Chapter 71 - Chapter 71

Iwagakure wasted no time sending in their first salvo of offense at Naruto and Sasuke. Apparently they had sought out the members of their forces that could create Rock Clones, because they were sent at Naruto and Sasuke in great numbers.

The two Konoha chunin stood back-to-back on the roof of the elevated building, defending themselves with taijutsu only as they gathered their thoughts and tried to brainstorm a way to win or escape.

"Hawks?" Naruto ventured as a possibility, grunting in exertion as he destroyed a random Rock Clone with a punch to the head, "How about it? Do you think we can fly out of here?" He said, continuing to scratch up his fists as he continued to fight with anything that got within hand-to-hand range.

"I don't know," Sasuke said, having an easier time of avoiding the constant barrage of enemy attacks than Naruto was. Sharingan and Sasuke's reflexes were an unfair combination, "If I try to summon one here, it'll just get bogged down by all of the clones anyway."

It was clear that the first phase of Iwagakure's attack was to try and wear them down as much as possible. Under normal circumstances, this could have been quite the issue, especially against a chakra monster like Naruto, but these weren't normal circumstances. They were hurt and tired from not only running and hiding all over the village, but from torment in prison conditions and from the mentally and physically taxing mission they had been on when they'd been captured in the first place.

Their stamina was still better than eighty percent of the shinobi in the world, but they were drained, and attempting to tire them out before having to fight them for real was the smartest course of action to take. Even if it was just two against all of them, those two were still more dangerous than most anyone would ever know without facing them.

Naruto felt the skin on his knuckles break after vanquishing yet another Rock Clone and decided that enough was enough, "Screw this," He said, grabbing Sasuke by the back of his shirt before dragging him to the edge of the building and jumping off of it and the elevated stone tower underneath it altogether.

Surprised, but not alarmed, Sasuke found himself more irritated at the sudden decision than actually angry about it. Eventually, he would have proposed himself that they just jump.

As they fell, Naruto noticed the walls moving outward, trying to push out and stop their descent quickly and violently. Creating a pair of Shadow Clones, he used them to shove himself and Sasuke out of the way before they could be hit.

Sasuke didn't waste the few moments given to him and summoned a hawk to fly the two of them out Iwagakure. Something in his gut though, told him that this measure of action wouldn't work. He didn't know why. Flight wasn't exactly anything that Iwa was known for.

Instead of panicking, it seemed as though a summoning of that nature had been what they had all been waiting for, "Do it now!" Kitsuchi bellowed.

Every Iwagakure shinobi worked together as one, forming hand seals and pressing their palms to the ground for one great collaboration jutsu, "Doton: Daichidoukaku (Earth Release: Great Moving Earth Core)!"

Quicker than Sasuke's hawk could tilt up out of its divebomb, the ground raised around it in a perfect square, trapping it between four narrow walls of rock and preventing it from being a mobile threat. Kitsuchi simply laughed at Naruto and Sasuke's plight, "Poor kids. You two have bitten off way more than you can chew."

Kurotsuchi looked to her father and received a nod from him before issuing a command to the other troops in his stead, "Close it off! They can't fly out so shut it up! We need them alive!"

As they worked to close off the opening at the top, a hole was blasted into the side of the rock enclosure to reveal both Naruto and Sasuke, sans hawk. Kitsuchi cursed aloud. The thickness of the walls had been sacrificed so that the trap could go up quickly. That had been quite the miscalculation. Even without the Kyuubi, apparently Uzumaki had enough brute force to muscle his way out of that kind of trap.

With what was known about him, he was a wind user. If Uchiha had softened up the rock first with his electricity, it was probably child's play for the two of them to bust their way out.

Both seemed rather aggravated, whether it was because they had been trapped in a gigantic stone box, or if it was because the enemy thought that a gigantic stone box with flimsy walls was all it would have taken to stop the two of them. Either way, it was up for debate.

Naruto cracked his knuckles, staring down the horde that they still had to face to get by, "First one to punch through to the back of the line wins."

Sasuke flipped his hair and grabbed at his wrist, feeling the electricity of the Chidori charge in his hand, "You're on."

Sparing each other one look, both of them charged at the enemy force simultaneously. Confidence bolstered by their numbers and the knowledge that Naruto was temporarily sans-Kyuubi, there was no hesitation for the Iwagakure side of the charge, each one of them planning on how they were going to cut Naruto or Sasuke down and capture them for the village.

Their confidence was almost immediately shaken at the sight of Naruto creating enough Shadow Clones to utterly dwarf their own fighting force. Two massive walls of humanity hit each other at the same time, sending bodies on both sides flying and dispelling in puffs of smoke.

Naruto's clones weren't meant to fight straight-up and win, though whenever they could strike a blow they did. They were meant to confuse and allow the real one to move through the ranks, getting his shots in when he could, but otherwise creeping through to make his escape at the back of the line.

Sasuke simply indiscriminately cut down whatever was in his way, whether it was a clone of Naruto or an Iwagakure shinobi, if it got within Chidori or kunai's reach, it got the business end of it. Naruto could feel Sasuke killing his clones whenever it happened, but there were more important things to worry about at the moment than Sasuke's possible disposition to friendly fire.

Namely, the giant slab or earth raising up on both sides of him, quickly folding up to crush him between them.

"Doton: Sando no Jutsu (Earth Release: Mountainous Earth Jutsu)!"

"Fuck!" Naruto exclaimed, speeding forward out of danger with a timely Shunshin before the structure could close in on him. So fast he had been moving, he stumbled to an almost uncontrollable stop after escaping, leaving him vulnerable to a downward elbow from the burly Kitsuchi, aimed at the back of his neck.

Kitsuchi lowered the crushing blow down, feeling a solid crack underneath the strike. Instead of watching the young man fall broken to the ground, he got a face full of smoke that quickly dissipated into the air. He switched himself with one of his clones immediately after escaping the last jutsu. The fact that he had been able to come up with a substitution so quickly was impressive enough to the veteran shinobi.

Naruto squared off with Kitsuchi, holding his own neck as though his head would fall off after nearly being killed twice. Kitsuchi had clearly been attentive enough to pick out which Naruto had been real, and it had been a timely display of symmetry with his own clones that protected him.

"You're quicker than I thought you were," Kitsuchi pointed out, addressing Naruto as a full-scale battle was being waged around them, "Not a lot of people could have gotten away from that. It's my strongest jutsu, after all."

Naruto spared a moment to glance back at the remnants of Kitsuchi's jutsu. Two gigantic quarter-circles had risen from the ground and smashed together, the intention having been to have him between them. If he hadn't slowed the jutsu's formation to ensure the stragglers on his own side had escaped, he might have just caught him, "...Thought you weren't trying to kill me."

Kitsuchi's grin was beginning to become infuriating, ever since Naruto had noticed him in the crowd at the start of the battle, "You're a tough guy. I'm sure you would have survived it... if just barely."

"Oh, okay. I guess we're doing this now!" Naruto exclaimed, lunging ahead to attack. He had none of his weapons of choice on-hand, except for one that was always with him because it came from his very chakra. From the tenketsu on his right wrist, Naruto formed a chakra chain with a sharpened point on the end and sent it flying right at Kitsuchi.

Kitsuchi almost chose to catch it in his hand to prove a point, until he remembered that Naruto specialized in wind usage and moved his body and his hand out of the way. A nasty grin came over Naruto's face as he grabbed onto the chain with both hands and swung his body around, using the chain like a reaper to try and cut down anything within its range. He managed to get five Iwa shinobi who thought they would be go-getters and take him out while Kitsuchi had his attention.

They failed and they fell. Bloodily.

Naruto didn't need his machete to cut things. He just liked using it as a focal point whenever he threw it with his chain attached. Also, enemies tended to focus more on the murderous flying blade coming through the air than the chains attached to it. It was a good, equally deadly feint to use.

The truth of the matter, was that the chains themselves were just as sharp as any wind-coated blade.

Kitsuchi held up his bloodied hand, cut by the slimmest of margins from Naruto's attack as he stared at the blond young man who stood surrounded by the bodies of his fallen allies, "You think I'm going to be scared of a brat and a stupid chain?" Even though that chain almost took his entire arm off.

Naruto held out his other hand and let a second identical chain fall from the tenketsu in his wrist, "Well how about a brat and two stupid chains?" Using the two chains like whips, Naruto skillfully swung both of them at Kitsuchi, his primary threat on the battlefield, "I don't care how many of you assholes I have to go through! I'm getting out of here!"

The chains cut through everything that they touched. Even when Kitsuchi used his earth release abilities to try and raise walls to block them attacks, Naruto was able to slice into them and get to him. Naruto wasn't a fan of using his chains in that kind of way however. Yes, it was a more difficult attack to anticipate and see coming because of the bends and waves in the chain, of which he had control of every single link, but it was a slow weapon to use when compared to getting in close and using his fists and his machete.

If he was using his chain, he preferred to use it as a surprise projectile, ejecting it from his wrist at high speeds for a single move or using it to stealthily attack from underground.

Living up to Naruto's fears for the use of his chakra chains, Kitsuchi eventually found an opening between the two-pronged assault and rushed at him, making six hand seals before amassing a large amount of rock around his right arm in the form of a fist, "Doton: Kengan no Jutsu (Earth Release: Fist Rock Jutsu)!"

The sudden increase in the range of Kitsuchi's punch hadn't been something that Naruto had accounted for when he started dodging. The blow struck him on the right shoulder and sent him flying, spinning through the air like a top.

Naruto landed on all fours before clutching at his injured right side and gritting his teeth in pain, 'That punch wasn't even that solid!' He couldn't let another blow like that land if he wanted to have the strength to make it home.

Iwa shinobi on the battlefield had gotten out of the way when they had seen Kitsuchi begin engaging Naruto, but once they saw injured prey, they swooped in to try and take him down themselves to save the higher-up the trouble of having to come in and finish him off. Unfortunately, being hurt didn't mean that Naruto was any less dangerous than he had been.

