-o-o-o-o

Tears no longer trailed down her cold cheeks; they were long washed away by iron and rust and hate. The air was thick with something more substantial than a light breeze or even the wildness of a tempest as it hung above throats menacingly like a knife or poison to be swallowed. There was the scent of blood it carried, but the stenches of shock and despair and hopelessness were overwhelmingly suffocating. She fought her collapsing lungs in order to stay conscious though she thought she was drowning with every drawn breath. Tears were not needed. Hope was not needed. Breathing, she feared, was soon to become completely obsolete as well.

It was the end, it was all over.

That was all she could think. There was no light at the end of the tunnel nor was there any true thought of what came afterwards. There wouldn't be anything afterwards, everything was simply finished like a closed book shoved into a faraway bookshelf never to be opened again. It wasn't like watching the sun set one evening and knowing that it would rise the next morning with the same beauty, warmth, and brightness as it always did. Now, she, born under the name of the sun and light, could no longer find what she could always find, what she was known to always find even in the darkest times.

But that was when her own sun was still there shining its golden rays in gentle caresses and smiles and laughter.

Her eyes, usually so bright, only shone a dull grey that she couldn't see nor did she care to see. She only saw the remnants of what her sun was, those empty vessels that used to carry her heart and reason for being.

Kiba, broken. Shino, gone. Kurenai and her child, dashed under the debris.

Ino, missing. Shikamaru, drowning in his own blood. Choji, soundlessly staring at the sky with big glazed eyes.

Ten-Ten, still and bloodless. Rock Lee, body twisted and burned. Sakura, covered in a red far more vivid than her clothes.

Kakashi, waxy eyes leaking fluids. Gai, lined with scars and scorches. Tsunade and loyal Shizune, both prostate and skewered by various weapons.

Neji-nii-san, impaled and reaching heights she knew she would actually be able to follow soon for once. He lay eagle-spread and the bodies of his cousin and uncle were mere yards away from his limply outstretched fingers.

And Naruto, that golden ball of hope and happiness and her light – he wasn't there. Nothing remained of him that reminded her of his smiles and his determination. All that she saw was a few strands of blonde hair blowing away on the lonely winds even though the atmosphere around her felt like all the air had been sucked away and stagnated. There was nothing left of her Naruto-kun, everyone's beloved Naruto-kun. His sparkling blue eyes were gone. His whiskered face was gone. His husky, childish voice was gone. His optimistic, if not hopelessly so, smile was long gone and not even those pearly white teeth remained.

The thing that now stood in his place was just a husk of burnt flesh and torn skin, ashes and flakes of what had been, and even his chakra element was forsaking him and blowing what was left into the horizon to dance with the leaves and dust. Trails of dried blood marked where Naruto had once stood, but she couldn't look at the browning crimson without fearing that her heart would come apart completely. A bitter laugh almost erupted from her dry and overused throat, but she couldn't remember what it was like to use it for actions other than screaming in desperation and sobbing in grief.

She, the weakest and most unimportant of all of them, was the last one standing. One of her legs was shattered and her arms felt like they were strained to the extremes, but she was still the last of the Rookie 9, the last of Konoha's famed possessors of the will of Fire. Ironically, though she had always disliked herself and could barely face herself without feeling intense shame, there was a sense of bitter, twisted pride and sense of self left in that hollowing vessel she called her body as she wearily looked up at Madara's stoic face. There was no one she loved to judge her and see her weakness, no one but someone who should've been, by all rights, as dead as her loved ones. The pressure she had anointed upon herself had disappeared and evaporated like rain on a summer day by her desperation, and there was no reason not to stand and sacrifice what was left of her for even just one last strike. Even if she were the final flame burning, she refused to let the fire die without a fight, weak and one-sided the battle would be. It was inevitable that she would be defeated, true, but she was already losing count of the scant number of breaths her lungs could take and any other hope had fled along with her sun's essence.

Most of her fingers had already snapped and her chakra levels were now only just sustaining her consciousness. Her hair was ruthlessly shorn away from her scalp and an icy wisp of wind licked at her bare neck while raising the fine hairs there. She knew that this would be her only, last-ditch effort and it would hasten her to her death; it was why she ignored the stabbing pain in her leg that told her of irreparable damage as she sprinted on it and pumped her life force into the chakra coating her broken fingers.

