Slam! The door to my temporary residence flies open.
"Alvarcus!" Sasuke calls out. "Get your ass out here!"
I explode out of the guest bedroom.
"What? Are we under attack? Who died? What's the crisis?"
"My brother." Crap. Itachi. I'm not sure crisis is a strong enough word. "He came to the village. He's looking for Naruto. We have to stop him! This could be my only chance!"
"You're not ready. He's still out of your league." I tell him.
"I don't care! I'm going! Where's my kunai holster at?" Sasuke tears his room apart looking for weapons and mission gear.
"Here." I pick it up off his dresser and toss it to him. "I'll be ready to go in three minutes."
"What?" Sasuke stops his frantic packing, "You're not coming with."
"Yes I am. Your brother is yours to kill. But what if he's not alone?" Shit, did I just say I would take on Kisame?
"Fine. Itachi is mine to kill. Anyone else is fair game." Sasuke goes back to collecting weapons. "Three minutes."
I go back to the guest bedroom. I really need to get my own place. I put on disposable clothes, odds are I'm going to end up trashing it when I use the Jiongu. I grab my already packed mission bag and wait by the door. Sasuke emerges from his bedroom with only weapons.
"Let's go." He grimly says.
We haul ass out of the village. Kotetsu and Izumo try to stop us, but we just ignore them. We'll have a team dispatched to collect us, that's fine. Everything should be over by then.
"How long can you keep this pace?" Sasuke asks me.
"Indefinitely. The Jiongu doesn't get tired." I reply.
"That thing is useful. Too bad it damages your body so much. Almost worth it."
We run the rest of the way in silence. Eventually we come across a small town.
"Here is where Naruto said he was going. He's helping Jiraya find someone, a possible Hokage candidate." Sasuke provides his information.
"Cool. Where is Naruto?" I ask. "A hotel maybe? If they are stopping here for the day that makes the most sense."
"Good idea. There can't be that many here." Sasuke stops a towns person. "Excuse me, where are the hotels in this town?"
"Down the street to the left. Only one here. It's the big reddish building." The civilian tells us.
"Thanks." Sasuke takes off towards the hotel. I'm right behind him.
We burst into the lobby, scarring the receptionist badly. We don't stop. We fly up the stairs. No one is on the first floor. Or the second. Then we hear something from the third floor, something very bad.
"We don't have to bring him back in one piece. How about I cut off a leg?" Kisame. That is Kisame. They're here.
We burst into the third floor. "ITACHI!" Sasuke roars.
He sparks up a Chidori and charges, dragging the fist of lightning through the wall towards his brother.
"You die today!"
"Little brother." Itachi sounds like a badass. "You've brought a friend."
Sasuke doesn't reply, instead he pours on more speed. Three meters away. Two meters. One.
Itachi grabs Sasuke's Chidori wielding arm right out of the air. "Friends are a hindrance, a liability. They'll make you weak. Friends didn't make me as strong as I am now. I stand alone, I alone achieved this power. This strength."
"Sasuke!" Naruto calls out. A red haze forms around him. He's using the Kyuubi's chakra, good. Naruto is taking this seriously. "Just hold on!"
"Let's sit this one out Blondie." Kisame pokes Naruto with Samehada and the red haze around Naruto is sucked into the giant scaled blade. "We wouldn't want to ruin this family reunion, now would we?"
"Little brother, you can't beat me. My power eclipses yours, you don't even have the same eyes as me. You don't have enough hate. How can you hope to kill me when you're still weak!"
CRACK
Itachi snapped Sasuke's wrist and drops him to the floor.
"Maybe your friend will prove to be more of a challenge." Itachi turns his crimson gaze onto me.
Sasuke launches up to his feet and lunges at his older brother. "I am not weak!" Sasuke roars. "I will surpass you! I will restore honor to the Uchiha name! I will avenge my family!"
