Broken and Abused Whats Behind The Mask

Why can't it ever go as planned?

The beast only growled ferociously at Sasuke, patiently waiting for him to make the first move. The air was so tense, Sasuke felt his voice dry because of it. A light, chilly breeze entered the room but neither took notice, both standing completely still except for the four blood-covered tails swishing in the air. Sasuke opened up his wings and took flight in an instant, the beast was motionless still looking in the distance almost in another world. 

"WAKE UP!" Sasuke shouted with a powerful voice, he flew down towards the tailed beast with his sword propelled in front of him hoping it will render Naruto paralyzed from his lightning attack. 

"What?" he whispered to himself

Sasuke's sword had most definitely made contact, but that was the point. It made contact but it didn't pierce its skin. It was as soft as a sponge but at the same time hard like a solid brick wall. To say the least, it wasn't a pleasant feeling especially since the four-tails had now begun to fight back. Two of its tails attempted to grab Sasuke but he wasn't going to let that happen twice. He quickly jumped back and made some hand signals forming a Chidori in his left hand. 

"Hn Just as stubborn as always"

"grrrrrrr"

"No words? How rude." 

Back with Shikamaru as his team finally enters the scroll room...

"Have you guys found anything? Ow!" Shikamaru had just opened a scroll which once opened transformed into various kunai that were aimed at the reader. Thankfully, it only cut his palm slightly but soon he came to realise that this task was much more difficult than first intended. 

"No good, all of the scrolls are either unreadable or have some type of trap infused with it," Neji said tiredly as he couldn't find anything. He closed a very ancient scroll with had olden Japanese characters he could not understand. Everyone grew frustrated as they could not find anything of use and time was of the essence. Kiba threw a scroll into the wall out of frustration which caused the scroll to release poisonous gas. Hinata, just in time, was able to use her air palms to ventilate the room and disperse the gas, hopefully out of the cave. Hinata collapsed onto her knees and was trembling slightly from exhaustion. 

"Be careful!" Neji said infuriated at Kiba's carelessness.

"Hinata! Are you ok?" Kiba asked, ignoring Neji completely only making him more irritated.

"Y-yes I'm fine. T-Tired is all." Hinata answered shakily. The team had been at this for who knows how long and the amount of chakra everyone had used up was enormous. It would have been normal if everyone was to simply call quits except in these circumstances that wasn't an option. Ever.

"We have to keep looking. Knowing Orcochimaru he must have had found some way to separate Menma and Naruto. Maybe he had some knowledge on sealing or ninjutsu or even some kind of kekkei genkai." Shikamaru proclaimed as he was struggling to keep everyone in check even though he was the leader. He most definitely did not imagine his first mission to turn out this way but at least everyone is still alive. 

Kiba looked around seeing if anything "seal-likely" came up when Akamaru started barking so he turned his attention to what the little white dog was barking at. He walked over to a box full of scrolls which were all labeled with a swirl-like symbol. He bent down in front of the box trying to see if there was anything that looked used or new but only found very old scrolls. Akamaru barked once again now brushing his tail against the front of the box but the box was so filled with dust it stained his perfect white smooth fur. Kiba was a little annoyed since he liked keeping Akamaru clean but then noticed something on the box so he brushed off some dust that covered some writing on top of the symbol.