The Last Avenger and the World of Omni: Homecoming

[Sasuke Uchiha]

The western encampment, the shinobi thought as he flanked its outer walls, comprised of three major fronts, it was more a fortress than an outpost. Standing atop a bank of sand, his free hand shielded his eyes from the glare of the, reluctant to rise, morning sun. A large, apocalyptic themed, iron-spiked dome sat adjacent to an elongated sandstone facility, all within a valley of sand, enclosed by three triangular watchtowers. Traveling through the night, the shinobi had come upon, scouted, and already analyzed the hideout, all while most its men had slept. 

“This will go easier if I can eliminate the towers without sounding any alarms,” Sasuke spoke aloud as he pondered from a crouched position, “but it won’t mean a damn if I can’t,” his face a reflection of thorough contemplation, “I’ll have a full raid on my hands then.” Painting his battle strategies into the sand by kunai-tip, the shinobi’s eyes absorbed all, “Maybe it’s finally time to use… ‘that’ Jutsu...” The ninja shifted on his haunches, uneasy, “but… that was for Itachi…” The Dante’s Abyss Champion stared at his palms intently, flexing his fingers into a fist several times, “Do I even have the chakra for that?.. The Omnilium?”

Before he could answer his own question, a bright fire in the distance lined his peripheral and caught his attention. Alarm bells rang throughout the shinobi’s psyche and he observed as the watchtower guards took notice as well. He had to act now, before they sounded any real alarm bells.

***

Against the grains of sand, just a few hundred yards off, a long, miserable trail of, what could loosely be classified as, human trafficking was now advancing on the Deathchew encampment after a long journey.

“Keep it moving!” shouted a Deathchew enslaver, while wrenching on the chains that bound his crew’s haul for the week: thee families of three, four, and six; two mining crews of thirteen and twelve; and a gang of, now unarmed, desperados numbering in the small teens. All secondaries, without a lick of any real omnilium between them now, whom all found themselves chained around the neck, shackled to one another, and helplessly subdued by the hands of a Deathchew raiding party, just a days ride from Carefore.

“Please, my wife,” one of the family men pleaded, halting the party in order to hold his dearest, ailing wife close in his arms, “She’s pregnant and we’ve been at this for days. She can’t take this! You’ll hurt the baby-”

“I’ll do much more if you don’t shut your mouth and get moving.” One of the slavers said from atop horseback, spurred his horse with a kick, and yanked the chain-gang forward, so abruptly, so violently, that several of the more feeble prisoners took a tumble. The enslavers laughed, they mocked; they enjoyed their captive’s suffering. “Get up and get moving,” the cannibal barked, staring down the more courageous looking men in the group, “or it’ll get worse for all of you, and we’ll eat the strongest first!”

“That’s right, inn’t it?” Another cannibal joined in, “The meat just taste better, after all!” All of Deathchew’s men shared in a cackle, and were generally delighted in all of their hooting and hollering that followed.

 “Henry, I’m okay.” It was the wife who spoke, attempting to stand, to shoulder the pain, for her family’s own sake.

“Momma?” their only son of eleven asked with concern in his voice.

“I can do it.” The wife said as she gave her husband and child a forced smile, “I can manage-” But suddenly, she couldn’t. She dropped to the ground and rolled onto her back screaming, “OH MY GOD!!!” Her husband rushed to her side, took her hand into his, and stared longingly into her eyes. “IT’S COMING! THE BABY IS COMING RIGHT NOW!” She yelped and screamed into the mourning.

“Enough of this!” Shouted one of the slavers, having had enough. He dismounted from his horse, unsheathed his dagger, and proceeded to stab the woman in the stomach several times. “There, now nothing is coming.”

“MOMMA?!” the boy shrieked in horror, "OHH MY GOD!!! MOMMA!!!" 

“HOW COULD YOU?!” The husband screamed and caught the slaver just under the eye, colliding hard, bare knuckles with soft, periorbital bone, and put the bastard on his ass. Diving on top of him, the husband sought to do more damage, “I’LL KILL YOU!!!”