His clones ran interference, shoving and otherwise bogging down people where they could. Easy targets. Naruto quickly recovered and lashed out with an area-encompassing jutsu, saying a quiet thanks to his copies as he did for buying him a few needed moments to recover, "Kura Taifuu no Me (Eye of the Dark Hurricane)!"

Nothing was safe as Naruto spewed massive amounts of burning, black ash from his mouth in all directions. Only the area directly around him could have been considered free from danger.

Anyone close was burned by the sticky substance burning into their skin. Shinobi and kunoichi unfortunate enough to breathe it in while yelling in pain died most brutally from the ash sticking to their throats and lungs, burning them from the inside. Even the ground sizzled from having the ash stick to it.

Kitsuchi could only watch in horror, lest he be injured or killed by the burning residue. Between the clones and the ferocity that Naruto himself fought with to survive, it was causing losses that hadn't been anticipated.

Trap Uzumaki and Uchiha. Capture them so that they could be used for the betterment of Iwagakure. It was supposed to have been simple. They were exhausted. They were fighting with several handicaps against them. So why was something like this happening?

The best and brightest of his village. Men and women he had worked with, laughed with, were dying in front of him because of one man who refused to lie down and let them win. One man who was the offspring of the last single man to deal Iwagakure such losses at once, though his father's numbers were far more staggering.

Still, children had to start somewhere. You don't just wake up one morning and turn from a man into a monster. No, that sort of change is gradual in nature.

As he saw Naruto, body and face stained black by standing in the middle own deadly residue, blue eyes piercing through him from afar, Kitsuchi decided then and there was going to remove that boy as a threat, so that he would never cast another jutsu again.

His primary claim to any sort of fame, the Kyuubi, would be taken from his body to be used as Iwa saw fit. As the military tool that it was.

Then, and only then, would Uzumaki Naruto be allowed to die.

"You gonna keep on staring, or are you gonna fight?" Naruto asked, his tone grave. He never took his gaze off of Kitsuchi 's own, even as the man was clearly wishing death and dismemberment on him from afar, "I'm not gonna keel over and croak just 'cuz you're pouting."

"I'm going to rip you limb-from-limb... but you can take it," Kitsuchi repeated from earlier with a growl, "You're tough... right!?"

Naruto stood straight up and removed his left hand from where he had it holding onto his right side. In the middle of his ash-coated chest, Naruto drew one circle in side of another and stood with his arms out wide, "You wanted me captured for the Nine-Tails. That was your big plan for me, wasn't it?" He asked, displaying the bullseye on his body, "I'm not rolling over. Not for Akatsuki, or for your dumbass village. But you can still come and take it yourself, if you're man enough."

Kitsuchi moved a step forward to take Naruto up on his offer, when the earth shook and a deafening roar rang out.

The last thing he saw before fire overtook them was the sight of a vicious grin on Naruto's face.

XxX

(Meanwhile – Underground – Iwagakure Underground Cavity)

Those boys would pay.

For every villager that died, one of their comrades would get the chance to exact some kind of revenge against them before they were used for their purpose. Onoki believed that this was the way things should and would go.

The operation was supposed to have been simple.

Naruto and Sasuke were supposed to have holed themselves up in the only place where they might have been able to make a stand, inside of the building that had been isolated during the evacuation procedures. Either that, or they were supposed to have tried to run away and failed. They had been intentionally given one gigantic gap in the formation to make a run for it.

They were not supposed to have stood and fought. They were not supposed to have been good at it.

Naruto's ability to use Shadow Clones had been overlooked when Kitsuchi brought him the plan for how to handle those boys. Onoki himself had seen just how many Naruto could make at once, though that had been years ago. Still, they had only been used for a suicide attack, so their effectiveness in actual combat in numbers that large had been thought to be low. Four years later, and now it was apparently enough to give a fighting force of actual flesh-and-blood ninjas trouble.

"If you want something done right, you have to do it yourself," Onoki said to himself, walking with his massive, rotund bodyguard Akatsuchi as he headed for a way to the surface. The entire village had been moved far underground temporarily by a special force of earth release ninja to not only protect it from the battle, but to make sure that Onoki could step in if need be without putting the place he loved at risk, "Akatsuchi, when we get up top, I want the battlefield cleared. I don't want anyone caught up in what I'm going to do to those upstarts."

He would have been lying if he said that he hadn't been looking forward to smacking those two down even before they had made sport of his loyal shinobi force. But now, he could hardly keep his fingers still under his robes, anticipating how much he would enjoy showing those two just how far down on the totem pole they really were.

"Nice bug-out shelter you've got here, old man."

Onoki stopped walking as he heard a familiar voice further along the air shaft to the surface he had been using to reach the battlefield. His wrinkled features slowly twisted in a scowl, as in the low light of the large passageway, he could see a tall figure with white, spiky hair leaning against the wall.

"Jiraiya," The Tsuchikage said, Akatsuchi immediately preparing for a fight upon hearing the famed ninja's name, "I would say it's a pleasure to see you again, but I'm not up to telling bald-faced lies right now."

"Then I'll make this quick," Jiraiya said smoothly, moving off of the wall, "...I want the boys. Give 'em up. Call your dogs off right now, I'll leave, and that'll be the end of it. We can all get on with our fun-filled, carefree lives. No one else needs to die today."

"Oh, no one else will once I get there," Onoki assured him, "I'm not going to kill the boys, yet at least. They still have things that I need. You on the other hand have nothing that I want. Nothing that I need. You're just in the way," He said as Akatsuchi took a step in front of his kage, prepared to attack on his order.

"You're really not going to sic this guy on me, are you?" Jiraiya asked, squaring off with Akatsuchi, just in case the large man decided to take a shot at him, "You know me. You know what I'm going to do to him."

Onoki wouldn't even have the time to step in and save his underling's life if he got close enough to try and tangle with Jiraiya.

The diminutive Onoki moved Akatsuchi out of the way with one hand, taking the younger ninja's position to prepare for battle, "Oh no. It's just that Akatsuchi is willing to fight anyone or anything for me. That's why he's my number one guard. But this is something I fear he is unable to handle. I don't want to put him at risk needlessly when I can always do it myself."

Jiraiya sensed a battle coming and let out a sigh, cutting into the building tension, "I didn't come here to fight you."

This came as a surprise to the Tsuchikage, who had always taken Jiraiya to be the most foolhardy of his rival kage Hiruzen's prized students, "Really? You plan on trying to negotiate when you hold none of the cards?"

"No, I think I hold a lot of the cards, actually."

"And just why do you think that?"

"Because of where we are right now. Or more specifically, where your village is."

Onoki knew a threat when he heard one. He also knew that Jiraiya had the strength to carry it out. How though, he had no idea, "...What have you done?"

"It's not what I've done. It's what I'm going to do, if you don't end this battle now."

XxX

(Moments Ago – Above Ground – On the Battlefield)

Sasuke had gotten separated from Naruto somewhere on the battlefield, which was just fine. He and Naruto didn't need to be together for the plan to work. When it was time, Sasuke would know it. Naruto's clones were doing a good job of setting it up where they could if the black plumes of smoke and ash in the air were any sign.

Iwagakure were fighting disciplined at least. Anyone that saw him and didn't engage him directly did their best to keep him corralled and prevent him from trying to run away. Or maybe they were just trying to lead him into something?

"Youton: Sekkaigyou no Jutsu (Lava Release: Quicklime Congealing Jutsu)!"

Sasuke dodged a large, gray substance, shot at him through the air. Instead of hitting him, it splattered off of the ground and began melting into the rock surface. He could just imagine how bad off he would have been if it had hit him. He didn't say a word as the lithe figure of their former jailer Kurotsuchi came at him and engaged him hand-to-hand.

He was quicker than Kurotsuchi, but she was extremely difficult to hit. Her ability to slip out of the way of his attacks without needing to block any of them had a way of getting on his nerves. She wasn't even trying to move in and counter, content with just dodging, waiting for the optimum moment, not willing to take a chance to create it herself.

Sasuke kept hitting nothing but air. He couldn't anticipate her moves and counter them before she tried them because she took no action independent of her own. Recognizing this, Sasuke stopped fighting, allowing Kurotsuchi to move safely out of his range where she too came to a stop.

"What's the matter?" She asked, "Out of breath already?"

Instead of dignifying her with a response, Sasuke looked through her and around her, trying to see if he could locate the real Naruto amid the chaos going on around him. The number of Naruto clones running amok was dwindling quickly. Very soon, it would be down to just the two of them again.

Kurotsuchi noticed Sasuke looking around and quickly found where she saw her father Kitsuchi fighting against a Naruto. Her father wouldn't have wasted the effort on fighting a clone without being attacked first, so that one had to be the real deal. To be ignored in the middle of a fight was more of a slight than her considerable pride would allow.

"You think your friend is fighting the stronger opponent?" Kurotsuchi asked. Sasuke wanted to respond that Naruto wasn't his friend, but instead focused in on the more important part of what she had to say, "...I'm stronger than my dad is."

Intrigued by that prospect, Sasuke slowly rolled his eyes back over to her, "That still doesn't mean you're stronger than me."

"You say that, but you're running on fumes," Kurotsuchi formed the bird hand-seal, bringing up spikes from the ground to try and skewer Sasuke, "Doton: Doryuusou (Earth Release: Earth Flow Spears)!"

He was tired. So tired that he didn't want to waste another jutsu without knowing for certain that its use would pay off. He could feel it, every last minute he kept his Sharingan on for. But being tired didn't mean that he had forgotten how to dodge. It only served to remind him just how important it was.

Sasuke dodged every stone blade that tried to skewer him from his feet up. He had seen that jutsu before, but he had never seen the spikes formed so swiftly before. If there had been any doubts to Kurotsuchi's abilities, she was quickly clearing him of them. He had to actually put forth an effort to avoid her attack.

It was his focus on the spikes that immediately threatened him that almost led to his death, as he realized almost far too late to react that Kurotsuchi hadn't been making just one trail of earth spikes. She had been making a larger field to cut Sasuke off and trap him while his attention was elsewhere.

