Dark Phoenix of Konoha by White Angel of Auralon

Part 42 - The Reaper Spirit

The Reaper Spirit

The group had needed six minutes to reach the second site. The sight they found was horrible. All around the seal were dead people, men, women and even children, that had been slaughtered by cutting their jugular veins and arteries to make them bleed out fast. There was a definite dark presence around and Mala was lying on an altar made of black vines in the middle of the seal, which was glowing an eerie red.

What disturbed them most was that Mala looked ecstatic while the being seemingly was in the middle of the process of entering her body. They had to dodge a volley of kunai, which Hidan had shot at them.

"You pests! You can't stop the ritual anymore!" He yelled at them, "Mala is nearly united with the Reaper Spirit. You lost. God Jashin will soon be reborn into the world and his glorious reign will last forever!" He laughed darkly at that.

"Can you do something, Dark Phoenix?" Dove asked.

"Not from up here and I don't know how to get down there with Hidan doing his best to stop us. He only has to keep us busy after all. He has the advantage of being able to ignore all kinds of injuries and only needs to nick us to draw blood to use his connection curse jutsu. I would need to set up a counter seal to draw the reaper spirit out again, but that depends on the battle of wills between the one being possessed and the one drawing the spirit out. And I don't know if there still is time. Nobody actually knows how long it takes after the spirit is here. I have no idea how they managed to draw it out this fast. I thought we had more time," Naruto answered.

"Shit! We will have to take a different course of action then. We need to separate them permanently. Then they can't create the offspring into which Jashin can slip," Dove decided.

"Easier said than done," Badger commented.

"But not impossible," Naruto stated, "They can only have that baby if Mala is capable of conceiving. If we irrevocably destroy her womb, or her ovaries, they can do it all they like, it wouldn't lead to a baby. While two high priest Jashinists are a major problem, they would be the lesser evil than an insane god set on destruction and murder being born into this world."

"Might work, but don't their bodies always recover from all kinds of injuries?" Cheetah asked.

"Normal injuries from weapons, yes, but perhaps poison or acid," Dove pondered, "We can at least try. Nothing else to do now that they got the drop on us. Hit them with your best long-distance jutsus. We don't have to hold back and consider hostages anymore. Hit them with all you have. Dark Phoenix, stay in the background and only act if you are safe from direct retaliation. This is now fully an ANBU mission."

The others confirmed the orders and Naruto took to a higher altitude, trying to figure out a way to assist without placing himself into danger. He used the chakra beam seals to give range support to the ANBU. It worked fairly well and it seemed as if Hidan realised the danger of those beams, as he regularly intercepted them with thrown boulders to prevent them hitting Mala. After three minutes of intense battle, Mala let out an ecstatic scream and rose from the altar.

"Finally. I'm a fully inaugurated high priestess of God Jashin!" She exclaimed loudly and her formerly brown scythe turned blood red for a short while when she took it and then changed back, but there was a dark chakra coming from it now.

"Now I'll punish the rats that thought they could go against God Jashin!" She declared and vines shot out from the ground again and chased the flying squad. Thankfully that was the time when the second part of the team led by Naruto's shadow clone arrived.

It forced them to split their attention into two directions and the fight was on. The group of eight ANBU split into their two normal teams of four and each took on one of the Jashinists. Jutsus of all elements, both in solo form and combinations, were used by the ANBU to corral the Jashinists away from each other, but they were good. Especially as Mala could use her control over the vines to intercept attacks on her or even Hidan. And Hidan was devilishly fast.