Gaara was not pleased.
That was possibly the understatement of the week.
To find both of his siblings had been defeated while he had only suffered one blow in his battle with a very skilled opponent that he was about to completely overrun. For Kami's sake he'd given himself so much sand to work with on that battlefield, there was no way he'd have lost. It would have been mean and very inaccurate to say that most of the talent in the family drifted his way, especially when that was partially due to the Shukaku being within him, but damn it.
"What have I told you all?" Gaara said as he moved through the trees with Temari and Kankuro to catch up with the Konoha team that had escaped from him but left his brother and sister behind, decently healed up, "Underestimating our enemies… is being burned once not enough for you two?"
Being rebuked by Gaara for their mistakes was much better than having to plead with him for sparing their lives, but it was still very annoying
"It was a fluke Gaara." Kankuro said. He had a right to be pissed off. He'd broken a genjutsu only to find that his puppet was about to be crushed by a giant, spiky ball. Sanshouo wasn't crushed, but it did get mushed into the ground, and he did get knocked out from it, "They didn't even kill us."
"They didn't kill us because they don't want to raise an issue with Suna." Temari said, glaring to the side at her face-painted brother, "Even if we're just ninjas intruding on their mission, we're still the Kazekage's children. That does mean something out there, even if it doesn't seem like it to our father."
"My opponent tried to kill me." Gaara said calmly, "I don't think he cared too much about the would-be connection between our villages."
Any fraternal conversation was cut short the moment they seemed to cross a threshold and intense killing intent that most of them had never felt before was placed upon them. So oppressive was it that Gaara had to stop tree-running and lean up against the trunk of one to deal with it, holding his head and moaning softly in pain to himself.
"Gaara!" Kankuro stopped to put a hand on his little brother's shoulder, but at the holding up of a hand, Gaara kept them back, "What's going on? What's with this feeling?"
"It's not Shukaku." Gaara said with a bit of difficulty, "It's… it's Uzumaki and the Kyuubi." He knew of that feeling anywhere, even if it was infinitely more imposing than the first time he'd had to face it, "Why was I not informed that he was on this mission?"
Both Kankuro and Temari looked at each other with varying degrees of skepticism. Temari could have told him the moment that Team 7 had shown up and Gaara had arrived in chase of Sasuke and Kiba, but… "Honestly Gaara?" Temari started to say, "Because we figured that you'd drop everything and go after him instead of stay on task."
"Who do you think I am?"
"A guy that's really pissed off about the only fight you ever lost." Kankuro answered despite Gaara's question being rhetorical, "You kind of obsessed about it for a year straight, even after we got promoted past genin. You wanted to turn it down and go to the next chunin exam in case he showed up again so you could kill him then."
"I did not obsess."
"Yes you did." A glare from Gaara got Kankuro to back off a few steps but he kept his position, "Killing me isn't going to make it any less true."
Without another word, Gaara leapt off in a direction completely different from the one they'd been tracking Team 7 in, much to the consternation of his siblings who had to follow along to keep the squad together, "Gaara." Temari urged, trying to use some kind of authoritative tone with him.
"We do not know that the team with the Uchiha in it is going to where Tsunade is." Gaara said in an effort to reason, "They could be decoys. If I were running a mission I would keep the most capable and durable fighter with the target. Uzumaki is the best possible choice for protecting her."
"Last time I checked Gaara, that kid didn't have an automatic defense like you do." Temari said, more or less deriding the idea of Uzumaki Naruto being anyone's main protection in a security or escort detail.
Gaara's eyes flickered in her direction before turning back in his intended direction, "There isn't very much need for defense when you can tear apart whatever is in front of you with brute force." Then why the hell were they going that way in the first place?
The answer was because Gaara wanted to see. It was rare when he ever got to see another jinchuuriki in battle, and Shukaku was screaming for him to go and prove that just having one tail didn't make him weaker than Naruto's biju.
Gaara wasn't going to open that can of worms… maybe. He just wanted to see what growth his reviled enemy had taken on over the last few years.
"Get down and behind something!"
A sudden blast of air flew their way, and it was only due to Temari's early warning that they weren't blown haplessly off of their perches. Due to the heavy debris flying past their places of hiding they were all certain that if they hadn't been warned in advance they'd be hurtling back through the woods bonelessly hoping they didn't smack fatally off of something solid or jagged.
"What the hell?" Kankuro said as he and his siblings dropped from the branches, taking cover behind the trunks of trees as the wind howled and weaker trees groaned and cracked under the force of the wind, "What the hell is going on? Temari?"
The only thing he could do was ask their resident wind specialist as to what was happening, "There's no cutting power to this jutsu!" Temari tried to shout up over the wind, "But it doesn't need it! It's strong enough without it!"
She couldn't estimate how fast the wind was blowing, but trying to keep her footing in front of it didn't seem possible in the slightest. She felt that if she'd put her arm or leg out into it she'd wind up with a dislocated limb or a completely lost one entirely.
There were flecks of red that flew right along in the direction of the wind that Gaara could attribute to Naruto.
And he could smell the blood in it.
XxX
(Moments Earlier – With Naruto – Decrepit Fishing Village)
If one could ever recognize the feeling of constantly having one's skin forcibly removed and replaced, they would tell you that it was what hell must have been like, and why would someone willingly subject themselves to such torment for any prolonged period of time whatsoever.
Naruto would not be amongst those people. Yes, it hurt like no other pain that could be comparable in his life, but focusing his willpower on the pain was what kept him in control when he was releasing that level of the Kyuubi's chakra.
A lack of focus outside of taking down an enemy was his faltering point in keeping control of himself in the past with the other stages of chakra intensity. Whatever he was thinking about at the time of utilizing the heightened power would be magnified in importance in his mind once he stepped it up, so if he had been thinking that he needed the power to defeat his enemy or make them pay when he'd been moving up steadily to the four-tailed level, by the time he actually got that far 'defeat' would become 'annihilate'.
Instead, he shifted his focus to how goddamn much four-tails form hurt, to keep him from losing himself. It also helped because it made him desperately wish to hurry up and put an end to the fight that forced him to go that far to begin with, so that he could stop with the self-induced torture.
Naruto's tails had carved a trench into the ground behind him with the way that they were constantly whipping in a circle like fan blades, and his solid eyes were focused solely on Darui who wondered why Naruto wasn't rampaging, "You can control it?"
"Heh, heh, heh…" The Kyuubi wished that Darui could hear him the way Naruto could, "He can endure it. Control is too complete a word for what he has. He's too weak to control me."
"Grr…" Naruto gritted out. It wasn't that he was feral or was trying to give the illusion that he wasn't in control. Being in four-tailed form fucking hurt! He didn't want to waste focus actually using words.
Even though he didn't say anything, he sent out his chakra arms to attack Darui and keep him away while tails started picking up the pace, spinning faster and faster, something that Darui figured he was doing to occupy his mind so that he didn't slip away and descend into madness.
Basically his mindset was that if he could stop the motion of the tails and make Naruto focus back on the fighting, he'd have a berserk jinchuuriki to deal with. Kumogakure knew how to deal with those well enough. That meant that Naruto was about to receive another attack that he couldn't dodge.
After managing to fend off Naruto's chakra claws with enough agility to escape their impressive range, he squared up and decided on a ranged ninjutsu attack, "Ranton: Reiza Sakasu (Storm Release: Laser Circus)!" From his hands he formed a gigantic orb of light that shot off dozens of branching light beams aimed right at Naruto.
Naruto did move away from the swift-moving ninjutsu, allowing his tails to somehow bat away each shot that had been aimed at him when he was able to alter the fan pattern of his tails in front of his body. Contact with even two should have killed another shinobi, and factoring in that Naruto wasn't normal even then he should have been devastated with the amount that made contact.
Darui didn't understand how they didn't affect him and shock him, even through the chakra tails, at least until he felt his hair begin to blow. There shouldn't have been any wind that night. There hadn't been any wind that night until right then, and it was steady… and getting stronger.
