The dreamscape, Luna noted, was relatively uninteresting: somewhat rolling hills, some bushes, a few trees, and a stream gave it an almost pedestrian look. The first thing she noted was the flavor was more memory than dream; the second, was that what was interesting about it was the presence of four of these humans — in that initial instant.
The first was running at two of them, holding lightning in his hand. His hair was black and spiked, he wore what appeared to be an armored leather vest and long shorts with many pockets… but the most striking thing was his eyes — they were black and red, and looked somewhat like a red flower bounded by the black of the rest of the iris.
The second was turned away from the first but appeared to be in the middle of turning; he was dressed in gray-splotched clothing that seemed an odd mishmash despite being uniform over everything he wore excepting his shoes which were a tan color and looked very sturdy. His eyes, while obscured by a hat whose brim encircled the whole item, were also red like the first human’s, but it didn’t resemble a flower — instead three comma-like dots floated in the iris.
The third was obviously a different sort of human, with soft curves instead of the hard lines of the first two. Her mouth was opened in a shout, though whether exclamation or warning was uncertain. She had longer brown hair, and green skin. Her outfit was black and red; basically it was a body-suit with red accenting trim along the wrist and collar, in addition to a large X across her chest, and was coupled with a blue cape. Her eyes were red as well, but the whole eye glowed like red lanterns.
‘Strange, are red eyes common among humans?’ Luna thought, as she noticed the final human.
The fourth was also curved like the third, but moreso; also like the third, her hair was long, but dark. She wore a pair of blue pants and a long-sleeved red shirt that were both somewhat loose but not baggy. Unlike the others her eyes were a light violet, almost white, color — instead of red — they were nonetheless disconcerting due to the lack of a pupil.
‘Human eyes certainly are strange,’ Luna thought to herself, noting that none of the eyes had anything in common with all of the others. ‘And if they’re strange, does that mean they have strange souls?’
All that happened in a frozen instant, and when the next instant came everything changed as the chaos of action took hold, appropriately accompanied by the sound of a flock of birds wildly chirping.
The first human winked at the green woman and she was suddenly engulfed by black flames; he then continued to rush the second human, thrusting his lightning-filled hand through his chest and causing him to disappear in a puff of dun dingy gray smoke. Then he turned to the last one and charged.
Luna gasped as she realized what this was: a violent fight against an existential threat; it could only end in death. She was no stranger to violence, or death even — she had so fiercely fought to bring peace to Equestria that she had been feared more than her elder sister, despite the lesser amount of raw power — but even those tumultuous times were over nearly two hundred years before her exile.
The woman tried to counter her attacker, arms quickly swinging about in a protective sphere just as a multitude of needle-like bolts shot out of the aggressor’s lightning-covered hand. For a moment it seemed like she might be overwhelmed, but that was only a moment and she expertly hit all the bolts, and when her hand met them they shattered into nothing.
In a sidestep so quickly executed it seemed to be teleportation the man attacked, again sending a volley of the bolts into the woman’s defenses. It ended in the same manner, but when he drew his hand back a third time something different happened — he summoned a sword of light from the midst of the writhing lightning and lunged forward to execute a series of rapid strikes.
The sword’s strikes seemed to do nothing, and when there was a slight break in his attack the woman jumped back, disengaging to catch her breath — it was then that Luna saw that the woman hadn’t been successful in defending against all the attacks: the tatters of her shirt’s sleeves tried in vain to cover that her palms and forearms were covered in small, pin-scratch cuts.
Her breathing, too, was less steady than it had been moments ago, and there was a light quiver on her lip in the moment she spoke — “Why, Sasuke?”
“Because you helped him.” the man — apparently called Sasuke — spat out, particular distaste evident on the last word from the tone alone, but the sneer that accompanied it was terrible and showed that there was no hope for him, whoever that was, to find forgiveness.
In an instant the blade of light winked out of existence, and the man hopped back a pace as he performed a quick series of contortions, almost too fast for eyes to see, with his hands and exhaled a giant fireball at the woman.
While the woman tried to escape the fireball, Sasuke performed more of those contortions and lightning once more appeared in his hand as he jumped through the fireball and thrust his hand into the woman — there was a frozen moment as Luna realized that he’d used his hand as a spear to kill the woman.
Luna watched in horror as the man used his leg to violently push the body off his arm, the almost-white eyes staring at her from where the corpse came to rest.
Suddenly there was a loud crack, like thunder but without the multiple reverberations — and Sasuke raised a hand to his shoulder which came away bloody.
A purple glow suddenly surrounded Sasuke, forming a spectral warrior whose form was truly monestrous; simultaneously a noise like “schklikt-klikt” sounded, far enough away that it was not loud at all, but close enough the distinctive sound easily reached Luna.
