Naruto: Dreaming of Sunshine

There is no passion so contagious as that of fear. ~ Michel de Montaigne

.

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Time didn't freeze – it only felt like it did; that one horrifying moment stretching out longer and longer like an infinity caught in a second. Like an instant crystalized, sharp and clear and still.

Everything felt unreal. Felt like I was watching something happen very, very far away.

The pieces of crumbling stone fell slowly towards the sand. I could see each and every one of them, the size and shape of them, like they were interlocking pieces of a puzzle that had unexpectedly come apart.

The pieces of-

The pieces of Shikamaru's arm fell slowly towards the sand.

And I discovered I could move after all.

I needed to do something. I needed to do something big, something that would turn the tables, something that would defend us, would get rid of our enemies and without wild area of effect damage. Something that wouldn't hurt us further. I didn't have many options.

Everything snapped back into alignment. My heart was thundering in my ears. My breath rasped. There was stabbing pain in my back. The world was tilting and swimming; my equilibrium upset by the poison.

Shit, shit, I have to do something now!

Who could I trust to defend us if I couldn't trust myself?

My hands flickered through handseals. "Summoning Jutsu; Heijomaru!" I screamed, like volume could make up for skill and surety. I forced chakra into the jutsu, trying to frame the situation in my mind, trying to convey what I needed.

It wasn't easy. Naruto had always made this part seem easy. Naruto hadn't even made this seem like a step, like it was so simple and obvious that he'd never needed it explained. I still didn't have it down – but Heijomaru always answered first and I was counting on that.

And he did.

Heijomaru surged out of the ground beneath my hands, sand spilling off of him like running water. He was armoured like the very first time I'd seen him, antlers glinting with metal points, demonic mask down over his face and sides protected with layered plates. I clung to them, fingers going numb, seating myself on his back.

A blur of ink raced past us, Sai's ink animals targeting the enemy behind us. The one I hadn't forgotten about but had ignored anyway. She wasn't important, right now.

"There!" I gasped, leaning forward.

And Heijomaru exploded into action. I felt his muscles bunch, the way his hooves dug into the sand, then the translation of potential into action. Into motion.

Shikamaru's shadow stitching jutsu – the one holding Kongo aloft into the air – was faltering, the slow decay of a jutsu that no one was maintaining.

Heijomaru hit the enemy without slowing, his spiked antlers dipping to pick him out of the air, metal coated spikes puncturing through the body like sharp knives through so much meat. The muscles of his neck bunched under my hands from the weight of a person, and then he shook, side to side, spikes driving in, tearing and then throwing Kongo free.

Blood splattered my face like awful rain.

Two more giant steps carried us over Shikamaru, and we slid to a stop, four legs bracketing him like a defensive, bristling fortress. Ishidate retreated, moving away from my brother, out of the path of our charge.

Barely seconds, and the tide of the battle had changed. Twice.

Behind us, Kiba raced through handseals. "Inuzuka style: Keukegen!" he spat.

Actually spat. A dozen small hairball like things flicked through the air, hitting the sand and growing to the size of a soccerball. They scuttled forward, a barrier between us and the two remaining enemies.

And to the side, the two ink clones of Michiru and Hikaru that Sai had so carefully been keeping out of the battle, the decoys of the people we were supposed to be protecting, turned tail and fled into the forest.

Ishidate and Karenbana took the bait. They blurred after them, leaving us wounded and damaged on the beach, abandoning the fight for what seemed to be their real objective.

Sai's remaining ink animals streamed after them, a long white and black line of pursuit.

I slid, sideways, off of my summons. My legs buckled when they hit ground and dropped me onto the sand, but I didn't need to stand.

"Shika!"

He was clammy pale, eyes wide in shock, and shaking almost violently. His right hand clamped over the stump of his left, fragments of stone peaking out from between his fingers.

It's real.

I swallowed. Then scrambled, frantically and uncoordinated, at the neck of clothes, pulling down the zip on my vest and shirt to free the necklace I wore beneath. I yanked it loose, snapping the cord.

Please, pleaseplease-

Gelel had healed me. It had healed Fugai, when we had fought her. Surely, surely it could heal Shikamaru.

I pressed the stone against him, but it wouldn't go. Not like the easy way it sank into my flesh, like it wanted to be there. I tried channeling chakra to it, but it still wouldn't. It wanted to be me.

No. No. Come on. Please.

"Shika," my voice cracked. "Channel some chakra into the stone. Try… try to use it."

His eyes darted to me, hazy, like he wasn't quite processing right. "What- what is that?"

"Just try!" I snapped, voice tight with fear and panic. It wasn't working. Why. Why was it not working?

Shikamaru tried. His hand – his only hand – clasped around mine, chakra flaring and sliding through.

And it did nothing.

Nothing.

It passed through the stone like it was nothing but cold rock, nothing but a lifeless hunk of crystal.

Like it was on a different frequency all together.

'Inert', Tsunade had called it. They'd run all kinds of test on it, before it had ever been given back to me. They'd found nothing worth mentioning. I'd never heard it sing, not like I had with the Gelel stones. And the Gelel was gone now, dispersed into the air and ground and world again, just a part of everything.

This stone had been pulled out of my eight gate. Out of my heart. Formed when the spirit of a god passed through me at the point of my death.

It wasn't made of Gelel.

It was me.

But it should still be able to heal Shikamaru, I thought wildly. I want it to. I pressed it forward, again and again, trying and trying to sink it into him the way the book had described. We're twins. We're the same. It should.

I was panting, breath coming in short, terrified gasps. "It's not- It's not working!" I stammered.