The wind was being generated by Naruto's tails as at the ends of them he was creating a gust and using the propeller motion to blow outward. It was the basis of the first wind jutsu that Asuma had taught him as a genin, only meant to do something entirely different.
The speed and the wind picked up to the extent that Darui had to cover his eyes with his arms to keep debris from around the half-destroyed fishing village from getting into them. He stuck himself to the ground with chakra, endeavoring to stand up and face whatever this was, somehow, 'Wind Release? He would have the elemental nature that trumps mine wouldn't he?'
As the wind picked up, a jet noise could be heard and Naruto took that as his cue to raise his hands up and form a more resolutely powerful incarnation of wind chakra. With a forceful grunt the length of his tails expanded, as did the width to the actual shape of circular fan blades, as they continued to spin, "Fuuton: Akao Shimpuu (Wind Release: Red-Tailed Typhoon)!"
A well-aimed directional subsonic blast of air blew forth in a controlled funnel, leaving a destructive trail in its wake. Darui tried to dodge around it, but Naruto could turn to aim without stopping the blurry whirling of his tails whatsoever. So intense was the exterior of the funnel that it effortlessly stripped the soil five feet down. Everything close around him in the path got chunked up into mulch and was sent forward along with the wind and the red glow of his chakra.
A dark chuckle could be heard as clear as a bell in Naruto's mind, "Very good Naruto. Not quite as good as I would have done with the same level of power at my disposal, but not quite a disappointment either. You left your mark on this land I would say."
XxX
Watching from a safe distance away from the battlefield, Samui had to watch in silent awe when she saw the destructive force of one jutsu. She was quite certain that such a jutsu could destroy the majority of an entire sector of a modern village in a circular pattern if he aimed it around himself.
Fortunately he wasn't aiming it in a general circle. It was being fired away from them. At Darui. And he wasn't turning anymore to track and aim at him, which meant that he'd caught the man up in the blast.
That… wasn't good.
The blonde Kumo woman couldn't believe it. Only years of maintaining the cold façade that was her usual demeanor kept her from giving her poker face away, but it was a struggle to keep from showing on her face that she was very much affected by this.
He couldn't be dead. Darui was the right-hand man of the Raikage, basically his closest confidant. A master of Black Lightning that he was taught by the Sandaime Raikage, Storm Release aside, he was a ninja that many in Kumo looked up to.
To think that both he and Omoi could be-. No, she didn't want to think about it. And it was actually a good thing that Karui was out of it. Losing Omoi was enough of a major blow to her psyche. To realize that Darui had been finished, it would be hard to consider how she would react to that, but it wouldn't have been in a calm manner.
Karui's jaw dropped at the sight of the damage, though it was really Ino's psyche inside of her body doing it, "Is that really Goldie-kun?"
"Unfortunately, yes." Shikamaru said, wiping a bead of sweat away from his brow as he saw Naruto immediately bringing out the big guns to put the fight to an end, "The sooner he gets out of that the better, but the damage is already done."
"What damage?"
"The part where his skin gets burned through because the chakra is so intense." Shikamaru said, staring at his partner seriously, "That's not just a chakra shroud. That's his blood mixed in with the chakra."
"WHAT?!" This was the cost for the power of a jinchuuriki? None of that used to happen when Naruto utilized the chakra. It didn't happen in Mizu no Kuni,
Samui kept quiet and reserved at Darui's demise, but she tucked this information away for posterity. They were doing a good job of refraining from saying it around her while still getting across the point of how dangerous Naruto's four-tailed form was, but she knew enough about jinchuuriki due to the two famed ones in Kumo to recognize this much.
That if using the chakra caused that kind of harm, he didn't have complete control of the Kyuubi's chakra. He was an imperfect jinchuuriki.
Killer B, Kumo's most powerful jinchuuriki, was perfect. Nii Yugito, while without the flawless control that Killer B had, still had greater control than this boy Naruto had. Their 'Version 2' forms engulfed their entire bodies like Naruto's did, but it did not hurt them the way it did him.
If only, if only.
If only Konoha had put this Uzumaki boy through the paces that Killer B and Yugito had been put through at young ages to control their respective biju. He was able to kill Darui on his first attempt after tapping into his Version 2 level of power.
Had he been properly given instruction for handling that awesome power within him sooner than the age of twelve… but that was not the case. Coming that far in only three years when others took at least a full decade to grow that powerful.
Still, Killer B and Yugito were beyond him. This she believed with all that she was. This display did nothing to make her believe otherwise.
'This mission is a complete and utter failure.' Samui thought, closing her eyes as if to shield them from the truth of what she had to accept, 'We cannot defeat them, not with what they have fighting with them, and we cannot complete our original assignment.'
She herself was injured to the point where she needed healing to walk. There wasn't going to be any way that she and Karui would finish their mission, even if they had managed to win at this juncture.
Shikamaru looked around and deemed it all clear before sticking his fingers in his mouth and letting out a loud whistle to get Naruto's attention, "Naruto get over here and turn that damn thing off!"
Ino in Karui's body recoiled and took a step back upon looking into the solid white eyes of Naruto's four-tailed form. So soulless. And then she barely saw him at all as he blazed toward them, chakra flaring wildly.
"Naruto, that's Ino!"
Naruto slid to a harsh stop, dragging a trench into the ground and coming to a halt just within reaching distance of Ino. She could feel the sheer heat from the chakra as if it were an open flame. She reached out a shaky hand to try and touch his face when she felt Shikamaru's hand grab hers (or Karui's in this case).
"It's not hot just for show." Shikamaru said, "It'll burn you, badly. It's toxic. Now turn it off already Naruto. It's killing you."
"Oi, don't try to hurry me up." Naruto said, gritting his teeth as his tail swished around to try and occupy his mind, "You're in a real rush to see me suffer aren't you Shika?"
Fool, it was because he didn't want to see him suffer that he wanted him to return to normal, "Okay, walk around glowing like a damn lantern until dawn and knock fifteen years off of your lifespan." Shikamaru said, "It's not like you don't already hurt like hell. Look at you. You can't hold still for half a second you're in so much pain."
Naruto just turned and stared at Shikamaru before turning over to Ino. He really wished that she didn't have to see this, but… well he was going to have to undo it eventually. Seriously, the longer it stayed on, the worse things were for his lifespan. The only reason he used it was because Darui was a powerhouse, and they didn't have the time for him to try and fight with him for too long. Their mission was to stay with Tsunade.
Never say that Shikamaru wasn't intelligent though, in more matters than just battlefield strategy, "Ino, take that girl's body and get the other one on their way out of here. I told her that we would."
Ino (in Karui's body) looked as if she wanted to protest, but he had given his word in order to detain Samui peacefully that if she didn't try anything funny they would let them go, "…Okay. But the moment I get them far enough away I'll be right back in my body got it? I won't be long."
With that she went over to Samui, and the defeated Kumo kunoichi could do nothing more than allow Ino to lift her up piggyback style to begin carrying her away, "My comrades…" Samui said, "What about their bodies?"
It was too much to ask that she request their bodies back. A ninja's body could divulge very important secrets in autopsy.
She was on the losing side of this conflict, and the loser couldn't dictate terms, but again it couldn't hurt to ask. What was the worst that she could say, no?
"You can have them." Ino said, surprising Samui. Her voice sounded quite hollow as she explained, "This wasn't a battle we wanted to fight. I know it's not protocol, but if I lost one or two of my teammates in one mission… especially since one of them was on your genin team wasn't he? So was the girl I'm in right now."
She remembered of course, because there was no way she could ever forget anything about the chunin exams that they'd originally come across each other in, even if they didn't meet directly in those days.
"We'll find their bodies and seal them away on the way out."
It was a small mercy after Naruto had decimated two of them at least. Even if she was absolutely certain that the same wouldn't have been done for them had the positions been reversed.
XxX
"You're an idiot, you know that?" Shikamaru asked as Naruto lay on the ground, missing the top layer of skin from his body, "Trying to be macho and not let Ino see you like this… she could have healed you before she left."