The sheer amount of them that she had created in addition to the ones she had actually been chasing him with was staggering. They were separated from the rest of the battlefield by at least one-hundred meters. Only thirty of it was walkable.

Sasuke let out a laugh of disbelief. He'd been corralled. The entire Iwagakure force had been trying to do it since his foot first touched the ground, and one ninja had been able to finish the job for them, "Not bad."

"Not bad, you say?" Kurotsuchi said, carefully measuring how to approach and finish Sasuke for good. The Tsuchikage wanted him alive, but she was more partial to killing him now. They could figure out the secrets of working the Sharingan if the eyes were passed down over time. The eyes were all they needed from him. The boy himself was just a bonus to interrogate for information on the kekkei genkai, "You've got absolutely nowhere to go this time, pretty boy."

She was right. There wasn't anywhere to go but straight ahead, right at her, and she would be ready for him, whatever he chose to throw at her to make his move.

It took a moment for Sasuke to realize that the dark haze that had settled over the area had a tinge of chakra to it. That was supposed to be the sign. When there was so much ash in the air that it was visibly floating around, or as Naruto had so eloquently put it 'a fuck-ton', that was the cue.

It was time.

Sasuke formed the necessary hand-seals and shot a fireball from his mouth, directly at Kurotsuchi.

The kunoichi scoffed at the apparent last ditch piece of offense and prepared to dodge before seeing the fireball ignite the air itself as it traveled. Sasuke quickly hit the deck and shielded himself as best as he could, as did Kurotsuchi, and the entire world seemed to erupt around them.

Sasuke had never seen it himself. He'd simply taken Naruto's word for it that his ash was an extremely effective accelerant, or once again in Naruto's own words, 'this shit blows up'.

That 'shit' did indeed blow up. He had underestimated just how much it would blow up. He assumed it just would have created an effective ring of fire to divide up the battlefield and give them a better chance to slowly whittle down the enemy numbers, not that it would likely take a good portion of the enemy numbers out.

Kurotsuchi's little gambit to corner Sasuke had been effective for her. If it had been a simple one-on-one fight, he would have been in serious trouble. But Kurotsuchi had put him outside one of the kill-boxes that Naruto's ash had created all over the place. He knew he would have a fair chance of survival because of it, which was why he ignited a fireball.

His ears rang loduly as he slowly picked himself up, clawing at the rock underneath him to get a grip. The air was hot and strangled him. All he could see around him was smoke and fire.

"Yeah. Not bad," Sasuke muttered to himself, surveying the scene around him. He remembered Naruto telling him that he had used a massive amount of his ash as Sora-ku burned. If that were the case, and it touched Itachi's Amaterasu flames that had engulfed much of the city, it was no wonder the entire thing was blown sky high.

"Uhhh..."

The groan of pain and accompanying coughs turned Sasuke's attention to the sight of Kurotsuchi lying on the ground, surrounded by what little was left of what he figured was a hastily constructed defensive fortification.

It worked for the most part. Though she looked to be pretty bad off, it should have been worse.

For instance, she should have been in several large pieces scattered all over the place.

Kurotsuchi's head simply wouldn't stop swimming. She felt nauseous long before she ever registered the feeling of the burns on her left arm. The long red sleeve that used to hang from it was now cinder, stuck to the charred flesh of the limb.

Her vision began to focus, and she eyed Sasuke in the near distance, sizing up her condition as she began to stir. Remembering that she was supposed to have been in a fight to the death, she tried to get up, only for pain to seize her as she dragged the injured half of her body against the rock beneath her when she tried to move.

Sasuke almost felt pity for the pathetic sight, had he not understood that she would have immediately sought to murder him where he stood if she had reached her feet.

Separated by flames and jagged upturns of rock, Sasuke turned his back on Kurotsuchi instead of trying to navigate that mess in order to get to her and finish the job. He wasn't there to fight a war. He didn't even want to be there in the first place. Every action he took was supposed to get him a step closer to leaving Iwagakure quicker.

Kurotsuchi watched Sasuke's back as he turned away from her and began to walk off. Breaths coming out in heavy, pained puffs, she managed to push herself up in a seated position with her good arm to shout at him, "Hey! Get your ass back here! We're not done yet!"

Iwa had risked too much just trying to keep him there for those damned eyes. They had lost too much when he'd fought back against their plan to trap him and Uzumaki. They couldn't get nothing out of this in return. Otherwise, what had all of those shinobi died for? Ash and fire?

Sasuke turned his head around just enough to look over his shoulder, "You think you're so special that I'm going to waste more time to kill you when I've already won?" He asked, not expecting a realistic answer, "Tch. You're not that important."

His attempt to walk away and leave it at that failed when a gigantic curved wall sprang up, blocking his path and forcing him to turn back around.

The tomoe in Sasuke's Sharingan eyes spun, reflecting his anger as he caught sight of a small unit backing up Kurotsuchi and assisting her with her injuries on the ground.

How many of these people did he have to cut through before they got the point? He didn't have enough chakra to keep doing this! He'd had to wait for a golden opening in order to justify using as much as he did against Kurotsuchi.

"You don't get it do you?" One of Iwa ninja said to Sasuke, able to see the look on the Konoha chunin's face, "If it's an order from the Tsuchikage, if it's an order for Iwagakure, a real Iwa shinobi follows it without hesitation, even if it means death."

Sasuke stepped away before feeling the cold rock of the wall behind him against his back, trying to buy as much time as possible to assess his chances.

How healthy were they? Healthier than they should have been after an entire battle, if they had been fighting Naruto's clones head-on. It was entirely possible that these were fellows that had been held in reserve, just in case.

How healthy was he? Not nearly as well off as he needed to be to keep going at the same pace he had been. His stamina was going to fail him soon. He could keep going for a bit longer, but they were still in the heart of Iwagakure. Whoever came after he got rid of these guys would have a better chance at finally putting him down than they did.

And so on, and so forth, for as long as the fight continued.

He wasn't thinking about giving up. Not for a moment. He would die first. But it was like a single ant running into a rival hill and expecting to take on the whole colony. Even if that one ant was far bigger and wound up killing a respectable number of them before it went down as well, it just wasn't going to happen.

Taking the high ground, Sasuke leapt back and jumped up to the top of the wall that had been originally erected to cut him off. If they were trying to keep him in place with just that, they were woefully mistaken.

As he prepared to fend off the inevitable assault, a better view of the battlefield brought a new feature to Sasuke's attention.

Someone was cutting a swath through the Iwagakure forces as they were polishing off the remainder of Naruto's few surviving clones. The individual didn't stop for a moment, plowing a straight line ahead. Anything in its way went down, violently.

"What the hell is that?" Sasuke asked himself, watching Iwa shinobi get tossed away by some kind of man on a mission. It looked as though he were recklessly hacking and slashing through foe after foe that tried to stand in his way with their rudimentary taijutsu.

And he was coming Sasuke's way.

Eventually he got close enough that Sasuke could actually make out just what he was looking at, despite the raw speed the man was still moving at.

He almost fell off of the wall in his shock. The flak jacket, the headband. It was from a Konoha ninja. A Konoha ninja that he sort of knew, or at least knew of if nothing else.

"Naruto's sensei?" Sasuke asked as the combat finally reached the small contingent of Iwa ninja that had previously been prepared to inflict grievous bodily harm on him in order to harvest his organs, "What the hell?" He asked, before noticing a woman in a Konoha uniform with black hair following just in the wake of Asuma's carnage before breaking off to approach Sasuke, "Who are you?"

The woman hardly paid Sasuke himself any mind as she started to try and tend to his wounds with a medical jutsu as soon as she reached him, "Shizune. Nice to meet you," She said, her voice not particularly meaning it, just saying it as a way to get an introduction past, "You certainly wound up in a bit of trouble, didn't you?"

Sasuke kept his eyes peeled, paranoid that things had actually turned out like this. He couldn't believe it. Someone had actually come for them and reached them before it was too late. Or did they get there in time after all?

From his viewpoint on the wall, he couldn't see the actual Naruto. Though he normally couldn't tell the difference between them, all of Naruto's clones had been hardwired upon their creation to fight the enemy so that he and Sasuke could move about freely. The real Naruto wouldn't have let himself get bogged down in a fight with people like that. Anyone who managed to engage the real Naruto and keep him there was someone talented enough to possibly give him fits.

XxX

(With Naruto)

Naruto stood up after getting blown clear off of his feet from the explosion that he'd had a partial hand in creating himself. Apparently Sasuke was good with the all-important wordless cue, because he didn't miss a beat once the battlefield was permeated with ash from Naruto and his clones.

Once again, well-placed explosions solved a serious problem in the life of Uzumaki Naruto.

By the time he reached his feet, Naruto was outright cackling. Not out of joy because of what he'd helped to just do, but because the Iwagakure faithful hadn't expected this as a possible outcome when they'd backed him and Sasuke into a corner.

"You think this is funny?"

Naruto stopped laughing when he heard the sound of Kitsuchi's gruff voice, angry at what he perceived as a slight against his village and those that died fighting for its interests. If he felt someone had done some

"No. It's just… well, what did you expect?" Naruto asked, the whites of his teeth showing as a stark contrast to the black soot that covered the rest of him, "Did you really think using the Kyuubi is the only thing that makes me who I am? That cutting me off from it for a bit would keep me from tearing you all new assholes once I started to get going? No, I just had to be all roundabout about it instead."

"What the hell are you talking about now?" Kitsuchi spat, ignoring the heavy wounds he had sustained from the spontaneous blast that had covered a large portion of the battlefield.

Naruto leveled a look onto Kitsuchi before gesturing at the smoking rocky plains around them, "All you did was make me take twenty minutes longer to blow up everything around me than it would have taken if I had the Kyuubi. Great plan," Naruto added with a double thumbs up.

"And yours was so much better," Kitsuchi needled, trying to gauge just how injured Naruto was so that he could try and mount another attack on him, "The only thing that stopped you from getting blown to hell was sheer dumb luck."

