paixaorpg | Not a Fool's Paradise: Attack of the Nobodies and the meeting of the Defender and Ninjas [Completed]

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Not a Fool's Paradise: Attack of the Nobodies and the meeting of the Defender and Ninjas [Completed]

Character(s): Machu Picchu/The Winged Defender, Haku, Naruto, dusks
Content: Machu Picchu continues fighting off the creatures and meets some other "warriors" as well. They fight some of them until they all get a bit tired and decide to withdraw to the hospital behind them.
Setting: outside Paradisio Hospital
Time: evening
Warnings: Fighting, craziness, likely swearing later

The Winged Avenger stood, sword at the ready, muttering an old prayer aloud in a scratchy, high-pitched voice, "I call the light of golden rays; I seek protection thus, I pray. For Heavenly forces at my side; Wise ones, sages, spirit guides, or wolves who walk with cunning skill, Come to my aid! Come at my will! Raven soaring, light my path, so I am victim to no one's wrath! And when my journey knows success, all those who aid me be blessed!" She watched her sword with its dim starlight glow brighten weakly, before making another attack at the strange things with the strong lack of an alliance, but the will to battle that she was familiar with encountering due to her brother's work.

She was a little frustrated that people had called her so late, just because of the turning point on that planet with the Callahan sisters and her brother. Glancing around she saw the sign for the hospital on her right. Certainly it was a good thing she was defending the helpless who were inside the building by getting rid of the creatures. Fewer people were on the streets now. She was dealing with the gray things and the blue things. The blue things turned out to be rather helpful, even though they seemed irritated at the gray things for some reason.

This was going to make her job of finding her brother a lot more of a pain, she realized as she continued fighting off the strange gray-ish creatures.

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Haku was certain, as he made his way through the city, hopping from one rooftop to the next, that there was a reason why the streets were deserted on this day. And that reason lay below him, a sea of strange looking creatures both glowing and not. So far, he had just been observing as he moved. It seemed that they were everywhere, attacking anyone and everyone within sight and reach, and Haku took care to remain out of both. He had yet to see anyone actually trying, and succeeding, to fight them, though the shinobi supposed his meandering path might be the cause of that particular miscalculation. And indeed, it was a thought to be proven wrong, as he noted a rather tall, winged woman fending off the gray colored creatures.

Haku paused in his travels long enough to pull his hair back into its usual bun, though he kept his hitai-ate tucked away. He surveyed the scene below long enough to gauge what his first actions should be and then made the appropriate hand seals to activate one of the gifts of his kekkei-genkai, the ice-needles. The frozen senbon were directed at the gray creatures as he leapt down from the rooftop to land beside the unusual woman.

"Care for some assistance?" he queried, drawing a few of the metal senbon he kept tucked in his sleeve.

A giant leap almost carried Naruto past the Winged Avenger and Haku, except he saw from the corner of his eye the glint of a sword and the more-familiar glint of metal senbon. And when he turned his head, he saw Haku's black hair, tied up in that achingly familiar bun.

And then he realized just what he was seeing—just who he was seeing.

"Hak—!" Naruto yelled, and slammed into the side of the building.

His hand flashed out, and he caught the rooftop's edge. He flipped and landed on the rooftop. His jaw ached. So did his fingers. He didn't care, though. His eyes were fixed on Haku. Never mind that there was a freakishly tall woman with wings fighting off the strange, white-ish creatures. His attention was fixed solely on Haku, who was alive and healthy and about ready to kick ass.

"Haku," he said again, only this time his voice was a more disbelieving half-whisper.

How the hell was he alive?

Didn't matter, Naruto decided. Haku and his strange, creepy-lady friend were fighting, and Naruto was good at fighting. He could help. He leaped again—this time he didn't slam into anything, hah—and landed nearby. "Good to see ya again," he said, flexing clawed fingers.

Adressing the first, she nodded as she put the sword at ready again, "If you wish. I don't think it's going to do much, though. There's too many of them. I'd rather die trying to defend the helpless here(she nodded to the building) than ignore these creatures, though."

She smiled amusedly at the second to arrive. His style and determination to fight after he landed near them, reminded her of herself at times. Foolish, but very brave when it came down to it. She smiled, "Feel free to help out."

Apparently the two arrivals...knew each other; or so it seemed from the second's remark.