"Kiss my ass." Naruto said, extremely grateful that despite not having a top layer of skin on more than half of his body he wasn't bleeding profusely. Once again, it hurt like hell though, "I don't need you telling me how to deal with the fallout from my own stuff."
"The way she makes you act sometimes is troublesome." Shikamaru said, taking enough mercy on Naruto's current state of being to stick a cigarette in his mouth and light it for his friend, "I'm not saying that using the Kyuubi's chakra was the wrong thing to do, because it wasn't. That guy was tough and we didn't have time for saving any tricks. But you went four-tails Naruto. What did we agree on about that?"
"Unless I'm absolutely sure someone around me's gonna die and I don't have another choice, don't fucking transform." Naruto said as if he were recanting something he'd been told several times already. Jiraiya, Tsunade, Shizune, every single guardian, and Shikamaru as well said as much to him.
"-Don't fucking transform." Shikamaru repeated in the third person, "Exactly. And why'd you do it here?"
"Because three-tails wasn't getting the job done?"
"How would you know? You barely stayed in three-tails to fight him." Shikamaru said, calling him on it as he had seen it, "You saw that lightning guy take a shot at Ino, and you were still pissed about it even after you finished the Omoi guy off."
"I didn't get pissed."
"You did get pissed. You're still pissed about it right now. Stop being pissed! You killed him!"
"It felt good didn't it?" The Kyuubi chimed in from within Naruto after Shikamaru had given his last statement. What, did he mean losing an entire layer of skin? Hell no that didn't feel good, "I mean to destroy your enemies like that. Just imagine how it would have been if you'd allow yourself to slip further, or yet, give me the reins. I'm more experienced at matters of destruction than you."
Yeah, but there was the entire matter of the fact that killing people didn't make him feel good, even after an intense battle like with Kimimaro and Itachi where he'd earned the win with blood.
'We'll talk later.' Naruto thought to his inner biju before addressing Shikamaru, "I'm going to blame it on a lack of sleep and nicotine for as long as we've been on this mission." He said, breathing smoke out past his cigarette. "I'm fine now. Seriously. I'll tighten the seal back after the skin grows back on my stomach if it'll make you feel better." A growl then went off in his head, 'We'll talk about it later.'
He wasn't going to tighten a damn thing back up. That was for Shikamaru.
"The seal's not the problem." Shikamaru insisted with a sigh, "I know you can handle the seal. No one our age is going to be better with them than you. It's your head when Ino's around. You've been weird ever since we got back."
Weird? What was weird to him? Naruto didn't think he was being weird. But he figured he was being normal by his own standards. He did get pissed and he knew that he did. Even right then he felt terrible about how he reacted. Ending a life the way he ended Omoi's. It was brutal.
"Seriously, I'm not mad anymore." Naruto said, sighing before wincing at his wounds, "It's fine. Look, can we just finish the mission? I just killed two people and I feel like an ass about it." Life of a ninja or not, killing someone never made him feel victorious in the aftermath, it made him feel terrible, "Sitting here, talking about chick problems that I may or may not have ain't gonna get us back to Tsunade-baachan any faster."
"Tch." Shikamaru rolled his eyes and, "When Ino gets back to her body she can heal you, then we can go. She's going to bitch you out after she sees you like that, but that's your problem." He noticed Naruto's eyes sharpen up and tensed up himself, "What's wrong?"
"I feel something else coming."
"Something else?"
Both young chunin stood back up and faced the direction that Naruto had chosen to turn in only for it to be occupied in a matter of a minute by Gaara, Temari, and Kankuro of Sunagakure. Both Temari and Kankuro looked cross, and rather worn, which probably meant that Team 7 had been able to handle them to an extent.
Gaara instead was staring directly at Naruto. With his current health issues, Gaara could feel Shukaku screaming in his head to take him down and see what the rest of his blood looked like, "Kill him! He's right there! He looks worn! Take him out! Finish him off! You know you want to! I want you to! Listen to your mother!"
Luckily, Gaara's improved relationship with his brother and sister let him learn things about their mother that he hadn't ever been privy to prior, 'You are not my mother. Be silent!' The only indication Gaara gave off of his discomfort in front of Naruto and Shikamaru was a momentary closing of his eyes.
"Gaara." Kankuro said, gesturing his head at Naruto and Shikamaru, "What do we do? He's the one you want to kill isn't he?"
It took a long while, as Gaara just stared Naruto down, contemplating deeply before he finally spoke up as the leader of the squad, "No. Not like this. When I kill Uzumaki Naruto I want it to be with our full power against one another." With that, he took steps in Naruto's direction and stopped within reaching distance of him, but Naruto didn't back up a step, "It has been a long time."
"Yeah, a real long time." Naruto replied, staring Gaara down directly, "Listen, killing me or not, you need to know. Akatsuki. A group is out there called Akatsuki made up of the world's strongest missing-nin, and they want all of the biju, so watch your back."
Shikamaru sent Naruto a momentary look, but realized that one way or another it was best that the other jinchuuriki were informed if they weren't already.
"You want to fight me again as well one day?" Gaara asked, sounding somewhat pleasantly surprised.
"No. I never want to fight you again actually. Are you nuts?" Naruto said in return, "Don't answer that actually. But you seem less… mad at everything now." Less lonely, "And I've killed enough people today."
Gaara knew that. The air was filled with the smell of blood. Granted, most of it was Naruto's since he'd blown the scent over most of the little destroyed fishing village along with his chakra aura, but it still smelled like blood nonetheless.
"Your concern is unnecessary." Gaara said back to him, "If there is anyone out there that wishes to take Shukaku from me… they can feel free to try."
"So now what?" Temari asked, eyeing the motionless body of Ino nearby the two other Konoha ninja, "What about the mission Gaara? Konoha has Tsunade with them right now."
"I care nothing about this mission." Gaara admitted rather bluntly, "It's a vanity assignment that father gave us. Contrary to what he says, we do not need Tsunade in Sunagakure and I am not here to return her home. I simply took this mission for one reason, the hopes of meeting you in battle again."
This sounded strange and farfetched, but it was true. Any high-level mission where it seemed as if Konoha would be involved, Gaara wanted to take it. He wanted to have another chance at fighting against the only person that had defeated him directly before. For three years he did this whenever the opportunity presented itself without the results he wished for.
And now… he wouldn't even be able to enjoy the struggle. And he really wanted to fight him.
Temari and Kankuro knew this, but they didn't know that fighting Naruto outweighed the missions that they'd gone on with him.
"Gaara…" Kankuro said, trying to reason with his brother, "…Dad's going to be pissed at you if you say that to him."
"Then I won't say it. As the Kazekage he should know better than to divert a village resource like a jinchuuriki to something like this." Turning his back and walking away from Naruto, back through his siblings, Gaara got a few more feet away before stopping, "Kankuro, Temari, we're leaving."
"L-Leaving?" Temari questioned. Aborting missions left a sour taste in her mouth, but things had gotten progressively worse as it seemed to all break down. Fighting to salvage something out of getting Tsunade had not gone as well as hoped, and even if Gaara ran the gauntlet of Konoha ninja protecting her, they'd then probably wind up getting on her bad side in the process, "Alright fine."
With that, the odd Sunagakure siblings, children of the Yondaime Kazekage departed the area as quickly as they arrived, eliciting a sigh of relief from both Naruto and Shikamaru.
"I could have taken him." Naruto said after Gaara had departed, "I just… really don't want to fight that guy again, you know?" However this meeting was infinitely more pleasant than the last time they'd come across each other.
"Yeah, I know." Shikamaru said in return.
"Seriously. Give me five minutes, I could have taken it to him."
"Are you trying to convince me or you?"
"Whose side are you on Shika?"
In a matter of minutes, Ino's body stirred on the ground and came back into functionality once her mind rejoined with it, and one of the first things she caught sight of was the current state of Naruto, "Oh my Kami, what the hell happened to you!?"