Naruto gave him an entirely incredulous look. Kitsuchi couldn't have been serious. This was a jounin he was speaking with, "It was my stupid idea to do that in the first place," Naruto pointed out, "You don't think I wasn't paying attention to how much ash was out and where it was? My element is wind."

He had been moving it wherever he wanted to around him while he had been moving around the battlefield. His ash dust had been spaced out in the places he wanted it to go for the most part. While there was no way he would have ever had any sort of control over the explosion itself, he could at least judge which areas got it worse than others.

Of course, that didn't mean that Naruto didn't get hit with any of the blast. He just got far less of it than probably anyone else did.

Kitsuchi glared as though Naruto were the worst sort of criminal. All he had done was take steps to defend himself. But his defense had basically been a really good offense, and Naruto's offense was destructive.

Naruto didn't have any sort of fire in his belly to keep fighting. Not like this, not just for the sake of finishing the job. He just wanted to leave, "Look. I don't want to fight anymore. You tried to take the Kyuubi, it didn't work. Stop already."

But he wasn't going to stop, and Naruto hardened his resolve to kill yet another person that he didn't have the taste to kill. If he wouldn't give it a rest, he would have to be put to rest. That was the way it had to be if he wanted to leave.

There were too many important things Naruto would be leaving behind if he were soft enough to let himself be taken down then and there.

Before another fight could begin however, Kitsuchi's body came to a complete stop, his formerly enraged eyes appearing blank and lifeless.

"Shinwakerushin no Jutsu (Mind Body Divide Jutsu)."

The sound of that voice made Naruto's eyes go wide in abject shock. There were times when he thought he might not ever hear it again. He didn't turn around, instead listening to the sound of sandals crunching on the torn up ground underneath them.

Purple and soft yellow filled his view as the object of his affections walked in front of him, her back to him as she kept her hands aimed at Kitsuchi in the most unique aiming hand-seal he had seen her use yet for her clan techniques. Her thumb, index, middle, and pinky fingers touched their counterparts on her other hand, leaving her ring fingers bent inward and the space between them clear to project her chakra at her target.

Whatever she had done had taken over Kitsuchi's body in a way that left her in full control of her own, as she dropped her hands and walked directly to Kitsuchi, a no-nonsense look on her face as she growled out her demand to the Iwagakure elite, "Walk until the soles wear out of your shoes."

Kitsuchi wasted absolutely no time, walking straight ahead, right past Naruto without even acknowledging his presence as he sought to fulfill his deigned assignment. Not even a word. His eyes didn't even seem to focus. Naruto followed him with his own eyes, turning around only to be alarmed when he saw Kakashi standing right by his shoulder.

"I was going to do something first, but she beat me to it," Kakashi said, cutting off Naruto's surprised exclamation before he could even make it, "You didn't look like you wanted to kill him," He pointed out.

Naruto frowned as though there were something bitter and disgusting in his mouth, "I think I did enough of that today," Most of his clones had been dispelled in battle. From their memories, he'd gotten more than his taste of taking lives, "...You guys found us. How?"

"Oh come on," Kakashi gave Naruto a pat on the shoulder, his eyes crinkled in a smile as he thought of a joke, "You may not know this, but I was always great at hide-and-seek. Just ask Sasuke."

Naruto shook his head with a smile. He didn't know very much about the man that had apparently been his father's student, but he knew enough about him by now to recognize that Kakashi wasn't the type to give you information that you didn't absolutely need to know painlessly.

The sound of light steps on the ground caused Naruto to slowly turn back around and face the girl he'd left behind in Konoha. It was only supposed to have been for a few days, and she wasn't supposed to have crossed border after border just to come and get him. It was a rush to know that she would, though.

Ino had needed some time to process that she'd actually found Naruto after she'd first reached him on the battlefield. After the vicious streak of vindictiveness that ran through her when she saw Kitsuchi trying to victimize him, everything emotional that she'd been trying to hold back for the better part of a week came roaring back with a vengeance.

Tears stained her face as she reached out and held Naruto's face in her hands, her thumbs stroking his ash-covered cheeks, tracing the whisker markings that branded them. Naruto simply closed his eyes and relaxed into the touch, letting her do as she wanted, "Long time no see, huh Ino?" He said.

Ino's breath hitched as something in between a laugh and a sob came from her mouth, "Yeah. Yeah..." She tried to come up with something charming to say, failing and giving up with a shake of her ponytail as she leaned forward and gave Naruto a kiss, "Ugh. You taste gross," She said before kissing him again.

"I feel gross," Naruto agreed after they broke apart for the second time. Ino's hands and face were smudged black from where she had touched him, "Are you okay?"

Was she okay? She was the one who should have been asking him that. Naruto looked terrible, as if the only thing holding him upright was the fact that there were still people around that would leap at the chance to kill him, "Come here. God, you're a mess."

Ino gently grabbed Naruto's hands and sat him down on the ground. As she set to healing the injuries that she could find on him, she could still see his eyes jerking around, searching for anymore enemies coming his way. Her heart ached for him. Just what had been happening to him for the last week?

Kakashi kept an eye on Naruto from afar as he stood guard over the two reunited members of Team 10. He never thought he would have seen the day where Naruto would be completely and utterly spent. Now would have definitely been the time to jump all over them and go after him with whatever they had left, but no other Iwagakure shinobi had come for them.

In fact, on most of the way to Naruto, he noticed that they seemed to be pulling back instead of pushing forward.

'Did Jiraiya-sama actually manage to get the heat off of Naruto and Sasuke?' Kakashi wondered to himself, also hoping that Asuma and Shizune had reached him by now. Ino had temporarily broken the telepathic connection between everyone to deal with Kitsuchi and heal Naruto, so he couldn't send out a signal to ask.

"What's happening, Kakashi-sensei?" Ino asked, finally catching up to the fact that she was in the middle of what could possibly be called the calmest battlefield healing session of all time, "Why did the fighting stop?"

They still should have had them woefully outnumbered, and with that kind of advantage the combat wouldn't just have ended Naruto and Sasuke didn't kill that many of them to break the back of any sort of offensive against them.

"Jiraiya-sama had a plan," Kakashi told the two blondes, "I don't know what that plan was, but they're not attacking anymore, so I guess it worked."

XxX

(With Jiraiya – Iwagakure Evacuation Cavern)

With Jiraiya's clone confronting Onoki and giving him his warning, that left the real man himself free to find a hiding place inside of the temporarily uprooted village and enact his plan.

It was a good idea to take the entire village and move it somewhere covered on all sides from attack. The place that Iwa had picked for the job was deep inside of the bedrock, somewhere that wouldn't be shaken by any sort of battle going on above. The earth itself would have had to split for something from the surface to do it any harm.

To Jiraiya though, it was a target that he could devastate with a single jutsu.

The entire village was made of rock. All of the buildings were basically raised from the rock that comprised the mountains, that comprised the bedrock that it had all been sunken into and between for the evacuation.

That meant that Iwa had basically just been pulled into one gigantic cavern. A single room.

He couldn't have been given an easier target to terrorize if the need arose.

In a small area hidden between two buildings, Jiraiya's body sat motionless with a toad on each of his shoulders. One wore a brown cloak and had a shock of white hair in the middle of his head, as well as bushy white eyebrows. The other also wore a brown cloak, but had curly purple hair and purple lips instead.

"More o' them Iwa boys are headin' back inside a' the village Jiraiya-chan," The purple-haired little toad said in a rural accent, "They look like the whole place is about ta go up in flames."

"Good," Jiraiya said, opening his eyes to reveal a toad-like change to them, "I really didn't want to have to hurt as many people as this would have."

His eyes weren't the only thing changed about him. His nose had grown larger, with many ugly warts. His teeth had become sharper and more unsightly. A goatee had formed on his chin, red markings had appeared around his eyes, and his toes and feet had a webbed appearance about them.

He had never shown it to Naruto, because he thought that it was ugly and didn't want to go through the phase of Naruto making fun of how it made him look until he laid a beatdown on him in that form. That was a long logical commute to make just to kick his apprentice's ass. He also didn't want Naruto to be fussed with by the elder toads Fukasaku and Shima after he summoned them for the task of stabilizing him while he was in that form.

Sage Mode was a big leap for him to take for anything, but to keep himself hidden and have the necessary firepower to back up his threats to Onoki in one move, he needed it.

Because the entire village was inside, he would have turned the entire evacuation cavern into a mountain toad's digestive system, trapping everyone down there inside of that hell.

It might have been something unforgivable, to take steps to destroy every individual within the limits of Iwagakure be they shinobi or civilian, but he had destroyed entire hidden villages before, albeit smaller ones that couldn't fight back.

Ones that didn't know better.

Not the way that Iwa did. They had no excuse. They knew what they had risked bringing down upon them when they'd tried to get one over and take advantage of a situation to steal away the Kyuubi. If anything, Jiraiya was being gracious by giving them an out.

"That old S.O.B. won't just let this go though," Jiraiya said, finding that it was probably time to make his way out of Iwa before people started combing the area high and low for any possible sign of him. Even blending his chakra in with the ambience of his surroundings wouldn't keep them from locating him forever, "He'll find something. Some excuse. Some reason to try and take a shot at Konoha."

Jiraiya was a man of his word though. It was clear from the influx of shinobi swarming back into the village that they had been called back from whatever military action they'd been in the midst of outside.

Destroying Iwagakure, something that he hadn't wanted to do in the first place, was no longer necessary to hold over the Tsuchikage's head. To do it now anyway was simply too heartless and callous for him to do. He simply didn't have it in him. As long as Naruto was alright and in one piece, he could let it go.

Onoki's pride would not let him do the same, however. But that was a bridge that would have to be crossed whenever they came to it. For now, things were resolved.

It likely wasn't the end for good, but for today at least, it was.

XxX

(Tetsu no Kuni)

Karin had been a prison warden. Sometimes Orochimaru or Kabuto requested her personally for experiences, but with the abilities that she had her best use had been keeping control of Otogakure's copious amount of prisoners that were used for various purposes.

