The Ripper and Murasame

Naruto: Tales of Ashihara

Prologue – Arc 3: Inner-demon

.

Chapter 27: The Ripper and Murasame

.

In the Hokage's office, Kakashi lifts a pen up from a ninja scroll. He closes the scroll and hands it to Shizune who stands next to him as always. She goes to attach this scroll to the leg of a falcon that is waiting on the window's edge. Once she fixed it correctly, she tilts the bird's back to send it flying away.

"Off to Sasuke!" she says, looking at it going.

Kakashi turns around to look out the window with his assistant, and hopes that Sasuke will be able to provide an explanation for what he encountered yesterday. They then both turn around to face the door when they hear someone knocking. Sakura Uchiha walks in and steps forward to the middle of the room.

"Good morning, Kakashi-sensei." she says. "You asked for me?"

"I did." answers the Hokage "There are matters about Sasuke and I thought you'd like to be in charge of it,… or at least to be aware."

"Kakashi, I mean Hokage?" says Shizune, correcting herself to appear professional in front of Sakura. "Sakura is 8 months pregnant and close to deliver. You can't send her on a mission now. We don't even know yet how dangerous it might be."

"Don't worry, Shizune." answers Sakura. "This isn't a problem to me. I can do it. And, if it's about my husband, I want to do it."

"Sakura… Are you sure?" asks the Hokage's assistant, worrily.

Before the medic-nin answers, Sai knocks and gets in the room. He's back from the archives library with documents that he leaves on the office desk. He greets everyone in the room, and notices the Hokage's interrogative look.

"These are old reports from Jiraya and from the Root" he explains, with a hand laid on top of the paper pile. "There are about the history and events that occurred in Shin no Kuni, the lands of Heart."

"The lands of Heart?" asks Kakashi who had sent the former Root ninja to find information that could explain yesterday's encounter. "This is outside the continent. Did I not ask about a jutsu that copies an individual's appearance but is perceived differently by spectators?"

"Wait for it…" answers Sai as he takes a sheet out of the pile on the desk. "These lands, who lay down south of the continent, aren't owned by any Daimyo like it is here. There, the ninja clans and samurai villages make the rules and battle for their territories. About 20 years ago, the wider conflicts stopped after a revolution, but few clans kept it on. And until 5 years ago, two clans called the Onikuma clan and Kurama clan were the only clans left at war."

"… And I suppose one of these two clans is of interest here." guesses Kakashi.

"Yes. These two clans refused the new order established by the Tomoe clan, who leaded the revolution and claimed sovereignty over all the lands of their continent. Onikuma and Kurama kept warring against each other, while the Tomoe clan elected to let these two destroy each other… But it didn't happen. 5 years ago, the Onikuma finally won the war, and the Kurama went extinct. Only a few surviving members remain and they all left Shin no Kuni."

"And our man is a surviving Kurama is it?" guesses the Hokage again. "Does the clan's name relate in any way to the Kyubi?"

"Yes and no. Kyubi is a magic fox, also called Kitsune. Maybe the clan decided to baptize itself after the only known living individual of this species."

"Kitsunes? How does this clan relate to Kitsunes?"

"Magic foxes are believed to possess shape-shifting abilities, and to manipulate illusions." answers Shizune, expressing her secret interest in animals and wild life. "That's it then." she adds. "This clan probably uses secret genjutsu or something."

"And one of their jutsus exactly fits what you've told, Hokage." adds Sai. "Hiden – Shin Kagami is a genjutsu that changes the user into whoever he wishes. It is an illusion, and not an actual transformation. The user is perceived by individuals according to what they currently believe the impersonated one looks like. As the name indicates, it acts as mirror that shows an image coming from your own mind."

"I don't understand…" says Sakura, a bit lost in Sai's stories due to her lack of context. "Did you meet someone using this jutsu to impersonate Sasuke?"

Kakashi acquiesces. This explains why he didn't see any flow in former student's behavior. He was exactly how he remembered him. And this explains why Shizune didn't see him with his new haircut. The last time she saw him was maybe a year ago. Kakashi saw him a few months back. So, being two spectators who have a different knowledge of the impersonated person is the only known solution to detect this genjutsu. He looks at the two former members of Team Kakashi standing before him and thinks.

"Sai. I know you didn't see Sasuke since the wedding." he asks. "But Sakura? When did you last see him?"