XxX
(Forests of Hi no Kuni)
Kiba and Akamaru flew through the trees en route to the bounty station that was the target objective, even as the sun peeked over the horizon just a touch. But Kiba was not running, he was riding, because he was unable to continue running any longer.
Seething to himself in pain as he rode Akamaru, Kiba's pants were stained with blood from inexplicable wounds on his legs, "What… the fuck is this?" He said before more shocks of pain jolted through him, "Why am I bleeding? What's going on?"
Grabbing a kunai he cut up the leg to find actual wounds on his body. But where did they come from? The only injury he received was that little bloody nick he took when he drilled that guy with the scythe into the dirt.
"Gah!" Another stab wound found its way into his leg, forcing more blood from the injury. Akamaru whined in concern, but Kiba was not going to stop just because of that," Just… just keep going boy."
What was happening?"
XxX
(Elsewhere in the Countryside)
Shino and Hinata watched as a ghastly-looking Hidan seemed to keep stabbing himself in the leg and waiting on some kind of reaction to come from one of them. Needless to say, both were stunned. Moments ago he acted as if he had them checkmated, and now he couldn't seem to understand why whatever he was doing wasn't working the way he had intended it to.
"Come on." The maniacal Akatsuki member said as he stabbed himself in the leg one more time with a retractable pike and shrieked in pain that he was expecting to be sharing with one of the Team 8 members in front of him, "One of you drop already! Whose blood did I get then? I swear to Jashin, it better not have been my blood!"
"What are you talking about?" Shino asked, still standing at the ready in case this was all just a ploy to lower their guard to get close to them again.
"This is supposed to link me to one of you worthless little shits!" Hidan angrily explained, "It has to be one of you! You're the only ones I've been fighting!"
But it wasn't one of them. Hidan hadn't injured one of them enough to draw blood from them despite his previous unending pursuit until Kiba interjected.
Oh no, Kiba. Before departing, Kiba had sported a few cuts that he couldn't explain getting from his last successful attack on the odd Akatsuki member. Was he nicked by the blades of that weapon in the process? And if he was, Hidan didn't realize it because Kiba had been so quick in his attack and so quick in leaving at their prompting.
This could either be really good or really bad. Really good because he hadn't tried anything fatal that he could survive and Kiba couldn't, really bad because he'd still stabbed himself several times and if he was linked to Kiba he'd have been injured as well.
"Shino-kun…" Hinata said quietly, "What are we going to do?" Kiba was at risk, even if Hidan didn't wound himself any further, they couldn't fight him without hurting Kiba as well… could they?
Shino had been looking at Hidan long and hard, and his gaze had been attracted to around the man's feet, "Hinata, do you see that circle around his feet? What is that?"
Hinata's Byakugan was on, but she had been so occupied and caught off-guard by everything that had already been happening that she almost missed what Shino was talking about, "There's a chakra connection running through that symbol, going into Hidan."
Get him out of the circle first and foremost, and with their abilities, step two would be to destroy the circle. Doing that without hurting him would be the biggest problem presented to them, because hurting him would be hurting Kiba as well.
But if there was chakra running through the circle… maybe they could do something about that.
Shino forcefully clasped his hands together, fingers interlaced, before he moved his arms out in Hidan's direction, "I had this set up in advance… but then this happened. Hijutsu: Mushidama (Secret Technique: Insect Sphere)!" From the grass around Hidan, thousands and thousands of kikaichu rose up around Hidan in the form of a ball that surrounded his body, "You've been checked."
"Ooh." Hidan taunted, faking fear, "You're gonna drain my chakra and yak-yak-yak-yak-yak. So what? You can stab me, burn me, blow me up, suck out my chakra, but you can't kill me! What are you going to do? You'd better make it count."
"Juuho Soushiken (Gentle Step Twin Lion Fists)!"
With his vision obscured by the insects swarming all about, Hidan didn't get to see Hinata moving around the battlefield to a vulnerable point at his back to attack him from. Around both of her hands, two shrouds of blue chakra formed in the shape of lion heads.
'Dumb bitch.' Hidan thought to himself, preparing to take the blow. It wouldn't do anything fatal even if it landed, 'All she's going to do is fuck up whoever I'm connected to.' Feeling a pull on something connected to his chakra, Hidan figured it was Shino's bugs trying to suck him dry, but when he looked down he saw portions of his circle had been ruined by layers of insects in certain places, "No! The connection!"
'He can't possibly dodge this!' Hinata thought to herself as she pushed her arms forward to smash Hidan with her most powerful taijutsu, hopefully in his spine so that she could possibly paralyze him, 'The chakra in the circle is gone!'
"Not fast enough little girl!" Hidan turned on his heel and lashed out with a scarily well-aimed kick to Hinata's face, avoiding her jutsu-covered hands in the process, "Ha! I hope that broke something!"
Hinata's body landed on the ground hard, her head swimming from the boot she'd just received at the hands of the deceptively strong Hidan, 'My strongest attack jutsu failed. So this is how scary an S-rank ninja can be.'
"I'm the slowest member of Akatsuki." Hidan admitted with a smirk as his skin returned to normal from the grim reaper look it had been sporting moments before, "But you're not fast enough to catch me off-guard with something like that."
With a vulnerable little strumpet on the ground prime for attack, Hidan hurled his scythe at her like a flail via the cable attached to it underneath his cloak sleeve. On the ground as she was, she was too good a target to pass up.
"Mushi Kame no Jutsu (Insect Jar Jutsu)!" A large amount of Shino's insects rapidly flew around Hinata's body in a dome formation with a strong enough force to protect her, bouncing Hidan's scythe off of it.
"Not good enough!" Hidan caught the scythe out of the air while running to the insect dome before he began slashing it apart with reckless abandon, "Now let me share some pain with you honey!" As the insects began to dissipate, Hidan lifted his scythe high over head to bring it down on the pale-eyed Hyuuga chunin.
'Almost.' Hinata thought to herself, having gotten back onto her feet with the time gifted to her to recover from Hidan's counterattack, "Now! Shugohakke Rokujuuyon Shou (Protection of the Eight Trigrams Sixty-Four Palms)!"
Seemingly like a dance, Hinata spun swiftly, her palms and fingertips nimbly producing a constant flow of chakra that she formed into a sharp net field around her body to protect herself from Hidan's pending attack. Due to the insects of Shino that had been obscuring her to an extent, the thin glow of the chakra was concealed until the scythe breached past them.
The immortal Akatsuki member found his attack not only blocked, but his right arm was severed just under the elbow. Wow. That was some sharp chakra. The kind of control it must have taken to force one's chakra into that tight a form and keep it powerful enough to be like a blade.
He was no stranger to getting limbs removed in battle however. When Hinata's jutsu repelled him and took his arm along with it, he backed up as if he'd been repelled, simultaneously switching his weapon to his other hand with sleight of hand. The second that stupid field of chakra dropped…
And once it did he hurled his scythe at her again, this time at a much closer range, too quick for her to reenact her defensive measures. With awe-inspiring flexibility she bent back and placed her hands on the ground, allowing the scythe to pass over her as she flipped out of the way.
While it was unexpected, it wasn't entirely unaccounted for, and Hidan had already been rushing forward to follow up even before she dodged his last move, his pike drawn and extended to run her through, "You'd better hope this kills you!"
Still vulnerable from the last evasive action she'd taken, Hinata landed back on her feet to find Hidan within a few steps of stabbing into her with his secondary weapon. As he moved his arm forward to finish the job, Shino's body jumped in front of hers and took the blow instead before dissipating into a swarm of insects.
What was with these brats? Hidan and Kakuzu mowed down a whole platoon of ANBU before they'd caught up to the Tsunade escort squad. He was not about to accept the fact that two stupid Konoha clan runts were good enough to keep him from eviscerating them.
