Consciousness came back to Daiki slowly, with a rousing pain that made him just want to go back to the darkness and not feel anything anymore.
Every breath he took, no matter how shallow, sent sharp spikes of pain echoing through him.
For a few moments, he just lay where he was, staring up at what appeared to be an oval shaped, glowing green ceiling.
…What?
'Did Kakashi come save me and take care of it all or something?' he wondered briefly, in a daze. Surely, he would have acted after seeing Sasuke take that hit he did?
Ignoring the pain that made him want to curl up into a ball and forgot the world existed, Daiki grit his teeth and forced himself to sit up.
And blinked.
…He was in a completely sealed off, oval shaped room, almost egg-like even.
And he wasn't alone.
There was a girl sitting over beside one of the walls, peering out from a small hole in it. A familiar girl. Petite, with tan skin, darker than his own, athletically built and short exotic mint green hair, her outfit consisted of a short sleeveless white midriff shirt with fishnet armour underneath, long white armlets, and fishnet shorts with a short white apron skirt over it, while a blue clothed headband was tied around the bicep of her left arm, depicting the symbol Takigakure.
She turned just then and looked at him, apparently feeling some form of movement behind her and stared at him blankly, orange eyes blinking owlishly before a wide grin spread across her face, "Hey, you're finally awake!" Fu cheered.
Huh.
That voice. That was the one he heard before he passed out.
Fu saved him?
"Dunno if you should be up and about actually, you took a hell of a beating from that dick Suien," she ploughed on when he didn't respond, "But hey, you were kicking major ass out there, you and your pal wiped out those Rain ninja easily, and even those two annoying ones, you did them in good!"
"…Where..!" Daiki began to ask, before coughing, a splatter of blood leaving his broken nose and pain erupting from his ribs.
"Eesh, wish I knew some healing jutsu right about now," Fu winced, rubbing the back of her head sheepishly, "Well, take it easy, you're safe for now, this is my cocoon jutsu we're inside, as long as we're in here, that guy won't be able to sense us."
Oh…that was good.
And bad.
Because that meant, Kakashi hadn't come in and mopped the main villain up like he was supposed to.
'Was I wrong? Did he actually just leave Naruto and Sasuke unguarded?' Daiki had to resist the urge to swallow heavily, lest his ribs throb in agony again.
It was already taking all he had to keep his thoughts centred.
Actually, now that he thought about it. Didn't Kakashi only learn about the Akatsuki, after the Chunin Exams, from Jiraiya?
And there was no way Kakashi could have predicted something like this happening. Like, who would? He only left them to clean up some trash before heading home, who would expect them to get drawn into an attack on an entire shinobi village?
'Focus.' he told himself, and looked Fu in the eyes, "Cocoon..?" he made a show of looking thoughtful, "Does that make you….the Nanabi Jinchuuriki?" it was blunt, and not skirting the edges at all, but he really didn't have the time to dance around this topic right now.
…He'd not been taking this seriously at all, he'd let the idea of Kakashi as a safety blanket make him complacent, arrogant in his assured survival.
Fu froze, "Ah….you know about that?" the mint haired girl swallowed heavily herself, "..Is that, eh, gonna be a problem?" she looked almost like a deer staring into headlights.
Why would she lock up like that just from as-
Oh right…Jinchuuriki were usually hated by those around them, because people were idiots.
God, what a waste. If people trained Jinchuuriki in the grind properly, they'd all be absolute beasts when it came to combat by time they were in their tweens.
Just look at how fast he was progressing with a bootleg healing factor using the Mystical Palm Jutsu!
"No, nothing like that," Daiki slowly shook his head and gave her what he hoped was a reassuring smile and not a pained grimace, "Honestly, wish I was jinchuuriki right about now, that healing factor you guys have would be amazing for me at the moment. I'm all for Team Bijuu right now."
Fu just stared at him for a moment, before giggling, "It is pretty helpful now and then," she nodded, "Though, not that the Nanabi shares much with me, besides these." suddenly, a pair of insectoid wings emerged from her lower back and flapped rapidly, lifting her up to her feet.
"Useful," he noted, before what she said caught on fully, "Wait, does that mean you can't use a chakra cloak?"
"Not yet, the bug refuses to let me do it, doesn't like fighting," Fu shrugged, "Says I should just run away and not risk getting killed."
"I mean…as far as pragmatic survival goes, its probably right," Daiki sighed. But that was also bad, because, having her able to even use the initial form, not even pulling on the tailed cloaks, would be a massive help, "Erm, how strong are you? How do you measure up to that guy who beat my shit in?"