She was rarely in the field, but normally when she was she expected to see humans fighting. Humans taking on missions for the sake of their master.

These were not men and women that were fighting.

Five… creatures had been dispatched by the modest force of conventional Oto shinobi that Orochimaru had brought to accompany him to the frigid samurai lands.

And then he had set them upon a village that had been something of an outpost. Samurai retired from the country's standing fighting force lived there, so it was a fair testing point as far as combat capabilities went.

Within forty-five minutes, Karin could only sense 13 chakra signatures in a village that had once housed well over 300.

Five of those signatures belonged to Orochimaru's creations, and they were still hunting feverishly for the remaining eight. It was chilling to feel every single one of those lights in her mind, each representing a life, snuffed out in such a quick period of time.

"This could start a war, couldn't it?" Karin asked, "Or send the samurai after you?" And her as well, because she worked for him.

"It's just a test my dear," Orochimaru said, extremely pleased at the results of his controlled experiment. Even on such a large scale, the results were satisfactory, "Tetsu no Kuni is not familiar enough with my work to recognize that it was me in charge of this incident. They will keep to themselves as they always do, and if they don't they'll be abrasive enough to the shinobi to alienate themselves from getting any help."

The samurai weren't exactly ones for picking up the subtleties that their shinobi counterparts were accustomed to dealing with. They rarely handled affairs involving the ninja world. They were unused to anything that wasn't straightforwardly cut-and-dry.

On the off-chance that they didn't wind up floundering around in the dark clutching at shadows, and they did discover that it was Orochimaru's doing, what would they do? Launch a task force to bring him to justice? That would be breaking the arrangement that the ninja themselves had established to not meddle in the affairs of Tetsu no Kuni.

That agreement would most certainly be expected to go both ways.

As she looked down at the rampant destruction and heard the roars of the three creatures still roaming down in the decimated town, Karin didn't understand. She didn't get why this was something that Orochimaru was interested in, but it had been his order to release the experiments inside of this village. You didn't disobey Orochimaru. Whether you understood what his aims were or not was irrelevant.

Besides, whenever he was particularly pleased with his work, he would let whoever was in earshot know just what it was he had done.

The white-skinned man noticed Karin's complete and utter discomfort, and they were standing a safe distance away from any of the horror going on below them. There was no one in the world who could sense chakra the way that she did. He could only imagine what she could feel.

"Orochimaru-sama, on earth how did you create monsters?"

Her question amused Orochimaru more than anything else, "It does seem that way doesn't it?" He said with a smile on his face, "But I can assure you, they are all just as human as you or I."

Karin let out an involuntary shiver. The thought that any of those things had anything in common with her, especially enough to still be considered human, was chilling. Of course when such a thing was said using Orochimaru as a reference for humanity, it didn't mean much. The man was barely human in the slightest.

"I have always been interested in the idea of making my own biju-less jinchuuriki," Orochimaru explained. And indeed, his curiosity as to all of the things that went into the creation of a jinchuuriki had even led to him finding his way into Akatsuki's ideals for a time, "For what is a jinchuuriki, other than a being putting its own humanity at risk to seal away a powerful being of chakra?"

And that was what he had done. He had not sealed an actual creature into these people. He had sealed chakra. His chakra. More specifically, the chakra of the Sanbi within him.

"Granted, the finished product isn't what I first anticipated, but still, it may turn out better than I originally wanted," Orochimaru said, critiquing his own work, "Imagine, a perfect death machine. No mind. No conscience to be swayed. Only pure, unbridled bloodlust. And since they come from the chakra of the Sanbi within me, Yukimaru's powers allow me to control them."

He had a weapon that he did not need to motivate to fight and die for him and his ideals. No matter what the target, these beings would march forward and eradicate it or be thoroughly vanquished in the process.

It was the pinnacle of the human modification projects that he had been experimenting with for years. He had turned human beings into artificial jinchuuriki.

Beings of nigh limitless power, and the only application these fool hidden villages could see for them was to stick them inside of people and use them for nothing more than last resort superweapons. They were all just so narrow-minded. It was painful to think about.

He would not squander the potential applications that his new power had.

"All it takes to change the world is a man with the creativity to see the possibilities in everything, the strength to carry out his aims, and the fortitude to see his endeavors through to absolute completion."

And why couldn't it be him to instigate some change? As far as Orochimaru was concerned, it was long overdue. Besides, in a body that was basically immortal, he had all the time in the world.

XxX

From afar, Deidara could only look down from his clay bird flying high in the sky. The scope on his eye had allowed him to have a bird's eye view of the carnage that had transpired below, and the wretched creatures that had caused it.

Was this what Orochimaru had come all this way to test out?

"Un… nasty fucking things," Deidara said to himself as he turned his bird around and flew away. He didn't need to see anything else. He'd already gotten more than enough to make a report on and then some.

Orochimaru had gotten brazen enough to approach the samurai of Tetsu no Kuni and victimize the people of their nation for his experiments, instead of sticking to terrorizing the people in ninja-dominant lands. He was also finding unique ways to make the most out of his possession of the Three-Tails.

Pain would not be happy to find out that Orochimaru was already finding ways to use the biju as a weapon without even having all nine of them.

That on top of losing Itachi and Kisame's strength...

Things were going to change soon in Akatsuki. They had to. If they didn't, their goals might never be achieved.

XxX

(A Few Days Later – Hi no Kuni – Konohagakure no Sato)

Traveling back home from Iwagakure was done with no issue. Jiraiya had ordered every last member of his team to move out with great haste, stopping for nothing until they had put two entire countries behind themselves and any potential pursuers from Iwa.

After arriving in the village, Naruto and Sasuke were immediately treated at Konoha's hospital. Shizune and Ino had healed some of their more severe injuries on the spot, but Sasuke especially had to take it easy for a while to give his body time to recover. The exhaustion was especially taxing for him, as he didn't have Naruto's reserves of stamina to begin with and had been operating under similar circumstances for just as long as he had.

Naruto on the other hand was released to go home that evening.

Jiraiya had managed to find the last seal, somewhere Naruto couldn't have possibly thought to look, and somewhere Jiraiya really hadn't wanted to.

Naruto had also been instructed to take things slowly for a while, but anyone within earshot of that doctor's order knew that it wouldn't be adhered to in the slightest. The moment he felt anywhere close to one-hundred percent he'd be back in the field again. So, three days at most would have been a safe estimate, and that would have been only if he had someone riding his butt about resting the entire time.

However, he would listen to the advice for one night.

All cleaned up and dressed in clothes that had been bought for him as a temporary fix until he could get to more of his own, Naruto opened the door to his apartment and flipped on the lights, followed closely by his temporary shadow in Yamanaka Ino. She hadn't let him out of her sight for a moment since they'd made it back to Konoha.

It wasn't as though he minded it. The attention was kind of nice, really. But she had her own life to live and things to do as well. He didn't want her to fixate on him when she had so many other things to attend to as well.

"You don't need to stick to me like glue," Naruto said, trying and failing to block a yawn as he walked through his place in the near pitch-dark. It was too late to start turning on lights, and he could sense his way through the apartment anyway, "I'm not going anywhere. You can head home for the night. I'll still be right here tomorrow."

Ino followed him through the home, stopping short of his room as he went in and turned on the light.

She didn't want to say something along the lines of that she didn't want to leave him alone for the evening, because that would just irritate Naruto if she made it seem like she was doing it for him. The reason she wanted to stay was for herself, but saying that would have sounded too needy. She definitely wasn't going to compromise her hard-earned aura of self-reliance that easily.

"Well, you were trapped in Iwa's prison for who knows how long," Ino eventually tried to reason roundaboutly to give Naruto a reason for staying, "I know you got checked out at the hospital, but I'm just saying, who knows? They might have put some weird sleeper cell, brainwashing stuff on you. I should watch you for a little while to make sure you're safe."

It clearly didn't fly with Naruto if the squinted-eyed stare he immediately gave her in return was anything to go off of, "Uh…huh. Right," It wasn't that Ino was a bad liar, it was that she was trying to lie to him of all people. Eventually he figured that with everything that had happened, some of it would have gotten to her mentally. Honestly, he wasn't even sure how much of the experience would stick with him, "Well please, do stay over and make sure I don't sleepwalk and start burning the village down."

"Well if you insist, I guess I can't say no to you," Ino said with a cheeky grin. She managed to get a half-hearted chuckle out of Naruto, but not much more than that, wiping the grin off of her face, "Are you sure you're okay though? You were really… quiet on the way back. Even after we got back into Hi no Kuni. That's really strange for you."

He was different, for lack of a better word when she'd gotten to him. They were home, and he was still not quite himself.

Naruto walked back to his room and sat down on his bed, staring down at the floor through the space between his legs. Ino frowned and moved behind him, knees on the mattress, draped over Naruto with her arms around his neck, "I was scared when you were gone," She told him, "But now I'm just worried. It's like you left something back there."

He might have left a piece of himself out in Sora-ku, or back in Iwagakure. A piece that he couldn't heal, and something that he couldn't just go and pick back up. The only way she would know though would be to either read his mind, something she would never do without permission, or hear it straight from his mouth. Ino hoped that she had earned enough stock with him to be an ear he could confide in.

They hadn't been children in a long time. Not really. They had been in mortal peril ever since they had first become genin. They had seen people around them die. People they knew. Not just enemies, but also some who were supposed to be on their sides.

Naruto had a sizeable body count, one that dated back from his time working with the Ninja Guardians. If he ever stopped to try and tally the actual number, it probably would have easily topped out above two-hundred. He was going to go down as one of the best battlefield-specializing shinobi of the current generation before he was done. There was no question about it.

Ino had tortured people for information that was evidently vital to Konoha's affairs, both mentally and physically. If you worked for Morino Ibiki in any capacity as a member of the Torture and Interrogation Force, he would make sure that you were able to do both, otherwise you wouldn't have a job.

They were 17 now, and had been on their paths for nearly five years. Despite all of that, there had never particularly been a moment where they had to face just what these things meant as they grew up. They did them because it fit who they were and who they were becoming as shinobi and adults.

