A/N: How the series is looking like it should and will end in a few chapters, I think

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TITLE: Finale
CHALLENGE: Smoke
WORD COUNT: 501
RATING: Pg16
BONUSES: burn, heat, sharp, lips, wound

It’s raining, hard and fast, but the flames will not die. The battlefield is strewn with broken bodies and craters that dot the landscape like scabrous, infected wounds and the ground is stained a dark, crimson red that intermixes with the roaring inferno -- the liquid and the fire subliming into one another and making each other darker, somehow, as if the earth were shedding dark, senescent tears of blood.

In the center of the war-zone stands Uzumaki Naruto, his clothes and his body torn to shreds and his every pore bleeding out dark, demonic chakra that chokes the air like cancer; the inferno coalescing and spiraling around him like a thousand-strong army of gossamer ghosts about to be sent to war. He screams into the oncoming maelstrom like a beast, his hand raised into a fist of defiance and his voice reaching up the heavens as if he were challenging the gods themselves.

Uchiha Itachi has never been more excited in his entire life. His veins are answering the Kyuubi’s call; reacting to it with adrenaline and heat and his heart is pumping against his ribcage like a manic beast, hungry and wanting of freedom. He’s running with the fire; screaming with the fire, and the carnage he leaves in his wake is so beautiful next to the kitsune’s that, when he finally reaches the thing and it acknowledges him as an equal, it’s eyes burrowing through to his soul, it makes him orgasm harder and faster than anyone has ever made him orgasm in his life.

“This is where it ends, Itachi!” Naruto growls, circling the Uchiha as the older male slowly licks his lips and begins to do the same; their training and their better judgment thrown into the burning inferno along with all of their facades and masks.

Here, they are not shinobi.

Here, they are not men.

Here, now, they lay themselves bare for all of the world to see -- a tired, broken man and a child dealt the wrong hand in life shining like the darkest of stars.

“I would gladly give my life for this battle, Uzumaki!”

“Then prove it, Uchiha!”

They charge at each other with a scream, a tempest of dark orange and blood-red slamming headlong into a whirlwind of black and sapphire. And when it is over, when the Uchiha falls back onto his knees, his cloak burning to ash and his wounds overcoming him as he skids away from the now-unconscious Naruto, Sasuke is there, waiting to finish the job like the ever-consummate opportunist he is.

“Brother, this is where it ends,” Sasuke drawls, unsheathing his blade. “I sacrificed everything, and now, it ends.”

"No, Sasuke.” There, when hesitates, when he looks into his eyes and finds that the Sharingan is gone, Itachi grabs the Kusunagi and rams it into his gut; whispering: “This is how it ends.”

“No.”

"This is how it ends."

“No.”

"Not with a bang."

“Stop!”

"Or a scream."

“Let go”

"But a whimper."

"NO!"

XXX

- Fin

XXX

“RASENGAN”