It was a clash of styles really. That was all. Shino didn't fight close, and Hinata almost had to. While Hinata gave him the distraction, Shino was the main attacker. Using whatever opening the Hyuuga princess could provide him to
"You say that you're not afraid of having your chakra drained. This is foolish. Why you ask?" Shino calmly said as his insects attempted to overrun Hidan once again after allowing Hinata to escape grievous harm, "Because immortal or not, you should always have a healthy fear of your opponent's ninjutsu."
"Why fear what can't kill you?" Hidan asked, licking his lips as he warded off the insects with skillful spins of his scythe, "That's what immortality is all about! I don't fear anything you weak little shits can do to me. No one can kill me!"
"There are worse things than death."
"Let's test that shall we?" Stopping his retreat from Shino's bugs, Hidan took a deep breath and unzipped the front of his robe to reveal his open chest. Taking his pike he quickly carved out a bloody symbol of Jashin on his torso and made a set of hand-seals, holding the last one as the insects engulfed him, "Jujutsu: Chimei Setsuzoku o Seigyo (Curse Technique: Controlling Fatal Connection)!"
The kikaichu began to suck Hidan dry, but something strange began to happen, Shino began to feel his own chakra reserves weaken and falter as well for seemingly no reason. They were running low at a rate that he could attribute to being similar in how an enemy's chakra would be drained by his insects. Hidan's skin temporarily switched to the black color with the white skull-like markings.
'What is this?' Shino began sweating and looked for the symbol of Jashin at Hidan's feet, but even if it had been there, Hidan had never gotten a single drop of his blood. With no other option he called off the attack off his kikaichu. With the amount of chakra he'd lost, the hive that was his body was already going to suffer enough for the dearth of energy.
"Heh, heh, heh…" Hidan chuckled to himself despite his own showing of the loss of chakra, "Well I guess that useless-ass jutsu ain't as useless as I thought it was. I'd rather hurt you idiots myself, but having you do the honors to yourselves is almost as good."
Shino found himself staring at the symbol on Hidan's body as the man's skin color returned to normal. It didn't stay that way like it had when he'd ingested Kiba's blood. It only turned that way when the bugs started draining his chakra.
Were they to attack him, as long as he could activate that jutsu they would wind up taking the damage from their attacks on him. It was a crash and see who could stand up situation. A technique that favored a battle of attrition. Hidan was immortal, he could take it. No one else could.
'This really is an S-rank ninja.' Shino thought to himself, sunglasses hiding the pensive look on his face.
XxX
The sight of the slug princess falling to the ground motionless put a smile on Kakuzu's face underneath his facemask. As his elemental masks rebonded with his body he walked over to her to ensure that she was dead. She'd been badly electrocuted by one of his strongest, fastest lightning techniques while she was surrounded by water.
"Oh… Hashirama countered that one." Kakuzu said as he stood over her. Reaching down at her neck he felt no pulse and prepared to seal her body away for safekeeping. And they weren't that far away from the bounty station either, so he could cash in on her corpse within the hour, "I guess enough of the clan talent didn't trickle down to his spoiled little granddaughter did it? An S-rank medic-nin is still just a medic-nin I guess." He felt a little static jolt come from her as he let go so that he could grab a sealing scroll.
*THUMP THUMP*
Kakuzu's eyes widened as he was still close enough to feel Tsunade's pulse kick in for one strong beat. The arm he'd just felt for her signs of life with wound up clutched in the impossibly strong, crushing grip of the blonde woman.
"You say that like being a medic is an insult."
Kakuzu could have sworn that even though his guts were insulated with an uncountable amount of black threads due to the Earth Grudge Fear kinjutsu, the punch that came from Tsunade as she rose off of the ground squished up his organs on the inside.
The only thing that kept him from flying off into the distance was the fact that she'd been holding onto him the entire time.
Actually, it did more than that, as Tsunade had been pulling on his arm to reel him deeper into the punch to begin with. Not only had she effortlessly dislocated his shoulder, her fist sailed straight through his chest and out through the back in a bloody, rib cage destroying mess, pulling a ragged breath from Kakuzu as he sank to his knees.
Laying face down in the soaked ground, Kakuzu's odd green and red eyes rolled back in his head and right forward again, 'Two of my hearts.' He said as he inhaled harshly with his severely damaged lungs, 'She destroyed two of my hearts with that punch.'
Jumping back, Tsunade looked down at the hand that she'd used to punch straight through Kakuzu. Her bare arm was covered in his blood up to her bicep, 'I'm glad I got over the whole hemophobia thing with the brat.' Making a fist with her bloody hand, Tsunade looked over at Kakuzu who had just risen from the dead. The massive hole in his chest that she'd just created was closing itself off with black threads, "Two down, three to go."
"Tch." Having more 'lives' so to speak made Kakuzu more prone to making mistakes that he would have avoided before he'd taken on his signature jutsu to prolong his life, "Consider that a freebie girl. You will not get another chance like that again." Hashirama for all of his power that clearly overwhelmed what Tsunade was capable of didn't fatally wound him.
But the Kakuzu of that time was fighting for something. He had an ideology that he'd been trying to uphold. He believed in something so strongly that he chose to take on the most dangerous ninja in the world by himself for his village of Takigakure without a second thought.
The Kakuzu of today fought for money, the only thing left that he could believe in. It was a hollow existence, but it was one that he had been good at. Even Akatsuki recruited him by promising him vast amounts of money, and he'd even taken on the title as the organization's treasurer.
"That's it." Kakuzu said as his shoulder fixed itself. He was prepared to remove his Akatsuki cloak to continue battling with the Sannin, "It seems I really do have to go out of my way to show you just where you stand."
"Kakuzu. Hidan."
The sound of a disembodied voice in his head prompted him to stop mid-action. He knew who that was, 'Leader-sama.'
Talk about terrible timing. And he couldn't reply, because unlike their 'all-powerful' leader neither of them had telekinetic capabilities, long-range or otherwise.
"You've taken enough time off to tend to your personal business. Now that Kisame has thoroughly recovered it is time for everyone to get back to their assigned missions. There is work to be done, and there's trouble mounting on our plans. Report to a safehouse and get ready for a meeting at once."
"Grr…" Kakuzu seethed quietly while he heard an annoyed 'Aw man!' from Hidan who jumped through the wall of flames separating his battlefield from his more maniacal partner, "I take it your brains weren't scrambled enough to miss that message."
"Time to go?" Hidan asked, patting out a flame on the sleeve of his cloak, "Pssht. Well I guess I killed enough people already as it is. It'll suffice for Jashin-sama I guess." Even though he really wanted to finish those Hyuuga and Aburame brats, "You didn't kill the old bat yet. What, is she immortal too?"
"Not likely." Kakuzu said before he and Hidan used Shunshin to move a ways away from Tsunade, "I'll be back… to collect my money. More important matters beckon at the moment."
Clenching her fists, Tsunade thought to go after them, but decided against it. They weren't going off in the direction that she'd broken off from Naruto in, thus he wasn't the matter of whatever business they were talking about.
Come to think of it, they probably didn't even know he was there if they were present solely due to Kakuzu's greed.
Waiting for several moments until she was sure a roundabout attack wasn't coming, Tsunade called out over the crackle of the flames in the field, "Kids!"
"Tsunade-sama." Good. They were alright. The bug kid being the one to answer so quickly signified that much, "Are you unharmed?"
"It'll take more than some ragdoll human to finish me off." Tsunade assured them. A part of her was greatly impressed by the fact that they hadn't been killed. If Hidan was half as dangerous as Kakuzu, a two-on-one fight against him still probably wouldn't have worked out in their favor, "Come on. The last rendezvous point is the bounty station. Let's go."
There was still work to be done. All of this was not about to be for nothing. The worst ten hours that she'd had in quite a long while.
XxX
(Konohagakure no Sato – Konoha Cemetery)
For Yakushi Kabuto it had been a hard night's work after he finished spying on Jiraiya and Danzo in the Academy. There was one more thing he wanted to do before leaving. He'd wanted to do this for quite some time, but the moment he did so he knew his cover would be blown, whether it appeared that he'd gotten away clean or not.