Naruto was sitting back and thinking about everything that had gotten him to that point. Why him being a jinchuuriki made him such a target, why everyone seemed to want what he had, and what it really meant for how dangerous he was and how powerful he could truly be.

"We killed so many people back there, Ino," Naruto began, getting Ino's full attention as she rested her chin on his shoulder, "When I first became a genin, I thought I was a good guy. That you, me, Shika, Asuma-sensei, Team 10 were the good guys. I stopped thinking that so much over time, but I always kept it somewhere in the back of my mind, you know?"

There was always a part of him that wanted to be a hero. Who didn't want to be? There had always been a part of him that thought he was one. But over time he had to start facing the facts.

Yes, he fought for the people who couldn't fight for themselves, but that was because they paid him. Yes, he fought for his friends and loved ones, but in doing so he had killed the friends and loved ones of other people. How many people looked at Darui and Omoi as family? Looked up to them as shinobi? As people?

And those were just two examples. He didn't just take down criminals. He fought sometimes just because he and his opponent weren't from the same village and didn't have the same interests in a given situation. But he had always expected nothing less than death in his own right if he were to ever lose, so he never sat back and thought about it.

It was just that the sheer numbers he wound up taking down in such a short period of time actually got to him this time around.

"I've killed a lot of people, just never so many at the same time," Naruto continued, "And even though a lot of it was through my clones, and through that explosion me and Sasuke made, it was still me who did it. I still saw their faces. Those bodies on the ground that burned because of me, I saw all of them."

Ino pulled herself closer, pressing her cheek to Naruto's and shutting her eyes, "I can't take those memories away, Naruto. I'm sorry," She said, legitimately sorrowful that she couldn't rid him of any thoughts that could possibly plague him from that point onward, "That's too high-level for me."

Her scent, her touch, just her presence by itself was calming. She was the only person who could do that, simply calm him down without needing to say the right thing at the right time. Even when they were butting heads, nose-to-nose and shouting at each other, which didn't happen often, any heat from whatever the situation was would just die out in a matter of moments.

"I wouldn't ask you to. My memories kind of make me who I am, don't they? Even the ones that suck," Naruto said, reassuring her that he was fine, "I don't want to forget anything I did over the last few days. Because in another place, in another time, I'm pretty sure that things could have been backwards. That Konoha could have tried to do that to someone else's jinchuuriki and they could have busted out and tore everything up."

That was what he had slowly come to realize. Fighting for Konoha didn't make him a hero. Konoha wasn't the universal good guy. No one was. They were all shinobi, equally.

But Konoha was home. Konoha was his. The people he knew and loved were there, and they fought alongside him every day.

Unless it was for something Naruto absolutely would not, could not agree with, he would have likely followed orders similarly to the Iwa ninjas if Hokage had asked him to, just like they did for their Tsuchikage when they tried to victimize him and Sasuke.

"Well, I'm happy you're here with me," Ino said, before pressing her lips to Naruto's cheek. She let them linger for the longest time before pulling back and setting her cheek against his again, "I don't care about heroes, or good guys, or whatever. None of that makes a difference. I don't need a hero. I need you."

Something like that sounded nice. Almost too good to be true as a matter of fact. It almost made Naruto feel bad that she was being so frank and vulnerable with him, "You sure you want to stick around with somebody like me? I'm starting to think that all Kage's kids are nothing but trouble," He tried to joke.

"Why not?" Ino asked, moving around to straddle Naruto's lap, "Just as long as you're sure you can handle all of this crazy. There is a lot of it."

"Maybe, but I guess you'd have to be a little out there to put up with me," Naruto answered, his blue eyes meeting hers in their close proximity, "Besides, as long as the crazy comes wrapped up in all of this," He said, running his hands up and down her bare midriff, "I think I'll be okay with it."

"…Hey, Goldie?"

"Yeah?"

"You're not going to keep me waiting anymore, are you?"

Ino punctuated this by letting her long hair down from its ponytail and sliding off both of her mesh elbow-warmers.

You would have had to damn near hit Naruto over the head with what you meant when it came to being vague about most things, but right there sitting on his lap with the feelings coursing through the two of them and the pheromones clouding their senses, even a mister obvious-type could get the message.

She couldn't think of any other reason to put it off any longer.

They were both old enough. That had been Ino's weakest excuse to not go to bed with Naruto, but it had been one she used on herself when she thought about the right time to make their relationship more physical.

The argument that they had plenty of time for such things later held no weight when only a week ago Naruto had been missing in action and taken prisoner. Whatever time they were supposed to have could clearly be taken away from them in a heartbeat.

Naruto had never brought it up, but Ino could feel his eyes on her. He was trained by a man that taught him how to appreciate the female form, and it was always encouraging that he appreciated hers. But that instruction was strict look-don't-touch. Jiraiya was a pervert, but that was where the man's limits sat. For any touching, consent was paramount. Naruto was also something of a gentleman. Such a term could barely be used on Naruto, so it was only applicable when it came to the growth of their relationship.

When it was time to kiss, he moved on it when she was ready. When things became more handsy, they didn't become that way until Ino had made it clear that it was expected and encouraged when she did it first. Sleeping over was done with her consent first. He didn't offer it until she took it upon herself to do so initially.

So as much as he wanted her, and she knew that he did, it was up to her to show him that it was okay.

Lemon Start

Ino reached up to her neck and undid the highest button on her blouse before slowly undoing the rest of them, steadily giving her boyfriend a greater view of her chest wrapped in bindings. She smiled roguishly at seeing how entranced Naruto happened to be.

"I'm pretty sure you know what to do from here," Ino said, egging him on. Naruto reached up and grabbed the bindings in his hand only to cut through them with his chakra, "…I meant take my bindings off."

Naruto put Ino down on her back and stepped away to lose his own clothes. All the while he grinned at the pouty look on the topless girl's face at being so unceremoniously disrobed. She had probably envisioned it to transpire as though it were a scene out of one of the flowery romance novels he knew she read.

"I did take 'em off," He said holding up a hand and wiggling his fingers, "Want me to take your skirt off too?"

Feigning as though she were giving it a moment of thought, Ino eventually lifted her legs off of the bed as though she were giving Naruto permission, "Yes, but rip my skirt and panties, and I'll make sure you don't remember this when we're through," She said haughtily.

Naruto could feel the lie all over her and let her know as much as his hands reached at the waist of her lower garments, "You just said you can't do that," He said, slowly sliding everything off with one pull. Ino didn't fight it for a moment, and Naruto simply relished seeing his girl lying underneath him as bare as the day she was born.

She wasn't scared, she wasn't shy about it. She radiated an air of warmth and invitation.

"Damn, called my bluff," Ino said with a click of her tongue, winking at her boyfriend and waving her legs up high in the air, "I guess you have me at a disadvantage."

Naruto stopped one of her legs and set her ankle against the side of his neck. Ino grabbed one of his hands and pulled him down comfortably between her legs, bringing his lips to hers. Their tongues met and engaged in a back and forth as Naruto ran his hands up and down Ino's body.

Ino grabbed a handful of Naruto's hair while she moaned into the kiss. She could feel Naruto's right hand moving down to her hip and fumbled with trying give him enough space to reach between her legs while keeping into their making out.

After getting kneed for the third time, Naruto moved, kissing down Ino's jaw and neck, relishing in the sight of the fading red marks he left on her fair skin with every peck, "Yeah, that stuff in the books usually doesn't work when it's your first time," He said, moving his hand into position Ino had been trying to get it to.

"And how are you sure it's my-?" Ino's question on her lack of experience died when she felt two foreign fingers slip inside of her. Until then she had only felt her own. The difference between hers and his were quite jarring, and the fact that he seemed to be privy to just how to stir her up inside only made the surprise feeling that much better, "Oh, Goldie!"

Naruto kept his focus on getting Ino ready for sex. She was extremely tight, and he was finding it extremely easy to work her over with just one hand. The poor girl put arches in her own back just from the slightest flexes and pumps of his fingers.

At that moment, Ino was making Naruto very grateful that he had a corner apartment in his building. If her wails and cries wound up getting too loud, at least he would get the least amount of neighbor complains possible the next day.

"W-Why do you know what you're doing?" Ino managed to ask between pants before thinking better of it and shutting down that train of thought, "On second thought, I don't want to know. Just keep doing it."

"Mmph," Naruto responded, his mouth full as he busied himself while fingering Ino by sucking on her breasts, flicking the tip of his tongue over the little pink nubs to coax them into hardness. Ino bucked her hips into her boyfriend's fingers, feeling a pressure building inside of her.

The prideful kunoichi loved the attention she was getting, every bit of it. She knew that Naruto was savoring the chance to show it to her as well. She could feel his erection rubbing against her every time she made any sort of move and realized that Naruto wasn't going to try and get his until he knew for a fact that she had gotten hers first.

It was quite courteous, but not exactly fair when the girl was the sort who wanted to try her hand at blowing his mind.

"L-Li…" Ino tried to say, wiggling fitfully, "Lights. Get the lights. Please?"

Naruto immediately stopped upon hearing Ino's request, wondering why turning the lights out would be such a big deal. But looking in the direction of his window, and seeing the curtain that covered the glass door to his balcony, he grimaced and figured it out. Potential voyeurs could likely easily see them going at it just from the shadows they would be making.

"Okay, one sec," Naruto said, hopping out of the bed, hoping that Ino wouldn't cool down any in the few seconds it would take to darken the room and return. Too little too late did he realize it was a trick when Ino's weight barreled into his back and her soft, delicate hand wrapped around his cock, "Ino?"

Ino had underestimated just how jelly-legged her lover's ministrations had made her and had stumbled in her attempt to swiftly reach Naruto before he turned back around. She made up for the clumsy misstep with a calm, gentle touch as she began to stroke his hard-on.

"You sure it's my first time?" Ino purred in his ear, taking a soft nibble at his earlobe. She slowly backed up to the bed, guiding Naruto with her as she did. The throb she could feel with every quick beat of his heart made her own pulse speed up.