I need to save Naruto. I know Itachi won't actually kill Sasuke, so he is relatively safe. I hope. I launch my chakra strings at Naruto, and pull him away from the hulking Kisame and place him behind me.
"You will not harm my friends!" I yell in his face. Oh Kami that was a bad idea. I just stole the sharkman's toy. "Naruto, stay close. I've never tried this with someone next to me before."
I spark up my new move I've been working on, an elemental string defensive move based loosely off of the Rasengan and Kaiten. I extend elemental strings from each finger, each hand has all five elements. I will them to form a protective rotating sphere around Naruto and me. It is a beautiful sight. All of the elements are present, all of them ever moving, never faltering in their absolute defense. No one wants to be battered around by a grinder of all five elements.
"Whoa. How are you doing this?" Naruto asks me.
"Shut up. Need to focus." It isn't easy what I'm doing right now, in fact I'd say its ridiculous to the extreme. I'm literally wielding all five elements at the same time, I'm continuously making five unique elemental changes. On top of that I'm moving them at a crazy speed and length to make up for the lack of numbers. Each string has to wrap around me multiple times and move in a unique pattern to be effective. It took me weeks to get this move down.
"Itachi, do we need this kid? He stole the jinchuriki." Kisame says.
"No. He's unimportant." Itachi replies nonchalantly while batting away a kick from Sasuke.
Kisame lazily swings Samehada at my neck height.
"Look little brother. Your friend is about to die."
I trust my defense to at least redirect the sword. It doesn't, I overlooked one very important fact. Samehada eats chakra. It ate right through my elemental sphere.
"Oh shit!" The Jiongu rushes to my defense, surging out of my chest and upwards to intercept the blade. Samehada doesn't even slow down.
The sword tears through the Jiongu. My head separates from my body and thuds dully to the ground. My defense vanishes, leaving Naruto exposed. My body crumbles, no longer capable of supporting itself.
~NO! The host will not die!~
"Isn't there supposed to be blood? There's always blood." Kisame asks in confusion. "I like the blood, it let's me know I won."
"Alvarcus!" Naruto calls out. "Alvarcus? But... why? Why would you do that? Why would you try to protect me? I'm not worth it."
"Alvarcus, get up." Sasuke demands. "We both know that isn't enough to kill you."
Black threads extend out of my severed neck, reaching towards my body. Likewise, there are threads from my body reaching to my head. They connect and pull me together, stitching my head back on my body.
"Whoa! Never thought that would happen! That's Kakuzu's thing!" Kisame says in surprise.
"Ow." I push myself to my feet and work out the kinks in my neck. "That hurt. Never had my head cut off before." I rub a hand over where the split was. "That's going to be one hell of a scar. Figures the chakra eating sword can get through a chakra based defense. How did I miss that? Stupid Alvarcus, real stupid."
"B-but your head!" Naruto is pointing at me. "How are you alive! I saw it! It got cut off!"
Itachi replies for me. "He has the Jiongu. Aim for his heart."
I freeze. Why is Itachi pushing Kisame to kill me? What did I do to deserve this?
"Simple enough. I wonder if he has more than one like Kakuzu does?" Kisame smiles at me. A shiver of fear runs down my spine. "Let's find out."
He moves. He's a blur, he moves so fast I can't tell what's happening.
Squelch.
~No! He hurt the host! Let me kill him!~
My chest hurts. Really hurts. Worse than when I push out my hearts. I look down. Blue. Spiky blue. Samehada, Kisame's big sword, is in my chest. Where my heart should be.
"One down."
Kisame pulls out Samehada. Slowly. I'm in agony. It's shredding my chest, ripping chunks of skin off with every centimeter it pulls out. I vaguely hear Sasuke getting the beating of a lifetime. Finally, Samehada is withdrawn completely. A ruined husk of red meat is pushed out of my chest by the Jiongu. It plops to the ground. A heart. My fire heart. My original heart.