Sure, working in the hospital he'd gotten plenty of DNA samples from the shinobi that had come through, alive or dead, but for the most part they were usually nobodies.
No, if he wanted the best material for the jutsu he was looking more into he had to get it from the best place possible. Most of the most powerful shinobi of history were already dead and gone. There was no better place to retrieve substantial remains of powerful individuals.
He had to depart soon though after covering his tracks. The sun was almost up and after this there would be no coming back. It was fortunate that the graveyard already sat at the outskirts of the village, he could make a quick departure and make tracks to the nearest border.
"Yakushi-san."
Damn it.
Turning around, quite a distance back, Kabuto turned to see Umino Iruka coming his way. The friendly schoolteacher with the scar across the bridge of his nose and the brown hair in the high ponytail. Double damn it.
Pasting his best cluelessly pleasant smile on his face, Kabuto turned to greet the chunin who seemed a bit confused at his presence in this environment, "Good morning Iruka-sensei. What are you doing out here so early?"
"My class is meant to clean and tend to the graves today." Iruka informed him, looking around subtly, "What are you doing out here so early?"
What could he say? That he was out there to visit the graves of his former teammates before he had to take on a shift at the hospital? No. Iruka was astute enough to know the kind of shifts that a genin-level medic-nin would be allowed to take. Even if he was twenty-three years old, he was still a genin, and he wasn't an exceptionally talented enough medic-nin (as far as Konoha knew) for him to be allowed to ignore this.
Thus was the curse of having a cover of a talentless ninja that allowed him to avoid scrutiny for as long as it did.
He couldn't say he was out to visit the grave of a patient he'd gotten attached to that had died. Then there would be follow-up questions that he couldn't answer, that would lead him into a trap.
"I know what you've been doing here Yakushi-san. It's rather appalling."
A hair-raising shiver went down Kabuto's spine at hearing the cold tone from the usually quite amicable man in front of him. It was a complete shift in demeanor from just a moment ago, "You just arrived here as I was preparing to leave Iruka-sensei. I don't see what's so appalling about visiting a grave."
"How about robbing them?"
Without another word being said, Kabuto slipped a kunai into his hand and attacked Iruka who seemed to be prepared for the attack, defending himself with his own kunai, 'Hm. He's so out of practice his movements are dulled.' Kabuto thought to himself with a smirk, "I wonder how you even found me. I erected a barrier around the graveyard to let me know if anyone was going to step onto the premises while I was doing my work."
"I'm a sensor ninja. I could sense that you had a barrier up." Iruka said before Kabuto disarmed him, losing his own kunai as well in the process. At least they were on equal footing without any weaponry in hand, "I don't understand why you would do something like this now of all times. Even as a genin you would have to know something about the spy threat. You know there won't be any leniency given to you once you're captured."
Kabuto couldn't help but laugh out loud at that point. It was just too much. Iruka had him red-handed but wasn't even aware of just how serious the situation was. He wasn't just some depraved grave-robber, "…Let me tell you something that's just between us Iruka-sensei."
'The way he moves.' Iruka thought to himself, preparing for a taijutsu battle until he noticed something that wasn't right. Something off-putting, 'That's not the way a genin moves. Any genin.' Kabuto's body language wasn't that of a hack ninja.
Iruka knew ninja body language. Even though he was just a chunin, he'd made enough genin out of academy students and seen enough chunin and above in his career to perceive that about the people that he saw, able to size them up moments after seeing them.
Five hand-seals came from Kabuto with an ease that can only come from practice and an expertise that seemed inconsistent with what records there were on him. Iruka wouldn't claim to know Kabuto's entire career rundown by heart, but he'd been in the most publicized chunin exam in history, and there had been some information about him that everyone had been privy to for background, "Chakura no Mesu (Chakra Scalpel)."
Both of Kabuto's hands were bathed in visible blue chakra, the sign of a rather high-level medical jutsu. Was he actually going to fight with that? Who was this man?
"Just between you and I Iruka-sensei…" Kabuto said as he faced Iruka down, "…I'm the spy you've all been looking for."
Before he could ask why he'd divulge such information without reason, Iruka felt a sharp pain in his heart from behind and turned his head to see Kabuto standing behind him, "Guh! C-Clone jutsu?"
"No." The Kabuto behind Iruka said as the one that had been in front of him collapsed lifelessly, "A surgically altered corpse. But that's not important. You know why I would have told you something like this? Because you're going to die here. Because I want them to know that I was here, it'll be like a big calling card saying, 'Kabuto was here.'"
"Why?" Iruka asked, feeling the damage to his spine to go along with his heart injury. He couldn't even move his arms. This was not good, "You were a Konoha ninja. For years."
"I've been splitting my allegiance all over the place actually. Blame Shimura Danzo." Kabuto said in a stone-cold tone, "He set the foundation to make me who I am. The 'roots' if you will."
With that, Kabuto removed his glowing blue hand from Iruka's back, removing the Chakra Scalpel and allowing the man to fall to the ground so that he could take his leave. What a shame. Oh well, what kind of spy let himself be known on the way out without leaving a few bodies in their wake?
Now it was all a matter of getting to the border where he wouldn't be so easily pursued any further. He'd have a good two hours of a headstart before anyone even probably figured out that he was the perpetrator for sure and sent a tracking squad after him. So there was no time to dawdle.
"Goodbye sensei. Orochimaru-sama is waiting on me to return." Kabuto said as he left the graveyard in a Shunshin.
And he did leave. He left a wide-eyed Iruka there on the ground, bleeding internally amongst the gravestones, breathing languidly because of what had happened to his lungs, unable to even move a muscle due to what Kabuto had done to his spine.
"Ugh." He couldn't move and there was too much fluid in his lungs for him to breathe. It was too early in the morning for anyone else other than him to be there because it was his job to be there. His eyes peered up at the sight of the sun slowly rising as his own was starting to set.
There was one more thing he could do as he felt himself get cold and his chakra started draining to preserve his vital bodily functions, and it didn't require hand-seals, but for it to be useful it would take a massive amount of chakra.
When he first taught Naruto Chakura Hankyouteii no Jutsu (Chakra Echolocation Jutsu), Iruka warned Naruto about putting too much chakra into the jutsu when he didn't need it. It was just something that had been a side-effect of Naruto's massive reserves and lack of real experience controlling it.
The thing about the jutsu was that if you put enough chakra into the sonar burst, others would be able to pinpoint your location as well from using the jutsu. That was normally a detriment to the jutsu, but in this case it would serve a positive purpose.
'Enough chakra' for Iruka at this point to register enough of a pulse for others to feel it and find reason to investigate meant sacrificing the rest of his own dying reserves. But he was too far gone to be saved anyway if he didn't do it regardless.
'At least…' Iruka thought to himself as he mustered what he had left in the chakra department, 'At least I can maybe get them a quicker lead on Kabuto.' He couldn't leave them a message, so alerting them in advance was the best thing he could do.
As the sun hung in the sky, Iruka figured that he could leave it in the hands of his village. Not to avenge him, but to keep whatever Kabuto had obtained from Konoha from harming other denizens of their home.
XxX
(Southern Hi no Kuni Bounty Station – Daybreak)
A by now healed Naruto moved the rest of the way at the head of the Team 10, travelling to the last rendezvous point for the entire Tsunade escort squad. Ino had done a good, quick job of fixing him up and repairing his skin for him (relatively quick as it only took fifteen minutes), though she was still extremely unnerved by the fact that he'd done such a thing to himself.
Either way, the mission was still on and they needed to keep going to get the obscenely high bounty off of Tsunade's head per the mission parameters. Not too much farther though, as there was a rather large, very conspicuous building sitting on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere.
"What's this place even supposed to be for?" Ino asked as they caught sight of it and landed directly across the large dirt road in front of it. She was tired and dirty and desperately wished that they could go back to that awesome hotel from the night before so that she could be pampered, "Guys? You were the Fire Daimyo's men, do you know?"