Again that single peal of not-thunder rang out, there was a spark of movement at the edge of the spectral warrior and a deformed metal slug fell to the ground, its velocity spent uselessly on the defense provided by the spectral warrior. — Inside the warrior Sasuke adopted a look of stoic concentration.
Three times more the schklikt-klikt/not-thunder pair sounded, each doing the same amount of non-damage as the first.
Then the spectral warrior drew forth a bow and, drawing back, loosed it in the direction the metal slugs had come from.
Just as the arrow reached the bushes, the form of the gray-clad man jumped out — as he was airborne he swung both his arms in Sasuke’s direction letting fly multiple projectiles: six small knives, trailing little paper tails as if they were kites, and four round balls.
The balls began to emit smoke, even before they’d reached Sasuke and his spectral warrior, while the small knives impacted the warrior’s armor before clattering to the ground and instant before their ‘tails’ exploded. — Using the distraction/cover of the smoke and explosions, the gray-clad man unlimbered a boxy looking weapon and, thrusting his hands to grab through the oddly shaped holes he lunged into it as he brought it to his shoulder and more of the not-thunder cracks issued forth… many more, and much quicker, as the gray-clad man advanced on Sasuke.
The spectral form bounded forward and in a quick swing of its arm backhanded the assailant who flew several feet into the air before popping into a din-gray cloud again, leaving the boxy weapon and several of the knives to fall to the earth.
“Damn bunshin!” Sasuke yelled, gasping slightly for breath.
Luna didn’t know what a ‘Bunshin’ was, perhaps the name of the gray-clad man? In any case, she could see that the defense Sasuke had mounted had drained him of a lot of his magical-powers, enough to start to manifest as physical weariness at the least.
A sudden explosion wide afield drew attention from both Sasuke and Luna, and a second later another ‘Bunshin’ fell from the sky, wielding a sword of light similar to the one Luna had seen Sasuke using except for its red hue and rough, jagged look that suddenly jumped to crisp, clear lines.
As the red sword struck the ethereal warrior encasing Sasuke, there was a bright flash of light before the blade stopped its course, embedding several inches into the spectral warrior’s armor.
Sasuke staggered back even as the spectral warrior swung at the new assailant — only to impact against a red shield that had sprung into existence betwixt them. The shield held for a fraction of a second before it was overpowered and shattered.
However, that split second was enough time for the gray-clad man to cross the first two fingers of each hand forming a plus-sign figure… and causing two more of himself to appear.
Sasuke stared at the central figure, the one that had summoned the copies, and suddenly black flames surrounded hie figure… but they were held at bay by another red shield that sprang into existence.
“You’re as annoying as the blockhead with that technique, Joey.” Sasuke said, even as he turned his gaze to one of the duplicates… who was slapping a paper on the ground near the raging black inferno, just as he himself was covered in the black flame.
The duplicate flashed through a series of hand-contortions slapping the ground just as he disappeared in the now-familiar gray-dun smoke.
“I’ll take that as a complement.” the second duplicate said, even as the black flames started consuming his peer and the first duplicate’s technique triggered, a reminder from the training that their teacher put them through, the remaining duplicate was pulled underground even as the flames ripped off of Joey’s shield swirling into the paper seal on the ground.
Sasuke glared at Joey, preparing to trigger another Amaterasu, who whirled around and scooped up the paper on the ground and throwing it high and to the right of Sasuke— it didn’t make it past the spectral warrior, but when it contacted it the black flames were released onto apparition.
“Hn. Nice try.” Sasuke smirked, glancing up at the black flame, then back. “You’ll be dead before that Amaterasu can damage my Susano.”
“Spirit Wave!” Joey interrupted, ramming a fist into the spectral warrior and releasing a massive wave of energy across Sasuke… even through the protection of the spectral warrior he felt it.
Susano, the ethereal figure protecting Sasuke, flickered out of existence even as there was the distinctive pop of a shadow clone from the ground below; the loss of his ultimate defense stunned him for a moment, and in that moment he saw Joey’s eyes turn red, comma shaped tome appearing and spinning angrily, as Joey ran through a series of familiar hand-seals.
Luna watched as the one called Joey rushed toward Sasuke, lightning appearing in his hand accompanied by the sound of a thousand angry birds. Joey leapt and twisted int the air, clocking Sasuke across the face with his right hand before locking it behind Sasuke’s shoulder even as he locked his legs around the opposite arm and plunged his lightning-filed hand into Sasuke’s torso... even as Sasuke had done to the woman earlier.
Sasuke’s lifeless body collapsed taking Joey to the ground with it — Joey got to his feet, staggered weakly for a few steps.
For a brief instant he was tempted to feel victorious, but the knowledge that his friends had died because of his stupid quarrel between himself and the now-dead Uchiha heir stripped that away, leaving only a weary emptiness.
“I’m so sorry,” he sobbed, “I’m sorry, Hinata… Megan… I’m sorry.”