"Well…" she answers. "I never told about it, but he sometimes passes by and doesn't go to see anyone else than me… Like to make sure I don't get too lonely. Last time was about 3 weeks ago. I can confirm he changed his appearance a lot since our wedding, even since you last saw him, Sensei."

"Quite fortunate. Sai, since you're here and specialized in tracking down targets, would you mind accompanying Sakura on this mission? I need you to follow the prints of the impersonator."

"This will be an easy job. With Sakura's sensory abilities, it'll be even easier." says Sai. "At your service, Hokage. I just need to warn my wife about my departure."

"Good, be careful however. The impersonator is obviously hostile to Konoha. Be prepared for a battle."

Sai looks at Sakura, and invites her to follow him. They leave the office together, and after passing by the Yamanaka house to see Ino and her daughter, they don't waste any more time and go on the enemy's paths.

Shizune is concerned about Sakura. She knows that she's very soon to deliver her baby and isn't sure if sending her on a mission now is reasonable.

"Sending her out now doesn't feel right, Kakashi." she says, not needing to keep the professional appearance anymore.

"Don't worry. She could be pregnant, ill, dying or well… It makes no difference for her." explains the Hokage, proudly and confidently. "She's just like Naruto and Sasuke: a former student that could kill me in seconds now. Such mere investigation is nothing for a woman like her."

.

Meanwhile, in Kirigakure, The Mizukage just returned and is being briefed about what happened while she was at the council. At the Minamoto's home, Tsubai is currently absent, and Sana and Tokiwa are together in the living room. Takeshi, the son of Tsubai and Tokiwa, is playing alone in the backyard.

Guroi, also called the Ripper, and Mimi, his sidekick, are going on with the task given by Isami Kurama. They calmly infiltrated Kiri, without triggering any detection system, thanks to the Ripper's past with this village. No evidence was ever found to link his mercenary name with any civilian identity.

Guroi is an old Kiri-nin that ran away when Mei Terumi became the Mizukage. With the help of what remained of the government of the Bloody Mist, his desertion went unseen and he was never noted as a missing-nin. Therefore, he avoided becoming the hunter-nin's target and is able to return to Kiri without triggering any security sensing system.

Mimi simply got in as a normal citizen, as she actually isn't more than that to the ninja world's eyes. Having enough information and preparation, they can proceed to do the job, unbothered. As they planned, Guroi goes uncovered on the streets to find whoever could be an obstacle, while Mimi does the main task and sneaks to get the kid.

Passing by the Minamoto's house, The Ripper is disappointed not to see Tsubai Minamoto anywhere. Feeling uneasy about this mission, he decides to still go and kill those who could interfere with his girlfriend's task. He inspect the street first to make sure there will be no witnesses. The neighbors from across the street aren't home, and nobody else is in the area.

He pulls out Murasame, the long and thin white bladed katana that Suto built for him, and walks toward the house. Lifting his sword up, he slices the door in half, without any resulting sound. He raises a hand to catch the falling part of the door to prevent its fall to make noise… But before he catches it, it is pushed onto him from behind and he's thrown away back on the street with it. Sitting of the ground, startled by this sudden attack, he throws the half door away and looks up to see who just did this.

Behind the door frame, Kobo Uchiha steps out and stands atop of the stairs, above him. He turns around to check if Sana and Tokiwa heard what happened. They didn't. The sound of the rain hid the sound of the door. Relieved, he walks down the stairs and faces the stranger.

"The ladies inside didn't notice your presence." says the 17 year-old Uchiha. "You can still leave the neighborhood unnoticed."

"I have a job to do. I'm not running away." answers Guroi who gets up, before asking "Who the hell are you kid?"

"Well… stay if you dare. I'll send you back to where you came from in a minute…" menacingly says Kobo, ignoring the man's question. "… Miss Minamoto and Sana won't even notice you were there."

Guroi sighs and tries to not mind Kobo's speech. He lifts his sword and lays it to rest on his shoulder. He walks toward the little Uchiha who activates his sharingan and pulls out his pair of tanto.

"Sharingan, huh?" says Guroi. "Whatever, this doesn't compare to what Tsubai's supposed to have. I'll just rip your arms off and resume my mission."

At a short enough but still quite long distance, the Ripper throws his blade down on Kobo, who didn't expect such a long range for a weapon. Not ready to jump back, he crosses his short blades to block the white sword falling on him. Guroi laughs and makes a hand sign that seems to cause a remnant image of the sword to float behind it. Kobo stays careful and ready for the next move.