Naruto gave her an 'I don't know' gesture, as he really only remembered things that he was going to be dispatched in order to handle personally. Shikamaru had an idea though, "I'm pretty sure that this is supposed to be a traveler's rest stop, but no one comes here anymore."
With the current influx of inn towns granting travelers a more comfortable place to rest for the night, and many more that allowed other amenities more lavish than that, overnight traveler lodgings that were free were starting to become obsolete.
The building actually did look rather old though, giving Shikamaru's guess credence.
Also giving him credence was the fact that Akamaru walked out of the front door carrying a lowly cursing and complaining Kiba on his back with blood coming down his legs, "That place is fucking gross." Kiba said to himself and to a whining Akamaru, "Hidden behind a urinal in a dirty public bathroom? Really?" Needless to say his senses had been assaulted.
"Whoa." Naruto said upon seeing Kiba's bleeding form on his trusty ninken, "What the hell happened to you?" The skin on his legs happened to be all torn up, and he'd seemed to have lost quite a bit of blood, presumably having taken more than one blood pill to replenish it from the rate it seemed to be coming out of him. Akamaru's white fur was getting stained red.
"You know…" Kiba said upon first realizing that Team 10 was there, "Anytime the resident medic-nin on that squad wants to come over here and stop me from bleeding out, that'd be just great." Akamaru barked in agreement.
Upon realizing that he was talking about her, Ino grumbled and quickly made her way over to her former Academy classmate, "…Not a medic-nin…" And she wasn't. She just knew a little bit for just in case situations.
"Close enough. Be easy woman."
"So what happened?" Naruto asked as he jogged over to Kiba who was being set down on the ground to be healed, "You just came out… alone. Shika and you both split up to join back with your right teams. What's up?"
"Yeah about that. They were fighting some Akatsuki guy with Tsunade when they told me to go ahead." Kiba had to say something else to keep Naruto from turning in the direction where he figured they'd be in and heading off that way, "No, no, they're coming this way right now. I can smell them getting closer."
"What the hell were they doing here!?" Naruto exclaimed. They'd just gotten through dealing with Itachi and Kisame before taking this mission and two more came forward to take them on, "Man." When it rained it poured. That was all he could say.
"I hit one of those guys flush with the Tsuuga and he got right back up like nothing happened." Kiba recanted, wincing as the green glow covered Ino's hands and went over his injured legs, "They had some seriously strong chakra. And those guys are supposed to be after you?"
"Did you get any names?" Shikamaru asked, "We've only got two. There are supposed to be nine in all."
"No." Kiba said with a shake of his head, "Hinata and Shino sent me away so fast I wasn't even able to size up the whole situation before I left."
Ino continued fixing Kiba's wounds with the Mystical Palm medical technique for a few minutes longer when the remainder of the squad that had seemingly joined up while on the run made their presences known. Team 7 and Team 8 landed, surrounding Tsunade who took note of Team 10 and Kiba with Akamaru.
"Oh. That's good. You're already here." Tsunade said as she walked over to the others, "Everyone still have all of their fingers and toes?"
"Well someone didn't have their skin for a little while at one point." Ino chimed in, shooting a look at Naruto who just gave her a shrug for the four-tails side-effects, "But other than that, yes. I guess we're all okay."
Hearing that someone didn't have their skin for a while got Tsunade to instantly crane her head towards Naruto who knew what was coming and put his hands up defensively, "Before you say anything else Tsunade-baachan, it was completely unavoidable. We didn't have the time for a fight without it. We had to catch up with you."
"And you had time to shorten your lifespan, burn off all of your skin, and tire yourself out?" Apparently that was a bit of news to the vast majority of the squad that hadn't been close enough to feel Naruto's power surge or bear witness to what he'd done, "You never look this haggard brat."
Naruto found that there wasn't much he could say to that other than the following, "…We still beat you here didn't we?"
Tsunade just stared at him for several seconds before dismissing him, "The only reason I don't flick you halfway down that road back to the capital is because I'm sure the Yamanaka girl wasted a lot of time and chakra fixing your broken-down ass."
"Love you too."
Sasuke crossed his arms over his chest and squinted at the sunlight hitting him in the eyes, "What about the mission? This is the bounty station, so don't tell me all you guys have done is stay out here and fix Kiba."
"Asshole." Kiba said before pointing out a blood trail that led inside and back out to where he wound up laying down for Ino to heal him. By now Hinata was assisting as well shortly after seeing her teammate on the ground, "I already went inside and back out. I thought your eyes were supposed to be good."
Sasuke scoffed and turned away from the Inuzuka youngster while Sakura asked the question that everyone else there wanted to know, "So what happened? Did you handle the bounty?"
"Yes and no." Kiba said, looking away from everyone else while his healing continued, "There were some things I could do, some things I couldn't do. It's complicated."
Yes and no? What the hell did that mean?
"Uncomplicate it then." Shino insisted behind his shades.
Growling at him momentarily, Kiba then decided to launch into explanation as Tsunade was now paying rapt attention to him, "Uh, I couldn't take the bounty off per se. The guy said that he couldn't do that since he's just the payout." Cracking her knuckles with one hand she slowly began stomping her way towards the bounty station, "I already threatened him."
"You're not me." She said as she planned on busting down the damn walls until she found the guy in charge.
"You've got to find the guy that set the bounty if you want to do anything about it. Even if you kill the guy inside another black market manager'll take his place." There were black market bounty stations all over the country.
And whether they knew it or not, even if Tsunade remembered the town that had the banker that she'd borrowed from and didn't pay back, Kakuzu had quite successfully scared him deep into the boonies in order to hide.
Bounties didn't really come off anyway. The person that commissioned it already put the money forward to be paid out. Team 10 knew a lot about this kind of topic because their sensei Asuma had a huge bounty on his own head that he loved bragging about, and Team 8 knew because they were a good tracking team and trackers were good at hunting runaways, nuke-nin, and bounty heads.
"So what do we do now?" Naruto asked, scratching his head, "We can't get it off of her without finding the guy that put it on her to begin with, and I really don't remember the guy so I know she doesn't." She'd done the same thing to so many creditors over the years, so she wasn't going to remember one in particular, "Shizune-neechan might, but I doubt even she would."
"Well I did do something that'd help." Kiba said as he began to feel the relief from his injuries healing up. He still wondered how he got them but he could find that out later, "You're not gonna like it though." He said to Tsunade, "…Because the only thing I could really do was change the bingo book entry to protect you some more."
"What? How?"
Needless to say, Kiba really wasn't excited about what he had to say next, knowing what he was privy to about Tsunade, "Well, I kind of had to get the heat off of you somehow, so I used your name and ninja ID to have them update your profile rundown to align you back with Konoha. At least now that'll stop villages thinking they can recruit you."
"But now I can't leave Konoha whenever I want." Tsunade seethed, making it look like she wished to strangle the dog-attuned chunin where he laid. How he even got her ninja ID number was beyond her, but it was basically as good as making an official statement on her behalf to the world, "…Sarutobi-sensei's going to love that."
"Sorry!" Kiba apologized, trying to protect himself as he scooted away from Tsunade and his own medical attention on the ground, eventually finding Naruto and Sasuke to use as a shield, "I tried for forty-five minutes and I couldn't think of anything else to salvage the mission with, can you?"
Tsunade tried to come up with something and stopped and started several times, but nothing came out of her mouth. Eventually Naruto spoke up and chimed in, "Oh come on baa-chan, you basically moved back into Konoha already, and you know you're still not gonna take missions anyway so what's the problem?"
In response, all the Sannin did was buck threateningly in Naruto's general direction to send him taking off away from her and her rather volatile temper.
"Oh my." Hinata said as she was able to see how far and fast Naruto had gone in such a short time with the Byakugan, "I didn't know Naruto-kun was so fast."
"He'd better be fast." Tsunade kept a deep frown on her face until she turned in the direction that she could see Naruto running down the road. Walking until she was at the front of the whole group she actually let a smile onto her face now that no one could see , if only for a moment, "Alright everyone, let's go home. Who knows how the place fell apart without you all there." She said sarcastically.