"Eight Trigrams, Sixty Four Palms," she whispered hoarsely, feeling her life drain away bit by bit as strength forced itself from her body and into her outstretched hands.

Charging fiercely and feeling almost no pain, she readied her hands into position and activated her Byakugan while ignoring the sound of crunching bones underneath her feet. With a gasp of determination, she jumped and aimed for Madara's heart with a wild jab.

She didn't know how, but her fingers managed to lightly hit his flesh as he spun away, weaving hand signs for what she presumed to be his Susanoo. He stumbled a bit before he blew a fireball at her instead, singeing the remainder of her hair when she dodged haphazardly.

Luck seemed to be on her side as recklessness flooded her entire body, allowing her to excel in her body's movements as never before. She didn't care that her leg probably wouldn't be able to walk again after the battle or the fact that someone had been wounded by two hits from the Hyuuga's Eight Trigrams technique. And she found herself not caring that she was going to die, most likely in a very painful manner.

"Four," she grunted as she managed to land another two attacks on Madara, who seemed to be rather surprised that she of all people was still up. He attempted to kick her side and knock her away, but technique alone was not enough.

His taijutsu was superior but fortune was not his ally as a hand from below snaked from beneath a pile of corpses and grabbed weakly at his ankle, causing the legendary Uchiha to lose balance for a moment. She had the moment to thrust another four fierce brushes at her opponent, who was beginning to stumble from his blocked chakra points.

"Eight," she counted dutifully, her hands swollen and purple as they artfully flew across Madara's torso like a pianist at his instrument. "Sixteen."

He lazily blocked at the attack as if he thought himself too powerful to even contemplate seriously fighting a mouse like herself but stumbled back when her gentle fists took advantage of his miscalculation. Though he still remained aloof and unconcerned by her advances, she felt her determination to at least leave a more noticeable mark on this man grow as she landed thirty-two blows.

He only smirked when he was swept back by the blast of chakra emitted from her hands, falling onto his knees with a complacent expression.

"I can't die, you foolish little girl," he told her comfortably. "And yet I can see that you are."

She ignored his first verbal acknowledgements of her with another thirty-two consecutive blows.

"Sixty-four!"

His chakra points blinked before disappearing from her Byakugan eyes, showing that she had reached one of her goals though she knew it was only because of sheer luck and his conceit that he hadn't really tried to defend himself from her.

He stumbled to the ground gracefully, his long hair flowing behind him like a majestic mane. His eyes were black and endless pools of emptiness, but she felt anger that he hadn't even activated his bloodline limit during their little skirmish.

"Within moments, I'll be free again to destroy you," he said nonchalantly, taking in the miserable picture she made. "There is no hurry, child."

Her hair was long and stringy in some places while they were mere dark bristles in others. Her skin, usually porcelain and pale, was decorated with an assortment of yellow and violet bruises, scarlet lines and gashes. Her eyes were still activated, veins bunching at her temples ferociously and straining desperately. Throat parched and stinging with cries, her breaths came harshly and loudly in the silent battlefield. She glared at him with as much fury as she could muster, which admittedly wasn't much. Her life was leaving her body faster than she could generate any emotion other than relief that she would be free soon.

"I pity you."

Both of them blinked in surprise as they realized that their words were shared in that short moment.

Madara simply laughed. "Yes, you seem more entertaining alive. Perhaps, I shall spare you instead?"

He already began to get up from his spot on the bloody ground, his limbs slightly stiff but mobile. Her Eight Trigrams had already lost their effects on this monster of a shinobi much to her dismay, but she was ready to join all who she loved with any blow he would exert upon her.

"Gentle Step: Twin Lion Fists!" she cried, knowing that she was thoroughly eliminating any chance of her survival. Even if Madara decided to spare her somehow by not attacking, her own life-force was being drained with this attack and she would probably die before she released its strength upon him. Knowing this, her Byakugan blinked away from lack of chakra and she dashed towards him blindly, arms ablaze with fiery blue sparks.