"It's still definitely your first time," Naruto said before Ino sidestepped him and shoved him down onto the bed. What a forward move, "Throwing me around isn't gonna change that, you know?"

Ino walked around to another side of the bed before crawling over to Naruto, a hungry gaze in her eyes, "Mmm, I'm not sure I'm the dominant type anyway. What do you think?"

Naruto laid back and kept his eyes on his girl, watching her carefully climb atop him, situated just in front of his dick. He wanted to be inside of her. Wanted so badly to flip their positions and take control, but while Ino wasn't dominant, she did seem to like a measure of control. When he was fingering her, she seemed to be making any move she could to have it done on her terms, "Not unless being bossy counts."

Ino lightly danced her fingernails over Naruto's chest before reaching behind herself and guiding Naruto's member to the entrance of her pussy, getting it as slick as she could with her own juices before going any further. That last needed step, "…Goldie, how much is this supposed to hurt?" It was the first time since they'd began that she seemed hesitant, "This really is my first time."

As Naruto looked up into Ino's light blue eyes, he didn't know how to answer her, 'I don't know. Akira said it's not the same for every girl,' He thought to himself about the Guardian that had taken it upon herself to teach him the ropes.

Akira had caught him and Jiraiya peeking on her and Kotoko one time, but instead of trying to exact any sort of punishment she simply laughed. For the next several months, the infuriating young woman needled him about how he didn't know the first thing about being with a girl.

It took a while, but eventually she egged him on enough that she was able to sucker him into proving it. A mere ruse done to instruct him, as she'd let him on to the fact of afterwards.

When he asked why, she responded that as his senior she couldn't let him go out and have him ruin the first time for whatever poor girl figured he was special enough to give it up to. That girl happened to be Ino. And Naruto was grateful for both of those things.

Eventually he decided to just go with the truth, "I don't know. It might hurt a lot. You might barely feel it. I couldn't tell you," Whether they stopped from there or continued on would be her choice. He wasn't going to lie or distort the truth just to get off.

Ino looked down at him before smiling softly, resuming her actions of pressing the head of Naruto's cock to her lower lips, "Well, even if it does hurt, I couldn't imagine anyone else in the world I'd rather lose it to than you."

And that was that. It was all she needed to say, and all he needed to hear.

Naruto rested his hands on Ino's waist and helped to guide her down as she allowed him to slowly penetrate her. Pain shot through Ino as her barrier had been broken quicker than she had been anticipating. Naruto easily took note of the discomfort on her face and cringed in return. Being inside of Ino felt wonderful for him, but the fact that it hurt her in any way made the feeling entirely hollow.

"It's not… so bad," Ino told him, realizing that he must have been worried. Really, she had felt far worse pains, but it was just that this particular one was in such an awkward place that it was jarring, "Just give me a second."

The boy underneath her simply ran his fingers over her hips and backside instead of trying to hurry things along, "Don't rush. Take all the time you think you need."

Ino winced and waited for the sharp pain to fade before remembering that she doubled as a medic-nin. With two hand-seals and a wave of glowing green hands over her pelvis for a split-second, she let out a sigh of relief. Feeling much better, a cattish smirk formed on her face as she looked down at her would-be prey, "Tell me if I'm doing it wrong, okay?" She asked as she began moving her hips up and down.

She set to making her own pace. It was easy for her to go with what felt good, and from the look on Naruto's face underneath her as he helped to guide her movements he felt the same.

Naruto continued to let Ino ride him, admirably keeping his cool despite the sensations he was getting from the beautiful girl sitting on top of him. With the soft, warm, wet friction enveloping his member, it was almost too difficult to believe it was actually happening.

Ino was his. She was really his. Every time he went in and out of her, it was the most inviting feeling in the world. She had given everything that she was to him. Whether it was for fifteen minutes, two hours, or it lasted forever, it was a moment the two of them would always have. The last barricade they'd kept between one another was gone.

He had felt so comfortable, so warm, so wanted, that he hadn't realized that he'd moved Ino onto her back until he saw her naked form surrounded by his linens, glowing in the pale flecks of moonlight that reached through his curtain.

The look in her eyes was one of complete acceptance and want, a willingness to understand whatever she needed to about him to walk by his side and stay with him. It was all there.

Ino reached up, placing one hand on Naruto's shoulder and caressing his cheek with the other, "Be gentle," She said.

There was no apprehension with her. Only a fondness forged through countless experiences shared, a yearning caused by years of separation, and an elation borne from being together in the most certain form.

Naruto looked down at Ino with the most serene smile on his face she had ever seen him give her. He would never harm her. Never on purpose. He would maim himself, disfigure his own body before causing her any kind of lasting agony.

He began to thrust into her, grunting softly in pleased exertion. Ino's toes curled up in the sheets with every push forward he gave, her breathy pants synchronized with the rhythm he had set.

Ino snaked a hand behind Naruto's head and softly pulled him down, touching her forehead to his as they both gazed into each other's half-lidded blue eyes.

"You're getting close. I can feel it," Naruto told her, driving his cock into her. One hand rested on the small of her back, letting him get deeper and deeper with each stroke. She wrapped her legs around his waist in a desperate attempt to fight off the sensations that would bring their love-making to an end, but he used his other hand to pin one of them down to the bed at the thigh, "No, Ino. Let it go."

It was too much. With Naruto in control, she couldn't slow the pace down when she felt like her climax was close. She kept skirting away from it, but now he was making her face it, and she didn't want him to stop. She was afraid of her release, scared that it would make all of it end. But she craved it. It was the goal. It was in her sights. He was going to give it to her.

"Goldie," Ino whispered, her voice shaking. She tried her best to keep from being too loud in the apartment, but it was a losing proposition. Eyes shut tight, her head shook back and forth before she arched her back and let out a loud cry. Her body shuddered and jerked in his arms, driven to convulsions by the first orgasm she had ever been given by another man.

Little pinpricks of satisfaction seemed to touch every nerve ending on her body. Blinding white flashes affected her vision. And then she felt the heat of Naruto's release fill her depths. He continued to move his hips until every drop of cum had spilled free from him.

Ino fully collapsed onto the bed and held Naruto's head to the crook of her neck. She giggled as his breath tickled her heated flesh, "Good boy," She cooed, running her fingers through his wet hair. Both of them were glistening with sweat, but had never felt so fulfilled, "That was fun. Did you feel as good as I felt?"

Naruto tried to push his weight off of the girl beneath him, but the weakness in his arms, and Ino holding tight to him kept him right where he was. That was fine. He didn't want to move just yet anyway, "Yeah. We should do it again sometime."

The blonde telepath grinned and wiggled her toes in delight, still tickled from the aftershock of her orgasm. A moment of surprise overtook her when Naruto rolled onto his back, bringing her to rest on top of him. Who needed a blanket? He had an Ino.

She whined out of loss when Naruto pulled out of her, but settled for a good cuddle, legs intertwined, the whole nine yards. She felt safe and happy with Naruto's arm resting around her back, holding her close. Not quite as close as they had been, but all it would take to relive that moment again would be a single word. That was what it meant to belong to each other.

Ino pushed herself up long enough to give Naruto a sprite of a kiss on the lips before coming back to a rest, head on his chest, arms squeezing him like a teddy bear, "I love you, Goldie."

Naruto shut his eyes with the loving telepathic projection of his girlfriend as the last thought on his mind, "I love you too, Ino."

Omake: 'Til Death Do Us What? (7)

Jiraiya truly loved the fact that he was born in Hi no Kuni, the apparent Land of Fire. The summers were hot. So hot that the woman took to frolicking in the many rivers and streams that you could find in any given area.

He had been all over the world, but for his money, the highest caliber of women were to be found in the village that borne him. There was no place to go babe-watching like Konoha.

"There you are, Ero-sensei!"

Jiraiya cringed and hoped that the girls under the watchful glance of his looking scope had not heard the loud, boisterous voice that could only belong to his godson and current apprentice.

"Shhh!" Jiraiya wheeled around, finger to his lips, waving his other arm frantically to try and shut Naruto's mouth before he blew his cover, "Kid, shut up! I'm doing a thing here!" He hissed.

Naruto had been looking all over Konoha for his pervert of a godfather. Thankfully he hadn't gone out wandering or spying again. Well, he was spying, but only on girls, "I've been looking for you for two whole goddamn days! You need to freaking come with me and fix what you did!"

Jiraiya seemed less than ecstatic to reunite with Naruto under the current circumstances. Especially when he had as many ants in his pants as he currently seemed to, "Kid, I have no idea what you want, but whatever you think I did, I want hard proof before you start accusing me of anything."

"Oh, I've got hard proof. Her name is Shizuka, and she's here in Konoha!" Naruto said, taking a measure of satisfaction in seeing Jiraiya's face pale at the sound of that woman's name. So it wasn't just Naruto that dreaded her presence, "Come on, you've got to have a way out of this. You got out of it once when it happened to you, didn't you?"

Jiraiya scratched at his long, spiky white hair, "Well, yeah… by basically pawning the whole thing off onto my student, which is you," This was clearly the wrong thing to say judging by the quick flare-up of the Kyuubi's chakra that he could see in Naruto's eyes. Well, kudos to him for holding it back, "Hey, if it's any consolation, it should have been Minato or one of my other two genin who wound up dealing with this crap. I had them first!"

Naruto immediately went pale. That didn't help at all.

In fact, it was rather disturbing to know that the only thing that kept him from having different parents or being born into a situation where it would probably be awful to be a boy was someone not having an apprentice at the same that time Jiraiya was originally training his dad.

"Okay, upsetting alternate reality branch aside-," Jiraiya said, moving things away from thoughts that were clearly making Naruto uncomfortable to think about, "I'm here now, so let's you and me put our heads together and fix this. We're both smart guys, right?"

Naruto didn't even have the self-esteem mustered to lie to himself enough to agree with that.

Deflated by Naruto's lack of support as to their situational intelligence, Jiraiya tried a different approach, "…We both know smart guys who could probably fix this for us, right?" Once again, from Naruto's reaction this was clearly the wrong thing to say.