Guroi pulls his sword back to him, lets it fall down in front of Kobo and stabs forward, aiming for the chest. The Uchiha, properly using his Kekkei Genkai, started mimicking the foe's moves as soon as the long sword got off his guard. He lowers his left arm, lets his hand fall down with the tanto it's holding and stabs forth. Due to the lighter weapon and a higher movement precision, he outspeeds his enemy but is too far away to reach him with his blade.

Thinking quick and efficiently, Kobo promptly lets go off his tanto's handle and throws it forward to Guroi's abdomen. Greatly agile at swordplay and using his size at his advantage, the Ripper swiftly spreads his long arms open and manages to hit and deviate the flying tanto with the bottom of his white blade.

"He's fast…" thinks Kobo, seeing his weapon be sent out of range, "… but not enough to escape my eyes." he declares to himself. Still reading and predicting his opponent's moves, he joins his legs together and leans on the right to dodge Guroi's arm and sword swinging up aiming for his shoulder. Kobo pays close attention to his opponent's position: left arm aside and right arm busy throwing his sword over his own head. He recognizes the same position that was took advantage of by the Daitengu against Sasuke's Perfect Susanoo, during their aerial battle 2 years ago. Having learned from his previous experiences, he readies to do the same as Sojobo back then.

Trying to get out of this weak position, Guroi steps forward. Kobo copies him and does the same, reducing the distance between the two fighters and bringing his opponent in his range. He now sees the Murasame above him fall down on him, helped by gravity. Before it falls, he hurries his right arm that's still holding a tanto up and forward to stab through his enemy's neck.

With his super speed eye sight, he sees Guroi's left arm come back to catch his hand before it reaches him, while his right arm is still falling down and holding the sword that is followed by a flashing image marking its trajectory. Always mimicking him, he also brings his left hand up to catch on Guroi's hand and sword handle.

Guroi grabs Kobo's right hand and stops his short blade, at the same time as Kobo grabs the mercenary's right arm and stops it from falling down on him. Kobo looks at the tip of his weapon, nearing the enemy's neck, but refuses to throw it forward while he can. Even though it could severely injure Guroi and end the fight, he renounces to do so as it could risk to kill him. And Kobo would prefer to capture him alive, since he doesn't know the Ripper's target and mission.

Letting this opportunity slip away, he sees Guroi facing the same thought process, but not hesitating to kill him. The Ripper lowers his hold on the Murasame's handle to let it fall down. Kobo realizes that he won't have the time to move his arm away from harm, and decides to avoid damage differently. While the white blade falls down on his arm with a flashing light following it, he quickly makes a few hand signs.

Doton – Domu

He covers the skin on his right arm with a thin but strong stone armor. Unfortunately, not even a quarter of second later, he sees the blade pass through like it's butter, ignoring the rock armor. He widens his eyes as he sees his arm, still holding Guroi's hand, separate from his body. In panic, he hurries to lift a leg up to kick the Ripper away. Guroi just releases Kobo's left hand and takes a huge step back, before he's hit by the young man's leg.

Kobo jumps back and looks at his missing limb that Guroi takes off his arm and throws aside. Kobo is unsettled. The sword has cut through his armor with no more potency than just gravity. But even more unsettling, and a bit relieving, is the fact that he doesn't feel any pain. He isn't even bleeding. "This ain't no ordinary sword", thinks the Uchiha who stays away from his opponent.

"How careless,…" says Guroi. "I am the Ripper. One of the most reputed mercenaries in the world. A mere teenager doesn't stand a chance against me, even with such a rare Dojutsu."

"The ripper? I think I heard of you before…" says Kobo, still unsettled. "You must be really confident in your skills to exclaim your cover name so proudly."

"There's a reason for this much confidence. I'm an S-rank criminal with countless names of ninjas and other targets on my kill list."

"Well… I've definitely fought stronger than you." answers Kobo who gets in a samurai pose, that he reproduces from what he remembers of Daisuke.

"… I think I see who you are now." say Guroi, who readies himself too. "You're the Uchiha kid trained by the old secret lab. Frostbite provided quite interesting intel about you and others a while ago."

"Frostbite?" asks Kobo, to whom this expression reminds Naomi Yuki.