She made a careful half circle with her sword to cut the creatures to one side before introducing herself. "I'm Machu Picchu. Picchu for short." She grinned. She hadn't expected the prayer to actually bring aid. She was just using it for confidence and her sword needed willpower to do its job properly. She continued with the battle.

Haku offered a smile and a nod to Naruto, who was apparently older than when he had last seen the loud ninja. Surely, then, Naruto thought him to be dead? "It's nice to see you, too, Naruto-kun." And it was probably much nicer to know that, at least now, they were on the same side. Knowing that Naruto was here now, the young shinobi wasn't sure if he would be able to fight him again.

Haku could remember quite well the last time he had seen Naruto. After all, it wasn't that long ago. A few days, maybe a week? The methods of his death were still fresh in his mind...

"It's not wise to underestimate the abilities of shinobi," Haku pointed out to Machu Picchu, casting aside memories in favor of focusing on the present situation. There would be time to reminisce with Naruto later, if he so chose. Haku threw the senbon in hand at what he thought to be vital parts of these strange gray creatures and drew more, watching their reactions. "Many have fallen that underestimate what we can do."

Another wave of senbon were thrown at the creatures as Haku considered the next course of action.

Definitely not dead, a part of Naruto quipped rather dazedly. Generally, dead people couldn't kill. Or speak. The rest of him was thrumming with a familiar excitement, though—the excitement of battle. If he had had a tail, it would have been frisking about.

"Yeah!" he said, throwing a grin at Machu Picchu. "We'll definitely kick these guys' asses!"

Not that they really looked like guys. Or people, for that matter.

His hands formed seals—kage bunshin no jutsu!—and with multiple poofs shadow-clones appeared all around him, whooping and cheering and pulling out kunai. He and his clones jumped immediately into action, loudly and cheerfully and with many poofs as the clones dissipated when hit.

She nodded, "Certainly. I won't make that assumption again." The two were rather good at their prospective talents."Creations are probably a better word than 'guys', Naruto." Picchu said gently as she continued with the battle.

She was amused by the way Naruto did his work. So many active clones. It was rather...interesting. Not something she was used to seeing often. It must take a lot of energy, though to keep so many active. Hopefully, he knew his energy reserves. She knew her own well enough. Unfortunately, they weren't as plentiful as she would wish, even though she was second-born.

"I'm here because I'm needed. It seems rather obvious why. This place is overrun with death and its facilitators, from what I've noticed. Although these are rather...lacking the alignments necessary to be my brother's. Someone else must have freely taken his role here. It is only fitting that if one of my worlds is born from someone taking my role, one of his will be created by someone taking his. Do you two have any idea as to why you're in this city?"

Haku took note of the creatures' reactions to Naruto's shadow clones as he readied his senbon for another attack. Despite the difference in Naruto's age between when Haku had last seen him and now, it warmed the effeminate boy to know that Naruto hadn't changed... much. Eyeing the creatures before him, Haku shifted his grip on his senbon and let them fly, aimed for the vital places once more.

"I'm not quite sure why I'm here," Haku replied, considering whether to continue to exhaust his senbon supply, or switch to relying on his chakra. "Before I ended up here, I was supposed to be dead, I believe."

The young shinobi began making hand seals; apparently, chakra won that debate.

"Hope you guys don't mind a little mist," he said as he made the last seal. Kirigakure no Jutsu swept into effect at the air began to condense into mist. For Haku, it would be easier to work with his jutsus now, and he had a feeling that Naruto wouldn't be held back by the mist. However, he wasn't so sure about Machu Picchu.

The white creatures, Naruto discovered, were easy to fight and beat—they weren't like the cool, calculating ninjas he'd met in the past. These things moved unnaturally, almost clumsily. Machu Picchu was right; they seemed more like creations than anything.

And there were a lot of them.

A lot.

He flipped back to avoid a hit. A kunai was brought up to defend against a strangely pointed limb? hand? claw? He pushed the thing away and hit it with a spinning kick. Another back-flip brought him nearer to his newest allies.

Hearing Haku's words chilled him somewhat—I was supposed to be dead. "Don't know why I'm here"—he brought his hands up to summon more clones—"but last thing I remember was fighting." He sounded a little indignant, as if annoyed that he'd been interrupted during a fight.

Mist descended. Naruto blinked in surprise, and then remembered—Haku, right. "How many of these things are there?" he asked.