Naruto darkly stared in the general direction of the Nara Clan grounds, hoping beyond hope that Shikamaru could sense his anger from that far away, "If I see my smart guy who could probably fix this for me, I'm tying him to something in the middle the village. Probably naked, probably painted, and maybe with some kind of animal crap on him," He then noticed that Jiraiya was looking at him oddly, "…Shikamaru is the whole reason this is all happening. He told her I was here."

Jiraiya could hardly believe that someone's best friend would clamp the ball-and-chain around their buddy's leg like that. Whatever happened to brotherhood? Had it gone the way of the dinosaur?

"Why are most of the friends that you graduated with dicks?" The shinobi from a bygone era asked incredulously. He didn't understand the backhanded camaraderie that he seemed to witness every day. And it wasn't just Naruto and his group of friends that he saw it from, "What, are all of you subconsciously rival alphas or something?"

"Nothing subconscious about it. I am pure alpha," Naruto responded matter-of-factly before stepping up to try and defend his cast of friends, "Besides, all of my friends aren't dicks. Rock Lee's actually a pretty cool guy."

"He didn't graduate with you."

"He's close enough," Naruto argued before getting back on track, "Look, this isn't helping! Everything I've thought of so far, other than finding somebody else to beat her in a fight, would end up with us probably fighting a war or something."

Which was bad. Oh yes, Konoha would totally win. But as far as publicity went, wiping a minor village off of the map because of a snafu'ed marriage arrangement would not bode well for Konoha's business. Also, any one of the other vultures that wanted a piece of Konoha would likely take that chance to take a shot at them.

There was no shortage of scavengers willing and able to pick at the scraps.

Jiraiya wondered why it had to be his apprentice in particular saddled with this kind of thing.

Oh, yeah, because once upon a time he thought it would be a great idea to do some of his famed research on a village whose standing ninja force was entirely comprised of women. And in fairness, it had been an incredible idea, one of the best experiences of his life, right up until he'd been caught and had to fight the village leader on his way out.

Ah, memories.

"Look, it's fine," Jiraiya said, throwing an arm over Naruto's shoulder as he began walking with the younger man, "We'll probably get this whole thing handled before a ton of people find out and the rumors start."

"Rumors?"

"Yeah. Trust me. This is a ninja village. If those get going, everything will wind up getting blown out of proportion."

XxX

(With Ino)

Ino couldn't help but feel self-conscious as another group of women walked past her and Sakura, looking at her as they talked to each other in hushed tones.

It was one thing to know that the shinobi were aware of what was going on with your love life, but when you heard it from the civilians who couldn't lower their voices enough for you to not hear it, or keep from making eye contact with you out of interest of your situation, it was really bad.

"Does everyone know what's going on with Goldie and that Shizuka girl?" Ino asked, hoping that such a thing was most certainly not the case. As a girl that was quite fond of rumors, she knew just how bad such talk could get if left to linger over time.

Sakura wanted to spare her friend and former rival in love the embarrassment of the truth, but felt it was better that she was aware of the situation, "Actually, the versions I've heard are all a little bit different, but most of them have some version of Naruto getting engaged and then coming back to Konoha and having fun with you behind Shizuka's back before the wedding."

Ino stopped in the middle of the street, her mouth hanging wide open in horror, "So I'm the other woman in this!?"

Sakura was quite confident in her ability to genjutsu Ino into docility if she were to fly off the handle, but even so, she took a step of precaution away from the passionate blonde, "…Yes."

No wonder it was mostly women who were looking at her. It was worse than she thought.

There might as well have been a rain cloud opening up over Ino's head from the amount of defeat evident in her posture. Sakura quickly waved her hands to try and discount what she had just said, "But that's not all of them! In some of them they have him coming back and falling in love with you! That's closer to the real thing!" A spark of hope swelled in Ino's chest that maybe the right story was getting out around, "…Except it still has him officially engaged to her, so he's still two-timing."

Well, that hope was nice to have while it lasted.

Ino stomped a foot in the dirt, feeling remarkably close to twelve years-old again. So badly did she want to throw a tantrum, "That's not fair! Goldie's a sweetheart! He wouldn't cheat on me, or anyone he was with!"

For as true as that likely was, perception was everything when the people processing the information knew nothing about the people involved personally, "Well with who his sensei is, I can see why people figured he'd pick up that kind of behavior," Sakura pointed out.

Ino shook her head with a frown, her long ponytail waving behind her as she did so, "Naruto says Jiraiya-sama is a total rolling stone, but he's never in a relationship to actually cheat on anyone, so that's not fair either."

Sakura shrugged as though it were out of her hands, "Gossip isn't fair."

There was a vein in Ino's head that she could feel throbbing. This entire situation was going to wind up giving her wrinkles before it was all said and done, "This whole thing is so frustrating. I just want to punch her in the mouth, but I don't want to start a war over this!"

"Is that what you were concerned about?"

Ino almost instinctively began to gnash her teeth at the sound of Shizuka's voice. Lo and behold, the gorgeous, dark-clad leader of Nadeshiko Village stood on a branch in the shade of one of Konoha's many trees. It seemed as though she had been looking for someone when she had come across Ino.

Sakura could see Ino's fingers flexing in and out of fists and the heel of her foot repeatedly tapping on the ground. She hadn't seen Ino detest another person to such a degree in the entire time she had known her.

Trying to defuse any pending clash in the middle of the street, Sakura stepped in front of Ino and tried to regard Shizuka with cordiality, "If you're looking for Naruto, he's not here. I met up with Ino and we've been together for a few hours."

"I don't want her looking for him. She'll actually find him."

Sakura rolled her eyes at the telepathic message and turned around to give the perpetrator a look, "If I don't get her out of here somehow, you'll just wind up jumping in that tree and trying to rip her face off," It was disturbing how the suggestion of such a thing put a docile smile on Ino's face.

Shizuka's striking green eyes didn't move away from Ino the entire time, "I'm afraid I'm not searching for my betrothed today. I was looking for you."

Ino raised an eyebrow and stepped in front of Sakura, ignoring Team 7's kunoichi palming her forehead and muttering curses to herself, "Oh really? And what do you want from me? I thought I was just an obstacle."

"You are," Shizuka agreed before sighing and closing her eyes in apparent resignation, "I won't be able to take Naruto back with me. I would have to convince him since I can't take him by force, and I could never do such a thing as long as you and he are together."

Ino wasn't certain, as many people didn't exactly tell her they were going to try and cause her harm before doing it, but it sounded like Shizuka wanted a fight, "So you're going to try and kill me?"

"No," Shizuka said before pursing her lips in thought. Perhaps more clarification was needed? "Maybe. It depends. Not outright at least. I simply propose a duel between the two of us to settle matters."

A duel? They weren't a pair of old-school samurai, they were kunoichi! "Are you insane? You can't literally fight for someone's boyfriend! Goldie's not some trophy or a prize!" What kind of customs made it completely feasible for her to figure that fighting for the possession of another human being was okay?

Shizuka was surprised at being so mistaken, "You won't fight me?" She had assumed that someone as spirited as Ino would have leapt at the chance to fight her and put an end to everything once and for all, "Even if I said that I would leave Konoha immediately and never return?"

"Hell no!" Ino snapped, trying to ignore just how tempting that setup was, "On top of everything else wrong with what you just said, you've got diplomatic immunity or something."

"I would never disgrace the terms of a duel, nor would I abuse the goodwill of my own village in such a way," Shizuka assured her, placing a hand over her heart, "Fight me. If you win, you will never see me again. If I win, you will relinquish your claim on my betrothed. You will relinquish any claim you have over him. I will be free to pursue him without you as an obstacle."

That way that Shizuka constantly chose to describe her, as an obstacle, as though she weren't even a woman. It was as if she implied that anything she'd built with Naruto was worth nothing, meant nothing. Every moment they had shared didn't matter, because she didn't matter.

Sakura didn't share Ino's hard-earned talent of telepathy. She didn't necessarily need it though, as she could see the gears turning in Ino's head and read her shift of expression like a map.

"Ino, no," Sakura said, speaking through the grit of her own teeth, "…Ino, seriously. No. Fucking no," Sakura accentuated with a sharp tug of the girl's arm.

Sakura was right. Ino knew that she was right. There wasn't anything to argue about it. The negatives definitely outweighed the positives in regards to accepting these conditions for a fight.

But it was a fight, and she'd wanted one for the last week anyway. Without the added parameter of Shizuka taking a permanent hike dangled in front of her like a juicy carrot.

"Unggh…" By now, Ino was physically affected by the battle of her common sense grappling with her sense of self-gratification, "I really want to hit her, Sakura. I really do. You have no idea," Sakura tried to stop what she was about to see, but Ino blurted it out before anything could be done, "You're on."

The pink-haired kunoichi stood motionless, staring at Ino for a moment before walking several feet away and yelling into the open air. Anyone that hadn't already been paying attention to the scene in passing all stopped to look at the crazy teenager, venting her frustrations via shouting and punching at nothing.

She finished to find Ino still standing where she had been before, seemingly patiently waiting on her to finish, "You done? Feel better now? That took so long, Shizuka told me where and when we were doing this."

"You know what? You two are perfect together, because that was a Naruto kind of move."

"You mean spontaneous and headstrong?"

"No, I mean dumb and forcing unnecessary conflict for the sake of a resolution. I guess yours is nicer though."

Jutsu List

Shinwakerushin no Jutsu (Mind Body Divide Jutsu). A-rank ninjutsu. Supplementary. Short-to-mid range. A high-level Yamanaka Clan technique. The user sends their chakra into a target's body and temporarily disconnects the target's conscious mind, leaving the body's motivations and directives a blank slate for the user to overwrite with a verbal order. The order will be carried out until the connection between the victim's mind and body is reestablished, giving them full control over their body once more. Depending on the target affected, the disconnect can last for an instant or for several hours. Multiple targets caught in the jutsu's aim scheme can be controlled at once.