She couldn't really see anything beyond his faint outline – her eyes were blurred and nearly completely emptied of light – but she felt the activation of his Sharingan reverberate with the ground. His chakra weighed upon her torn ligaments and joints but his power was not as heavy as the losses she had sustained so she felt herself slowly grow lighter and fainter, as if her spirit was attempting to leave the body in which it inhabited. Though she didn't have her bloodline limit activated, she could sense his power heightening until it was completely concentrated on his accursed eyes and then she knew that he was about to summon his Susanoo or the eternal black flames of Amaterasu.

Closing both her weary eyes and her distance between them, she plunged both fists towards Madara's heart and prepared herself to fall into numbness forevermore.

Neji-nii-san… Naruto-kun…

And then there was pressure seeping into one point of her back, as if something was prodding at her skin inquisitively. Seconds later, she felt the same feeling erupt on the other side of her torso, where her vulnerable belly was located. She heard the smooth slide of metal and the squish of human innards contracting and relaxing as they were exposed to the exterior world; her dry mouth heaved with stricken relief as it flooded with a warm wetness that trickled loosely from her parted lips. Her nose inhaled the familiar scent of liquid iron and she found herself stunned as she slowly looked down towards her stomach.

"W-w-what?" she choked, splattering another dozen droplets to the ground with her unsteady breaths.

To her surprise, Madara himself seemed just as shocked when he peered down to see red tinted silver connecting both of their abdomens like a solid chain link. He moved his hand to his own back and seemed to find the tip of the blade protruding from where his spine would've been, mouth agape and Sharingan eyes wide as they took in the person standing before him.

"You…" he said hoarsely. "This is the sword of Totsuka."

Her neck ached but she pivoted her head towards the presence behind her, the one who had so ruthlessly impaled Madara using her as a buffer. She wasn't sure who she was expecting or even if she had expected a person at all, but the man there was someone who she'd never really gave much of a thought.

Empty but unsettling Sharingan eyes peered back at her, the red and black kaleidoscopes swirling hypnotically as they surveyed her with clinical complacence. His face was bland in expression, classically handsome in structure, and haunted in countenance. His pale, unscarred hand was steady as it held the blade she and Madara were pierced by and it didn't tremble once as he slowly pushed it further into human flesh until the sword was all but gone to the hilt.

She felt the swiftly warming metal shift around her insides but couldn't feel the pain thankfully, while Madara made a disgusted face as the sword noticeably disappeared into his torso.

"You will be sealed," Uchiha Sasuke said plainly to his progenitor. He mechanically twisted the handle, calmly observing the shaking that was increasing within the girl he'd just stabbed. It was obvious that she'd gone into shock already.

Madara, contrary to expectations, merely shrugged. "I've died before and I've finished destroying the Leaf. What am I to be afraid of, Sasuke? However, I do believe that this little girl here was a completely unwarranted casualty. The last of the village he'd sworn to protect, what would your big brother say about this?"

Without a verbal reply, Sasuke simply unsheathed the sword from his victims with a single swipe, letting the bodies fall to the ground in heaps.

It was brutally silent, not even the sound of the carrion eating crows or other scavenging vermin broke through the forced tranquility. She was still breathing, harshly swallowing the bloodied air, but it felt like she was underwater, cold trails of liquid strangling her neck and blocking her senses mercilessly. She couldn't make out most of the blurred images twitching across her impaired vision, but she recognized the apathetic drawl and low timbre of her killer. But she knew now that it was Sasuke, Naruto's and Sakura's sun, who had finished and snuffed out the last bit of fire she let burn within herself.

She lay on her side staring silently at the last Uchiha through layers of shorn hair and nearly blinded eyes, watching his own bloodline limit look at her dismissively. All she could see was burning red.

She was nothing to him, not of any importance even if his beloved brother would've fanned her will of fire by saving her. He wouldn't have acknowledged her in any way at all. She was the last remainder of his home village, of his best friend Naruto, of his loyal lover Sakura, of even his exalted brother Itachi's dream. And yet, he didn't care.

"It's no matter," Madara said when he noticed his descendant's unmoved face. "She'll be put into a new and better world than the one I just ended."

The younger Uchiha did not remove his offside glance towards the fallen girl. "But you will be sealed in hell, Madara."

Darkness fell and blackness finally eclipsed the light.