She didn't know it at the time, and neither did any of the rest of them, but it really didn't turn out to be that sarcastic in the long run.
Guardian Days 12
(Two Years and Four Months after Shikamaru and Naruto's Acceptance)
This year's chunin exam had taken place in Kumogakure once again, another sign of Kumo's growing strength, and again the Fire Daimyo wanted to be in attendance for the festivities. Needless to say, the man got what he wanted, especially when it came to things like this. Once again all Guardian hands were meant to be on deck and indeed they were, but much like it did a year prior, something major happened to Naruto.
In the course of the festivities, a few wagers were made, some between people with vastly differing luck, and that led to bets being made that could not be backed up.
Tsunade and Jiraiya owed Naruto money, because apparently he was great at picking out dark horses for winning their way through rounds in the tournament. They paid him the only way they had to do so after they'd lost all of their gambling money to him and some of the other Guardians at some point.
At the close of the chunin exams, Naruto was told by Jiraiya who his father was.
Talk about a culture shift.
He kind of shut down after that, and wasn't rightfully fit to carry on with the important guard duty for the long trip back to the capital of Hi no Kuni if he couldn't get his head straight by the time they were slated to leave the next day.
Naruto had left Kumo for a bit of air. A bit of air must have meant leaving and heading out roughly twenty to thirty miles outside of the village on a walkabout, because that was what he did. It didn't take Shikamaru that long to find him, although the latter wasn't pleased to do so.
Kaminari no Kuni had a lot of mountain ranges, and the only thing more annoying for a guy like Shikamaru than having to walk was having to walk around in a mountainous place.
"You gonna go back yet?" Shikamaru asked as he walked with Naruto through some gigantic watery valley covered in clouds and fog, "Seriously, if it's walking around you want to do, wait for tomorrow. You can do all of the walking you want during the escort back."
"Can't smoke indoors in Kumo, you know?" Naruto said with a cigarette in his mouth that was more ash than actual cigarette at this point. The sound of a waterfall filled his ears and he turned in the direction that they heard it from, "Hold on one second."
Naruto looked down at his hands before charging off in the direction of the waterfall, shouting at the top of his lungs. Shikamaru flinched and cringed when he saw Naruto slam his hands into the waterfall and cut a split straight up the middle that destroyed the top of the fall.
Huh… well someone finished their wind manipulation training didn't they?
The perturbed blond landed back at Shikamaru's side, his cigarette remains now non-existent due to the downward force of the waterfall he'd just split, "Sorry about that Shika. You were saying?"
"You get that out of your system? You feel better?" Shikamaru asked before pointing in the general direction of Kumo, "Can we go back now? I don't know what's wrong with you."
"I just found out my old man is the Yondaime Hokage."
"That's… awesome."
"I know."
"…That's so troublesome."
"I know."
"Are you mad about it?"
"Not mad."
"Emotionally distressed?"
"Dude, no."
So he knew who both of his parents were by now. It had to be a shock to the system for sure though. And Shikamaru couldn't relate, so he had absolutely nothing to contribute to help out at all other than just being there, "Want to destroy some more stuff before we go back?" Shikamaru offered.
Looking around and finding that there was a lot of barren rock and absolutely nothing else around them, it kind of set Naruto's mind right there, "Yeah, just a little bit more."
There had been a plan to form a Rasengan and from there, Shikamaru didn't know what Naruto was going to do other than tear up what he had the energy to, but they were quite rudely interrupted before that could happen.
"Ye~~~ah!"
Both young Guardians were forced away from each other by a large figure crashing down into the water between where they had been standing just moments before. Whether it was an attack or a falling chunk of mountain they didn't know, but both were prepared as if it were an attack.
This was what they got for leaving the party it seemed. Shikamaru blamed Naruto, but now was not the time for that.
As everything around them calmed, they could easily tell that it was a person that had taken a huge swan dive down on top of them. A very muscular, dark-skinned man with odd-patterned white hair, a goatee, a white Kumo headband, and small sunglasses with a bull's horn tattoo on his cheek. He wore Kumo's white one-shoulder flak jacket with no shirt underneath, a red rope around his waist, white and red hand and shin guards, seven swords on his back, and a tattoo with the kanji for 'iron' on his right shoulder.
"Now, now, now." The burly man said, gesturing his arms flamboyantly, "What'chu two doin' on my training ground?"
Despite being separated, Naruto and Shikamaru both looked at each other confusedly. Tactful as ever, Naruto spoke up first, "Uh, who the hell are you?" Stay smooth Naruto, budding jinchuuriki extraordinaire.
"You don't know Killer B fool?" The large Kumo ninja asked, seemingly incredulously at the ignorance of the two foreign shinobi, "Ya 'bout to get an education on Kumo's rules!" Seriously, who didn't know who he was? He was a hero! A superstar, "Listen and learn before you get burned!"
Once again, both younger men were at a loss for words, "…Is he saying he wants to fight with us?" Shikamaru asked with a raised eyebrow, "I can't tell."
"I don't know." Naruto replied, wondering if he should pull his machete or if that would be a horrible idea or not, "You're the smart one. And why the fuck does he keep rhyming? Stop rhyming!" He then blinked and amended his statement, "…Actually I don't mind the rhyming, just rhyme better!
The abnormal Killer B responded to Naruto's shout with a middle finger sent his way, "Jinchuuriki-sama doesn't have to take that from you, you're just a snot-nosed baby that's tone deaf too!"
"You're damn right I don't have to take this from you."
"Naruto, I think he's talking about himself."
"That would mean he's a jinchuuriki Shika."
"I am a jinchuuriki ya brat! The jinchuuriki as a matter of fact!" Killer B stated, throwing his hand into the air with his index and pinky finger forming a pair of horns in the sky, "Whooo! It's true boys and it ain't trite, the great Eight-tails will end your life!"
"Eight…"
"…Tails…"
Naruto smacked his lips in thought before asking the next most important question that came to mind, "And how much can you actually control?" Please say three tails or less. For the love of his own bravado please say three tails or less.
"Ha! Been training since I was small, so the great Killer B can control it all!"
All eight tails.
Concern over his parents was the last thing Naruto was really worried about at the moment. He could dwell on that later. Right then he and Shikamaru had to worry about how to get themselves out of trouble for apparently trespassing on the training grounds of the perfect jinchuuriki, because they weren't going to even try and fight him.
Even if they survived a fight with him they weren't going to win it, and it would have started an international incident.
But running away didn't make them any less manly did it?
Hopefully they never did anything to piss that person off in the future.
Jutsu List
Fuuton: Akao Shimpuu (Wind Release: Red-Tailed Typhoon). S-rank ninjutsu, offensive, all ranges. Highly specialized, to even utilize this jutsu wind release mastery is required as well as a minimum of four extra appendages in addition to arms. This is not a problem for a jinchuuriki such as Uzumaki Naruto, but even for him it requires a minimum of four tails to generate the fan motion that provides the 'kick' of the jutsu. Holding highly pressurized wind chakra in one's hands, Naruto will project it and allow the chakra tails to blow it away from him with pulverizing cyclonic force. If the flow is reversed it can also be used as a method of suction. Theory of additives says that the more tails used in the jutsu, the more powerful the wind motion.
Jujutsu: Chimei Setsuzoku o Seigyo (Curse Technique: Controlling Fatal Connection). Hiden, ninjutsu, defensive, all ranges. Another jutsu discovered by experimentation of the techniques of the Jashin religion, it is similarly activated with the drawing of the religion's symbol, but on the body of the user. Of lesser priority to Hidan in battle than Jujutsu: Shiji Hyouketsu (Curse Technique: Death Controlling Possessed Blood), he deems this jutsu less useful as well. Hidan is put in a more compromising position, unable to torture or kill his enemies himself, but anyone that attacks him while he holds this jutsu active will inflict the same injuries upon themselves. When he takes damage his skin momentarily takes on the grim reaper appearance to signify the link being temporarily made.