" Those were the last words I'd heard before darkness consumed my mind completely.