He remembers her as the supposed mercenary, that looked really untrustworthy, but with whom Sasuke seemed okay, and who also joined Karasu. As this isn't the current bother, he washes this thoughts off his mind and focuses back on the fight.

.

While the two swordsmen go on with their confrontation, Mimi sneaks in the backyard as planned, and sees a left alone child roaming in the grass and mist, playing with the rain. Quietly, she approaches him, but is a bit surprised by the difference between what she knew of him and what he really is. With only 1 year old, he's already autonomous enough to walk and slightly run around alone… However, he still appears to be a defenseless kid.

"Such an easy target…" she thinks to herself. Using her short size as an advantage she hides in the mist and grass, and slowly gets closer to the child, unaware of her presence. When she reaches him, she promptly grabs his shoulder and makes a hand sign.

Kiri – Nehan Shoja (Mist – Nirvana Temple)

She spreads chakra through the mist and uses a genjutsu in attempt to make the kid fall asleep, so she can carry him away. But unexpectedly, he doesn't react at all. He just stands there and looks at the stranger silently, not even startled by her sudden entrance. Unsettled and a bit frightened, Mimi makes a disturbed face and soon enough feels that her chakra spread in the surrounding mist, as well as her illusion, are being taken over by a foreign presence.

Somewhere else in the village, at the Mizukage's mansion, Tsubai Minamoto is walking in the halls when Daikoku, his first tengu, gets bothered by an unpleasant sensation.

"The hell is that chakra?" says the floating cloak. "Don't you feel it, Tsubai?"

"Uh? What do you mean?" asks the Minamoto clan leader, not sensing anything now.

Daikoku shuts his mouth for a moment, and tries to locate the source of this strange energy.

"Shit, man! It's coming from your damn house!" he yells abruptly when he figures out its position.

"Oh yeah I feel it too!" says Kasha, falling back on her butt, uneased by this new feeling.

Tsubai stares at his two tengu, suspecting some kind of prank. Not sure about it, he looks by the window and focuses to sense all the flows and position he can.

"Damn! What's that?" he yells, as he now senses it too, coming from his house, just as Daikoku said.

He runs out the window and hurries as fast as possible through the village to get to his home.

.

In front of the said place, Kobo and Guroi don't sense anything, and are fighting in a tense sword battle. As he's being pushed back, Guroi starts to regret his confidence, but doesn't give all up. Kobo adapted pretty well to all of his opponent's tactics and found a way to get around anything that should give the mercenary the upper-hand. He even got pretty quick over missing an arm, by inspiriing his movements from what he remembers of Sasuke's swordplay.

But Guroi still has one advantage that is the length of his sword. Slowly feeling overwhelmed by the raising speed of his adversary, the Ripper takes a big step back as soon as he has the opportunity to do so, and uses his Murasame's length to slice through the air toward Kobo's head, now out of the young man's range. When he saw the bounty hunter's step back, Kobo could predict this move and reacts in time. He leans back to let himself fall but keeps his ground with his two legs. He sees the long thin white blade pass right over his face and miss the target.

He understands what advantage the Ripper is trying to exploit here. But fortunately, Kobo thought of a way to get passed this problem too. He holds a hand sign with his remaining hand that holds his weapon.

Katon – Shonenha

His short blade starts to heat up and bursts out in fire that shapes as a longer and sharper fire blade extending toward the enemy. With the expansion's speed added to Kobo moving his weapon forward, it bursts forth and the Kiri-nin finally succeeds to hurt the mercenary. The fire blade stabs through the slender man's abdomen and leaves a heat mark and burning wound.

Immediately after being hurt, Guroi hurries to leap away and gets on his knees. He feels the pain from the burning wound, and thinks of how long he'll have to keep this fight going. He was too confident to begin with, but has too much pride to give up. Before this wound gets too painful, he has to fight back as much as he can.

Just a few seconds racking his brain are enough for him to figure out the main advantage of Kobo he should get rid off: his Sharingan. He stands up and sets up a counter for this problematic dojutsu ability.

Suiton – Kirigakure

The mist around them gets thicker and completely covers Kobo's sight. The young Uchiha understands that this is supposed to keep him from reading the enemy's movements, but he actually can't see much at all now. He moves away to avoid standing still and getting surprised. While he does, he looks around frenetically to see in very close range. Guroi, feeling the movements in the fog, navigates hidden and slowly goes behind the Uchiha. Once he reaches his back, he gets close enough and takes quickly and quietly care of him.