I couldn't fix it. My stone could fix it.

"We have to go!" Kiba barked, interrupting me. He had scooped Akamaru's small still form up and into his jacket. "We have to get out of the poison. Now!"

I jerked up, thoughts scattering.

He was right. He was right.

My stone wasn't working.

What fucking good are you? I thought at it, viciously, hurling it away. It bounced on the sand, forlorn. Useless.

"Heijomaru. Can you- can you-" I couldn't get the words out, formulate what I wanted to ask properly.

But he understood, or knew, or guess, anyway. He moved to the side and knelt down, bringing himself low so I could sling Shikamaru onto his back.

I turned back, one last minute desperate idea making me draw a scroll and scribble a sloppy storage seal onto it, sealing a square chunk of beach and stone into it, hopefully collecting all the lost pieces of- of arm. If I could find some way to undo the transformation…

"Shikako!" Kiba snapped, again, leaning over my deer and pulling me onto it. My muscles were all jelly. I couldn't tell if it was from the poison or adrenaline. The three of us cling to each other, trying to keep steady and balanced. Sai was still in the air above us, keeping watch, staying out of reach of the poison.

Heijomaru stood and moved, long loping strides eating up the open shoreline. He carried us away from the battle ground, away from the lingering poison and danger. Sai swooped ahead, leading us back towards where we'd left the real prince, safely out of the fight.

"Is- Is Akamaru…?" I asked, falteringly.

"Dunno," Kiba said tersely.

Fuck.

Everything had gone wrong.

Sai swooped down, dismissed his ink bird and landed neatly on the ground. Ahead of us, Korega's guards were only just starting to load the prince onto a small rowboat to transport them out to the ship they had waiting out at sea.

Our fight had been so fast. We'd been trying to stall them, to buy time. But it had been so fast…

"What is it?" Korega asked, hand on his sword and eyes scanning the beach behind us. "Are they coming?"

"They are chasing the decoys," Sai said bluntly. "We should move quickly."

I slid awkwardly off of Heijomaru and helped Shikamaru down. My legs held, this time. The poison faded quickly, maybe? Or had it just been shock and horror? Heijomaru bowed his head and I managed a stilted thanks and dismissal, allowing him to vanish into chakra smoke and return to the summon realm.

I helped Shikamaru into the boat. He didn't look improved. He looked worse, really. There was a grey pallor to his skin.

I didn't know what to do.

Michiru gasped. "Your arm!" he said, alarmed. He stood suddenly and the boat tipped and rocked, unsettled, until he sat again.

"Same as the king," Korega said, grimly. "That stone…"

I nodded. The king had- fuck- the king had died of this. I fumbled with my med kit, nearly spilling everything into the boat. "Painkillers," I said. It had to hurt. Painkillers would help.

I was so out of my depth. I didn't even have any fucking medical training-

My breathing was coming too fast. Too fast. I tried to choke it down, to something that wasn't hyperventilation. Wasn't panic.

I needed to do something to fix this. To make it okay.

Kiba climbed into the boat, unzipping his coat to free Akamaru. The puppy whined and twitched. Something in his face relaxed at the obvious signs of life.

"The glove," I said. My thoughts were too scrambled. I needed to think. I pressed my fingers over my eyes, like the pressure would help. "The glove that Ishidate had. That's what caused… it. If we had that. We might. We might be able to find a way to reverse it. It's a technique. There should be… There should be a way to…"

"Are you crazy?" Kiba asked in disbelief. "We can't go after them! We need to get away. That was the whole plan. We create a distraction, then we run. We barely managed that! You think we could handle a second round? Akamaru's down. Shikamaru's down. You're injured. Me and Sai are exhausted! We need to go."

"You're injured?" Shikamaru croaked, looking up. The painkillers had returned a certain amount of colour to his face, but his eyes were glassy. Kiba was right. Shikamaru wasn't going to be fighting anyone.

"I'm fine," I said, dismissively.

"You have a kunai in your back!" Kiba barked. "Our mission is to get the prince to safety, not to fight those assholes. We're wasting time. Get in the boat."

I grit my teeth. He was right. It burned.

Sai was staring back down the beach. An ink mouse was skittering over the sand, moving swiftly and surely. He ducked down to retrieve something from it. "What was this?" he asked, holding up my necklace. "You tried to use this before to heal him. What does it do?"

"Apparently nothing," I said, bitterly. It had done fuckall to heal Shikamaru. It was useless.

Or.

My hand gently closed around it. It felt like an idea, like committing to a plan.

"I'm going after Ishidate," I said.

"The fuck," Kiba said, disbelievingly. "Are you even listening? We. Can't. Fight. Anymore."

"Are you questioning the orders of your team leader?" Sai asked, with a frown. He looked tense and unhappy. "You should trust your commanding officer."

"Don't fucking start," Kiba said, darkly. "This is not about trust. If it were about trust, I would have said 'no' when she told me to take my Genin team up against a Jinchuriki. I didn't. This is about her being wrong. Team Leader or not – she's wrong."

"I don't care!" I snapped. "Go! Get out of here!"

I turned away.

"Shikako!" Shikamaru called, desperately. He lurched for me, rising out of his seat, fingers clawing through the air. He stumbled and my insides twisted, wanting to catch him.

Sai hesitated, then moved after me.

But Kiba had been right about this too, hadn't he? Sai was exhausted. He'd been throwing out ink creation after creation and I'd never thought to question how much energy each one took. Even if he was better off than the others… they would need him if things went wrong.

"Stay with the boat," I snapped at him. "That's an order."

His eyes widened in surprise but he dropped back.

I vanished into the forest and headed for the castle.