Okay, so this is another DOS Fanficfanfic (as in Silver Queens Dreaming Of Sunshine, so read that first, or nothing will make any sense), and we're going back down the Soul Marks rabbit hole - with an added dash of time travel, and a lot of angst. This is originally from the Soulmark Fic and Discussion forum on this site. I'm cross posting all the parts here because a forum user asked me to ages ago, and I've just now got the time and patience to do it. Please enjoy :)
Standard Disclaimer: I do not own anything that is the rightful property of Silver Queen or Masashi Kishimoto.
In Newtonian physics, free fall is any motion of a body where gravity is the only force acting upon it. In the context of general relativity, where gravitation is reduced to a space-time curvature, a body in free fall has no force acting on it.
Shikako was so glad when Tsunade relented, and let them go on one last mission as Team 7 before Naruto left with Jiraiya for his training trip.
Shikako was less glad when they were assigned a C-rank, but the Kage assured them that she'd had it vetted three separate times.
'A sure bet' she'd told them as they left, and a collective shudder passed down the backs of the four 'Lucky Sevens'.
It was supposed to be a simple retrieval mission, but they didn't make it as far as the borders of Fire Country before things predictably went to hell.
Shikako does not know who her enemies are, and they've taken great pains to disguise themselves and their loyalties.
They have different body types, chakra natures and specialisations, but their weapons, clothes and skin tones (dyed probably) have the artificial homogeneity of an intentionally faceless Black-Ops unit. Or rather, three Back-Ops units, seeing as how there are 12 enemy nin bearing down on them.
Two teams are engaged in the monumental effort of containing Kakashi-sensei, and three nin from the final team match up against the apprentices.
The fourth member is doing something worrying with seals around the perimeter her comrades are enforcing.
Shikako has some terrible suspicions about their mission, given that black masked nin are very deliberately not injuring them.
The Balck-Ops teams have been throwing around tainted Senbon, and clouds of noxious smoke, even jutsu when called to it. But they have not struck any decisive blows against Team 7.
With sharp battle focus set in, Shikako sees the faintly purple edge of a Tanto pull back slightly as it drew across Sasuke's ribs a few feet away – a graze; and the way Naruto sways, littered with metal needles – too much like that time in wave.
He's flickering red-blue: like a dying police siren from a lifetime ago.
Shikako's own opponent is having a hard time, it would seem. He cannot approach directly, not with her shadow lengthened by the evening sun low on the horizon. Soon enough that strength will become a weakness, as night bleeds over the land; but Shikako is not foolish enough to think she will last that long in this combat.
For now, she enhances her body and puts Kakashi's 'dodge training' to good use; twisting and weaving around the ranged attacks of her opponent. She will not be able to keep it up forever, not with a dose of the poison in her system.
Shikako tries to metabolise it, but she is not skilled enough – not precise enough to do so in battle, and especially not while chemically compromised.
The first attack had been a sudden explosion of coloured smoke, and only Kakashi had escaped from it without displaying obvious symptoms of the drug.
Some kind of anaesthetic, or sedative.
The Nara is just desperate enough to use the Gelel stone when she sees Sasuke stumble – fall. She becomes shadow quickly, easily. Simpler than breathing, because the shadow does not need breath, Shikako turns a portion of her mass to a cutting edge, and strikes. Her opponent falls, and she darts across to Sasuke.
Shikako is flesh and blood again at his side, because she can't be a shadow and heal Sasuke at the same time.
Then something happens.
The last nin calls out, some shrill bird-cry mimicry, and her comrades fall back – leaving their dead behind carelessly.
Kakashi is suddenly next to them, with Naruto lolling under one arm – and then she and Sasuke are in his arms as well. Crushed with her back to his chest, and Sasuke pressing so hard against her front Shikako can barely breathe.
Sensei's arm is an iron bar fastened so tightly around Sasuke's middle that Shikako is sure she can feel it through the Uchiha.
Kakashi's plan is clear.
He tries to jump over the encircling mass of seals, take his students and get the fuck out of dodge.
Except that doesn't work.
Shikako, as obscured as her view currently is, can see the Kanji of the seal – feel its intent.
Contain
Bind
Ensnare
It won't let them go.
It is in fact, Shikako notices as it grabs at them, four interlocking seals – one for each of them.
Calibrated.
That's what the fight was for, Shikako realises: the Seal Mistress needed their measure for the seal to work.
It is truly upon them now, a black maelstrom trying to settle into their skin – into their chakra.
It is a stupid, desperate, reckless thing Shikako does next; but what choice does she have?
Attempts to disrupt, or dispel the chakra-ink by simply lashing out with her own chakra are fruitless, so instead of pushing, Shikako pulls. Rather than rend or destroy, she adds.
Anything her addled brain can think of, anything that might fit in the ever shrinking gaps in the compressing and settling enemy seal: the timer sequence of her Touch Blast, preservation elements from her food storage scrolls, a stabilisation matrix that settled between settled ink over Kakashi-sensei's hara, and the fluctuating marks digging into Shikako's spine.
Anything to stop this.
With one last addition (some half remembered sigil that made her recall a stylised image of a chameleon for some reason she didn't have the time to focus on) the seal changed.
Accepted the new command codes.
Still in flux, it pulled through the four of them.
Preserve settled into the primary focus of the secondary ofuda, overriding the original directive.
The primary focus of the first was still in flux, but now it felt like travel/move/distort – it meant something bigger than traversing mere earth.
But it was incomplete.
Shikako reached through her sensei to reach the central array, wishing desperately to be away, far far away from here please.
And something came to life.
Some dead thing, purposeless without the chakra of its creator, wavered into existence – returning to ink from a shadow of itself.
It shared a likeness with the chameleon seal that had become the focus of the principal seal, and was accepted into the writhing mass easily.
Suddenly the world wavered.
Suddenly space-time lost its grip on four bodies in motion.
Suddenly, a call went out though countless millions of universes, and the seal was complete.