Silent Killing

He uses the tip of his sword to slit Kobo's throat and kill him, but he doesn't feel it like cutting through flesh. Kobo fades away, as a mist doppelganger made to draw Guroi's attention. The Ripper understands that he's fallen jutsu. He was tracking the wrong target's movements and lost track of the original. He looks around, lost in his own fog, then hurries to move away but too late.

Suiton – Suiryudan

Kobo sends a water dragon bullet that bursts through the thick mist toward the last position of the mist clone. It grabs Guroi in its maw and pulls him further and outside of the mist cloud. Guroi lowers his blade and slices the dragon head in half to get rid of it. He rolls on the ground and lands on a knee and foot, then sees Kobo walking out of the mist in front of him. He touches his wound from earlier and feels it getting more and more painful.

As he slowly stands up again, he sees someone running on the roofs and coming toward them. It's Tsubai Minamoto. At the same moment, a woman's voice coming from the backyard can be heard shrilly screaming. Tokiwa and Sana hear it. Guroi recognizes Mimi's voice. He thinks that something must have stopped her from getting the kid. Surrounded by Tsubai, Kobo and Sana coming from the front door, he considers his mission failed.

Accepting defeat, he puts pride aside, and uses Suiton to manipulate fog cloud and make it grow, engulfing him and Kobo again. Distracted by Sana and Tsubai's entrance, the young Uchiha doesn't do anything against this move. With his attention brought back to Guroi by the moving cloud, he firmly holds his sword and dashes through the mist to where Guroi was sitting, but doesn't hit anything. Guroi simply hid himself to make a quick escape with Shunshin no Jutsu.

Tsubai jumps over the road and runs to the backyard where he finds his wife looking at a strange scenery. Their son is standing numbly in the grass under the rain, staring at a little woman who's impaled on the branches of a tree that Tsubai could swear wasn't there before.

Tokiwa runs to get her child as the father lands next to her. Tsubai looks horrified at the injured woman who seems to be petrified with a look of terror on her face. He carefully cuts down the branches stabbing through the girl and gets her off the tree to check her vital signs. She's still alive but barely. He now looks, frightened, at his girlfriend and son, unable to imagine how this happened.

In front of the house where the thick mist flew away, Kobo finds his missing arm on the ground. He picks it up and looks at it, confused. He goes to Sana and asks if she can fix this. She looks at the limb, as unsettled as her boyfriend, and notices it doesn't look injured at all. There isn't even any blood. The spot where the arm incised is plain white. The interior of the limb isn't even visible.

Unsure, she tries to simply push the severed arm back into Kobo's stump, and it works. This is because the Murasame is actually using a space-time ninjutsu. It simply creates some kind of space gate on the two sides of sliced objects, making it able to slice through any thick object without causing any pain or noise. Yet, if a vital part like the head or heart was sliced with it, it would still be lethal. Sana looks relieved at Kobo and waits for an explanation. Kobo just smiles, glad he avoided getting one more common aspect with Sasuke.

In the yard, Tokiwa asks her son about what he just lived, worried about if this could cause a trauma. But still numb and unaware, the child calmly answers.

"I don't know…" he turns to look at Mimi, the nearly dead woman in his father's arms. "Nightmare demon did that."

Tsubai and Tokiwa look at each other, at loss of words. They both go search for answers from Tentoki and hold Takeshi's head together. They connect to his mind and only see complete darkness. The only visible thing is Tentoki shining in the dark. The child's mind didn't fully grow yet, so its real aspect can't be seen. Tentoki is slightly able to communicate with him, but he can't talk back. In there, Tentoki sees Tsubai, Tokiwa and their tengu appear.

"Finally, you're there." says the shining tengu.

"What happened?" asks Tokiwa.

"I didn't do anything… Guys… This kid truly is interesting. This wasn't me, this wasn't him. It was something that is here, but that none of us can see."

"A new tengu?" says Daikoku and Amabie together.

"Pretty obviously." adds Tentoki.

"Damn. This creeps me out." says Tsubai, with Daikoku hidden in his back, and Kasha, also afraid, hiding under the floating cloak. "What's up with that kid? Why does he have to behave like a horror story child."

Tokiwa just holds Takeshi against her. The young boy is just confused as he doesn't understand what is wrong about this situation at all.

.

End of Chapter 27 – Next Chapter: Sakura's strength