Instantly the chain-gang was thrown several yards by the spurring of multiple horse riders, pacifying the threat in the husband, who now went to his fading wife’s side.

“Nope! Hell no,” the defeated cannibal spat as he scrambled to his feet, “we’re teaching this one a lesson!” Glaring at the husband, the slaver gave a wicked smile, signaled something to the other slavers with his hand as he released the husband from his bonds, and said, “Oh boy, you gonna wish you hadn’t done that.”

“Father?” the boy just stood there, distraught. His mother was fading fast.

Oblivious to his surroundings, the husband was sobbing into his dying wife’s bosom when the slavers yanked him to his feet, causing him to came away smeared in her blood.

“No,” the boy stammered, “no, no, NO!” He was screaming, “GET AWAY FROM HIM!!!”

Restraining the husband and fastening him to a crucifix they had prepared, the slavers began nailing the widower to it, by his wrists. His shrieks and howls of agony pierced the morning and wrought unease against the other prisoners, you could see it painted on their faces.

“FATHER!” the boy was in tears as he shrieked, “NO! PUT HIM DOWN!”

The wife and mother passed away in that moment.

Dousing the husband in gasoline before stringing him up high for all to see, the slavers lit a match, and set him on fire. Hysterical, the boy fell into violent convulsions, shrieking for his parents, before losing consciousness altogether.

***

Summoning forth and charging chakra into his feet, Sasuke began his ascent of the nearest tower. One chakra infused step after another, and at a blazing burst of speed, the ninja’s adhesively inclined feet made little work of the tower’s height, and slipped him into its corridors, undetected.

“What’s that?” a guard asked with an out stretched finger. Both the shinobi and his heart stopped for a moment, until he realized the guard’s finger was pointing in the direction of a fire, and not him, several miles off for all to see. Sasuke breathed and cursed himself as the other guards moved closer to their comrade’s side.

“Doesn’t matter.” Sasuke answered for them, announcing himself from behind the shadows, and the backs of their startled chainmail.

“What?” exclaimed a guard as he drew steel, “Who’re you?!”

Another shouted, “Sound the alarm!” while making a break to do just that.

“Sorry,” the shinobi said, intercepting his path in an instant, “I can’t let you do that.”

Surprised by the tremendous speed, the guard withdrew a step, and a second, before recuperating his courage. However, the delay was all the shinobi needed to pivot his stance, raise a knee to his chest, and execute a powerful side kick to the guard’s exposed chest, sending him headfirst, and clamoring into his allies.

“Five on one?” the shinobi smirked, transitioning from one martial arts stance to another, “I like these odds.”

“Good,” one of the cannibal guards snarled as he launched his assault forward, with his companions in tow, “we like to eat powerful meat!” The shinobi elegantly evaded the assault of not one, but three of the cannibal’s attacks, until a fourth slipped the defense, bounded through the air, and socked the ninja square in the mouth, “IT JUST TASTES BETTER!”

Knuckles banged into wood where should have been mouth, instead of blood, a plume of smoke materialized, and Sasuke appeared from behind them, on the opposite side of the tower. Using the ruse to his advantage, the ninja took a moment to concentrate his chakra. An aura of bright azure enveloped the shinobi, while he spoke in one language, and his hands in other, “EAT THIS!”

Expelling from the Uchiha’s mouth, a massive orb of roaring flame engulfed all but one, and to the sound of three dead bodies hitting the ground, Sasuke had already pinned the survivor down, literally, with Kusanagi, and through the stomach.  

“Hh-how did you get here?” the guard stammered through his last few breaths, “Doesn’t matter, you won’t get past the other towers.” Hacking up blood all the while and between each breath.

 “Who, them?” Sasuke smirked as he used a thumb to point out an explosion going off in the background. Behind him, the other watchtowers were already under attack. “Nah,” the shinobi said as he plunged Kusanagi further into the cannibal’s torso, “they have their own dying to do.” His youthful features, illuminated by the carnage, were to be the last things embedded into the guard’s mortal coil, just before he shed it.