Goriness ahead. :3

He growls an animal growl, and it reverberates through the ground, sending waves up the shinobi's feet. They shiver a little from the throaty earthquake. He smiles with his eyes, because the fangs that have grown do not allow him to smile. He grips the girl's body closer to his hunched form, digs his claws into the skin of her back but does not tear it. His claws are gently ferocious as he breathes in her scent.

"Mine," he snarls, his eyes ruby and glinting. He's daring them to move, to make a sound.

No one does.

The shinobi look to each other, giving secret glances and subtle shifting. They know that he is dangerous, and they know that they might not win this battle, but there is also a chance that they might.

He pants hard, grating the air with his monster breath; the glorious hair straggled with blood. Suddenly the shinobi have vanished—but only for moment, before reappearing a few meters closer. Again the blur, and the reappearance. He senses each of their movements, the pulses accelerating as they gain closer.

He lets out a roar as one of them appears 3 feet away. The unexpected roar frightens the man and that moment gives him leverage to strike out with his long claws. He feels a bit of flesh ripping off with the clothing beneath his nails; it's a relatively deep cut, and he's satisfied for the moment as the blood squirts sourly in his face.

The other two are on him now, and he focuses on the two figures, the two chakra pulses dancing. One is sailing above him, the other to his right, and he feels their chakra gathering and flaring to their hands at the same moment. He knows he must stop them before the doubled attack is readied, so with the girl still cradled in his right arm, he kicks out with his feet and trips the one on the right while at the same time, reaching up to grab and snap the wrist of the shinobi above him. He feels the chakra die in the shock. The one with the broken wrist rolls away gasping, but the kicked one retaliates with a kick of his own, catching him in the knee. He lets himself collapse with the girl shielded below him and then grunting, he backward kicks the man in the gut, forcing a good amount of chakra into that leg.

The man stumbles backward clutching at his stomach, and from what he can tell, he's exploded the stomach. He watches, breathing hard and fascinated (the fascination never dies, even while the man does), as the man vomits a heap of blood and some sort of organ. The sick expression is glued to the man's face as the eyes widen in panic and realize that something is wrong before abruptly dying out.

The three are down but suddenly, he feels the presence of more shinobi in the trees beyond the clearing. They were waiting the whole time, he realizes. They appear before him now, a dozen men with dark gazes and toothy smirks. He growls and will not let himself feel fear; he is beyond it, he tells himself.

The girl stirs faintly and he curses softly into her pink, pink hair.

The twelve survey him with cool confidence. One crazed boy and an unconscious girl cannot accomplish the impossible. They grin to each other and one of them, the leader he supposes, swaggers nearer.

"Dear boy," the man drawls, "I am sorry for your situation. I truly am."

He growls threateningly when the man takes a step forward.

The man holds up his hands complacently. "I don't want to make this situation any harder, boy. But if you choose to complicate things, then that is your choice, and you must bear the consequences."

The man takes another step forward. The boy growls louder, baring his teeth.

"If you give us the girl and leave peaceably, we will not follow."

Another step. A louder growl.

"But if you choose to stay, you are putting your own life and the lives of those who sent you at risk."

Another step. The boy does not growl but his eyes spark dangerously.

"It's up to you, boy."

The man smiles his most fatherly smile. The boy is sickened deep inside because even with the beast burning away the human inside of him, he can still feel the card-board fatherhood in this man's smile. He knows that this man is not a father, could never be one. He has seen a father before—not his own, but a father nonetheless, and the father's smile he knew constructed worlds and painted skies.

He wants to bite the man's head off for his lies.

The man is oblivious to all of this, and prods, "So what is your decision, boy?"

The boy looks the man straight in the eye, his own eyes so red they could be bleeding. "Screw you."

He watches the man's eyes narrow.

The boy knows that this is his chance to attack. He lets loose the wild inside of him and tackles the man full force, ripping his claws through and through and through until he feels like he can rip that father smile from the man's face. Rip the lips off, and watch them shrivel and pucker apart from the face.

He is so content in ripping the man's face apart that he barely realizes when the others are on him. He continues to lash out and kick gracelessly with his entire body, feeling the bruises and the scratches and the cuts forming all over and the burning that encompasses all the little pains into one huge bonfire of pain. He arches his back and screams but will not stop fighting, biting at whatever he can get his teeth around. The girl is still crushed against his chest. (He hopes she can still breathe and that the fire inside of him has not singed her.)

He bites and rips, but he knows that as time progresses his jaw is getting tired and his arms and legs are growing sore. The beast is waning and the panic growing like a weed with a fertilizer of desperation, and he knows that the human is coming back to him.

For once he wishes that it wouldn't.

He understands for a moment what all the great men meant when they told him that emotion was a weakness, that being human was a weakness. They told him it was better to be a beast because that way, you were strong and you were invincible. As long as you were that—

The blood is draining out of his eyes, and the pain is really starting to come to him now, in excruciating little stinging and great flower petals of blood running down his face and arms.

The girl, she mustn't get hurt, he thinks numbly. I can't let her go.

"Sakura-chan!" he screams, his eyes wide and blue.

A man deals a heavy blow to his head. The boy drops heavily to the ground, unconscious, but his arms still clenched around the girl.

The men pull back, panting, to survey their work.

"He was a wild one," a tall one says, sweating. The others nod in agreement, wiping blood from their faces.

Simultaneously, they look to the man with his face ripped off. A few of them shudder and look away.

"You," says one of the older ones, "get the girl." The heavy man nods and lumbers over to the two bodies, trying to pry the girl from the boy's grasp. He grunts.

"Damn the kid, he's a brat even when he's not fighting."

Finally he manages to pluck the girl from the boy's limp arms. He examines her.

"She's got a doll face," he says, "but I wouldn't kill myself over her." The other men nod in agreement.

"Alright, let's go," says the older man. "We haven't got much time."

They regroup and disappear into a haze of trees.

Two fatherless men left behind.

-

I think I'm starting a multi-chapter. By gosh, it's been a while. :D