Picchu shifted the sword into an energy feed position as she folded her wings to get them out of the way as Haku created the mist around them. The energy she fed her weapon was enough light to keep the weapon visible, however, she was also timing and limiting it. She might be the Champion, but she was also the Rebuilder. She had to conserve enough energy to aid in the healing process at the end of this.

So unfortunately, she had to make a few compromises between what she wanted to do and what she was able to do.

There was a shrug from the taller woman at Haku’s mention of supposed to have been dead, "Technically I was dead from a battle with my brother when I came here. But I’m not fully inside time, so I just shift forms. Thus this odd mix of being. This is nothing like the heart of time—the afterlife, as some would call it—although it may have been created as a mockery of such a thing."

She had to grin at Naruto saying indignantly about how he was dragged into this Paixao place during the middle of a fight. A part of her knew that feeling well.

"I'm not exactly sure. They seem to be...capable of spawning. This doesn't look quite well, for the record. These have...much more thought put into them than what my brother creates." She sighed, sweeping a slash up high to one side, rather surprised that they could manage to meet her height when they wished, hovering near her somehow. "I do know that I won't be able to keep feeding this my energy soon, though." She glanced at her sword briefly, toning down the glow, deciding to just deal with possibly having to re-orient herself to the creatures later.

"Spawn they might, but surely they have to stop coming at some point," Haku said, flying through hand seals. The mist would aid him in the jutsu, providing the moisture to freeze so that it didn't take as much chakra. Ice senbon at hand, he flung them at the creatures, knowing that they would strike their targets through the mist.

"With any luck, we can at least scare them off for a while. There is a hospital behind us, and I'm sure there are people inside who may need our help." Of course, they had to finish taking care of things outside, and Haku was more than happy to.

The young shinobi would go through volley after volley of ice-needles, all in ready supply thanks to the mist he had created. There were always advantages to jutsu that people didn't think about. With Kirigakure, it created a ready supply of moisture to fuel ice-based jutsu, and Haku was using it to its fullest extent.

Naruto stabbed one of the creatures with a kunai. It staggered a bit, and then raised a clawed limb—what, did it not realize there was a sharp pointy thing sticking out of its neck?—but a neat punch sent it slamming backwards into one of its mates.

He was impressed by Haku's use of the ice-needles; they got rid of quite a lot of the creature-things. Which was good, because there were a lot of them. He was worried about Machu Picchu, though. He wasn't sure how good her stamina was.

Glancing around them, at the creatures—were there really less of them then there had been, or was he just being optimistic?—he had a sudden, horrific thought.

"Hey," he said to the two others, "there's three of us"—he ducked to avoid a leap—"and a lot of them. What's stoppin' them from going around us or getting into the hospital from the back, or something?"

Picchu sighed, dropping the energy from the sword entirely. It would be easier and would deplete less energy just to deal with focusing on one area, rather than trying to cover everything and figure out where her sword was. The other two were doing a good job covering that piece, anyway.

She heard Naruto's question, "I'm not sure why they don't go around us..I suppose it may have to do with the fact that we fight back. The greeter at the gate said he didn't know how to fight when I asked him why he was hiding. I suppose that makes them...rather easy targets, easily boring after awhile." She shrugged, "My brother used to say it was dull when people were too nice and too easy to overthrow. There isn't a challenge in it. I suppose that's why they prefer attempting to go through us."

"They can't see to get into the building behind us, currently," Haku pointed out as he readied another volley of frozen needles. "The mist aids us in that much, at least."

The shinobi threw the readied senbon with the already exhibited lethal accuracy. "They also might be too stupid to think of such things. Might explain why they keep coming despite the fact that we're obviously killing off their bretheren."

His newfound allies' explanations made sense, Naruto thought. Especially Haku's.

He wished he could think of a way to just—blow them all to bits. The creatures were fast getting on his nerves. It didn't seem to matter how many he destroyed. They just kept coming. And moisture clung to his skin and clothes and hair and seemed to be either pleasantly cool or just irritatingly wet.

"Seems to me they've got lots of brethren to spare," he grumbled. "When's this gonna end?"

Picchu was getting just about as annoyed as Naruto was. And it was starting to rub off in the Defender part of her personality. The fact that the things kept coming no matter what was becoming a matter of energy...although the other two might have a lot of stamina, she was going to run out sooner or later.

She didn't have the ability to control her energy in time very well. It was easier when there weren't those limits. And she was more used to the almost unnervingly high limits of a parrot, so the fact of being partially human again was a matter of a lot more attempts of self-control that were not easy to hold onto.