"Suien?" Fu tilted her head before grinning proudly, and for a moment, hope surged in him, "I don't even come close! I'd be lucky to last fifteen seconds against him one on one if he was serious!"
….Fuck.
But then, what was he expecting? Waterfall wasn't exactly known for their powerful Jinchuuriki, or well, powerful anything. Waterfall was basically treated as a joke, and only really got any recognition because it sat on the border between the Land of Fire and Earth, and worked as a stop gap if those rock fetishists tried to invade Fire Country.
They were more of an overly large outpost than a real ninja village to be honest, their population was less than two thousand.
"Well, ten seconds would still be a big help I guess," Daiki tried to be hopeful, "Actually, do you know what happened to my friends?"
Fu winced, "Ah, yeah about that…" she trailed off before pointing at the hole that she was peering out of before, "You might wanna take a look."
He had a feeling he was not going to like this. Ignoring his body protesting even the slightest movements, Daiki dragged himself over to the edge of the glowing green cocoon room and peered out of the hole.
He found, that they were apparently, very high up in the massive tree he'd saw earlier, hidden amongst the thick greenery of the leaves and had a good vantage point directly downwards.
He saw the problem immediately.
One, Sasuke was beaten quite badly and hanging, tied up from a large red tori gate. While to the side, a huge rectangular barrier of some kind, with large earth stakes on each corner, held tens of dozens, no rather, multiple hundreds of people all tied up and squished together in there.
A flash of pink caught his eyes, and he saw, at the very front of the barrier, was Sakura, tied up alongside Shizuku and the little boy who's name he hadn't caught that was with them, her mother, laying tied up and unconscious next to them.
Fucking hell.
'Seriously Sakura?' Daiki resisted the urge to groan. He hadn't put much thought into leaving her behind, because they'd killed all the shinobi bar the cackling idiot before heading off.
Yet…she'd still somehow managed to get herself captured?
Fuck, just fuck.
At least Naruto and Shibuki seemed to be still free out there. If he remembered right, they should be somewhere within the same vicinity as them, in amongst this tree.
Though, considering the sheer size of it, that wasn't saying much.
His eyes drifted to directly outside the barrier, at the front, where a familiar man sat on a rock, arms crossed, wild spiky black hair with a bandana over it.
The fuck head who beat the shit out of him. His vague memories of the movie, told him, that barrier thing was totally new.
And somehow, he seemed far more powerful than he was in the movie, even without the Hero's Water. There was no way Naruto even with the initial chakra cloak could beat this guy.
He doubted he'd even be able to with the full one-tail cloak actually.
Daiki grimaced, turning away from the hole and slowly bringing his hands up. It was painstaking, both literally and figuratively in the scope of speed he could make one single hand seal.
"Yeah, luckily he hasn't killed your friends," Fu pointed out optimistically as green chakra blossomed out of his hands, "Unluckily, he's holding them hostage to get Shibuki to come out and give him the Hero Water, at which point, he'll drink it, get way stronger and slaughter us all anyway."
Daiki seriously wished he never agreed to come on this missions. 'B-rank mission my ass!' he pressed his hands to his chest, and spread the healing chakra of his jutsu through into his ribs, and directed the rest through his arms.
He didn't have enough in the tank to heal himself fully, especially if he still wanted to be able to fight.
But, as long as he could at least move without being in pain and get some speed back in his arms, he could do….something.
"So, healing jutsu huh? You're pretty good!" Fu praised him, "I had trouble with those two with the whips earlier, but you took them out in less than a minute, so you're strong on top of being able to heal. Konoha ninja are something else!
"I'm just built different," Daiki couldn't resist the urge to brag a little bit to the pretty girl with him, "So, while I'm healing myself a bit, have you got any plans for dealing with that guy?"
"Not really," she gave him a sheepish smile, "I've really not got anything with the fire power to bring him down, I have one that could startle him a bit though and give you an opening."
Alright, he could work with that.
"That'll do," Daiki nodded, "Keep him in place for a couple seconds and I'll hit him with my strongest jutsu."
Jonin or not, he wasn't going to be shaking off a B-rank lightning jutsu without being fucked up.
"Gotcha!" Fu grinned happily, "I'll lay him up, you knock him down….you?" she started strong, before trailing off as she realized, she didn't know his name.
"Daiki." he introduced himself.
"Daiki, great name!" she beamed, "And I'm Fu, pleased to meet-cha!"