She kept debating consistently whether she should waste her energy on one strong summon of the blue shiny things to get rid of the whitish gray creations. It would be a modification of the battle cry that called the creatures to action during the wars in her universe sheaf. She wasn't sure if it would work, since she didn't have the things true names, but...she thought it possible to try. The other problem with that thing would be that she would be unable to use the energy later on. Which wasn't a pleasant idea.

"I don't know!" She muttered irritably at the impatient shinobi's rhetoric question. "I want to get out of this as much as you do." She made a defensive stance and spread her wings to shake the droplets from the mist off them. It was getting cold and she felt damp and uncomfortable in the mist now.

"Perhaps it would be wise of us to withdraw?" Haku suggested. The mist was beginning to thin noticably and it wouldn't be long before the street was completely cleared. "Without knowledge of how many we have taken down and how many we have left to go, we cannot accurately judge how best to utilize our strengths."

It wasn't like they had another member of the group sitting out and watching to gauge the weaknesses of the enemy, not like when he and Zabuza went on missions together.

"I doubt even a Kage would be able to do this without such planning." Another volley of ice needles went into the mist. Ice... and mist.... and... That was it! Maybe it would work, and maybe, just maybe, it would buy them time.

"Why I didn't think of this before, I don't know," Haku said as he began to direct the mist specifically at the strange creatures they had been fighting. He was consdensing it as he went, intent on turning the things into creature-popsicles.

Naruto glanced at the winged lady. He hoped she was alright; somehow he doubted she had a demon inside her belly to provide her energy. And even he was beginning to feel the strain of creating so many clones. His fighting style was most suited to explosive one-on-one battles, not this. "No kidding," he grumbled in reply to her, and ducked to retrieve a fallen kunai.

He watched as Haku did--well, something, and whatever it was, it was cool.

"Whoah," Naruto said, and then grinned, showing sharp canines. "Great job, Haku."

He was really, really glad the other shinobi was on his side now. He didn't particularly like having his ass frozen off in battle, but didn't mind the enemy freezing, because they deserved it for being so annoying, dammit.

The Defender, knelt on one knee for a minute, her sword point down in the ground, when Haku had decided to freeze the creatures in mist, or so it seemed. She sighed, trying to drag up a bit of energy from the ground. There didn't seem to be much and she frowned. No real plants, no real animals, the sun's energy wasn't quite natural either. This was going to be a rough stay, apparently. "Nice job, Haku," she echoed Naruto's sentiment.

"Withdrawal might be a safe idea. At least temporarily. I need to regroup a bit." She was making this a bit of an understatement, but it was better than needing to worry her newfound friends about the troubles of being a god stuck in time. Which was a complicated explanation.

"We all need a rest," Haku pointed out. Even limitless chakra supplies had to come to an end sometime. "Shinobi and not, we cannot engage in battle for long periods of time and expect an outcome worth our time when the odds lay against us."

He watched the frozen creatures for a moment, to make sure that they wouldn't be getting loose. Satisfied, he turned to look at the hospital.

"We have the hospital at our backs to regroup," he told them. "I'm sure that they would be able to patch us up, and they would probably appreciate any help we can offer, if those creatures have been giving them more patients."

Once a medic, always a medic... Despite Zabuza's wishes to the contrary, Haku had often requested that they stop by hospitals, descreetly, of course, to help the medical staff. And Zabuza always reprimanded him later, but those vists were like his way of paying for ever kill he made. Because Haku didn't like having to act as a killer, even when he had to.

Naruto nodded. "'Kay," he said, straightening. The still-surviving clones--quite a bit, actually--poofed into nonexistence. "The hospital it is!" Not that he was good at healing. He'd never really had to, because he had a demon in him that liked living and so made it a priority to make sure he didn't die. But, well, Haku could be right in saying they'd like any help offered, and Naruto was sure there had to be something he could help with.

Always the hasty one, he turned and headed towards the hospital.

[ time to wrap the thread up? ]

Picchu nodded at Haku, watching as Naruto made a beeline for the hospital. She grinned, amused, "He's rather lively."

She glanced at the frozen creations. "Thank you." She nodded, "Let's get to work on helping out." She took out her journal as she walked toward the hospital.

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Not a Fool's Paradise: Attack of the Nobodies and the meeting of the Defender and Ninjas [Completed]

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