"I do not wish to cause unnecessary bloodshed. Give me Uzumaki Naruto and you will be spared. This is your final warning."
Naruto was stunned.
"Is that... Konan?! What is she doing here?!"
Pain's invasion of Konohagakure happened around a month ago so Naruto had not forgotten about Nagato Uzumaki's right-hand subordinate.
"Is she here to break me out?"
He couldn't wrap his head around the idea. He had made peace with Nagato and Konan and after Nagato sacrificed himself to bring back to life everyone that he had killed, Naruto and Konan separated on a good note... But he had never envisioned a scenario where a former Akatsuki member of all people would one day come to save him from prison, right after his own friends and his village had turned on him no less.
⁂
Standing on top of the tall walls surrounding Hozuki Castle, the leader of the prison, Mui, glared a the blue-haired woman flying in the sky.
"From the day Hozuki Castle was founded, none of the prisoners have managed to break out. Go away, Akatsuki. Your kind is not welcome here."
The other wardens looked at their leader inwardly startled. Even after the angel-like woman had already attacked the castle, Mui still didn't retaliate. But, in their memory, Mui was not the kind of shinobi to ignore such acts or the type to hesitate when dealing with his enemies. They didn't know that, as one of the highest-ranking shinobi in Hidden Grass, Mui was well aware of Konan's identity and her real strength. A kunoichi that was capable of flight - especially an S-ranked criminal - would almost always have the advantage in battle.
"I tried giving you a way out. It's all on your head now," Konan said and her body dispersed into countless tiny paper butterflies.
In a matter of moments, the swarm of paper butterflies covered the entirety of Houzki Castle's walls.
His eyes widening at the sight of the thousands of explosive tags that covered the walls and building all over the castle's courtyard, Mui let out a shout at the top of his lungs:
"Everyone! Get away from the walls! NOW!"
But his warning came a little too late. The majority of shinobi and kunoichi among his subordinates heeded his words and quickly jumped to safety but most of the wardens at the Blood Prison were not chakra users. They couldn't escape in time.
A chain of explosions was suddenly triggered and the ancient and majestic walls surrounding the castle collapsed in a heap of debris, fire, and dust. With the walls suddenly being brought down like that, hundreds of prisoners cheered at the unexpected windfall and broke into a mad dash towards freedom.
But Mui didn't even spare them a glance. As long as the Celestial Prison Technique was active on their bodies, none of the inmates would be able to escape. The moment they went past a certain distance from the caster of that technique, they would combust from within and burn to death.
Instead of wasting time fussing over the escaped convicts, Mui went through a short sequence of handseals and inhaled deeply before spewing out an enormous conic wave of fire. The sky was covered with flames and the whole world seemed to catch on fire.
Suddenly, the whistling sound made by a sharp object cutting the air reached his ears and, not even a second later, a four-foot-wide paper chakram pierced through his sea of fire seemingly unaffected and nearly decapitated him in the process as well. It was only his instincts as an elite jonin that allowed him to dodge it by the skin of his teeth. He couldn't rejoice at his survival just yet because only a moment after nearly grazing the tip of his nose, the paper chakram's trajectory made a 180 turn and came back like a boomerang.
A split second before the paper chakram hit him, Mui substituted himself with one of the wardens watching helplessly from the side. A wet squelching sound was heard as the warden was sliced in two from head to toe, the poor man not knowing even at the moment of his death what had killed him.
Taking advantage of the brief respite, Mui went through another sequence of hand seals and jumped sharply towards the blue-haired woman floating in mid-air.
"Katon: Heavenly Prison Fire Sword!" he screamed and, as a long dark crimson flaming blade came out from his arm, he slashed with it at Konan in a wide arc.
But right before the flaming blade could incinerate her, Konan dispersed in a flurry of paper tags which quickly flew and reformed behind Mui's back.
As if he had been waiting for her to do something like that from the beginning, Mui swiftly turned and thrust his flame-coated palm at her while shouting:
"Katon: Tenro!"
It was his most used technique, it was the fire seal that he used on all the shinobi that had been imprisoned in the Hozuki Castle, the jutsu that would seal their chakra away, rendering them no stronger than civilians.
When he felt his palm touching solid matter, a small smirk of satisfaction appeared at the corner of his lips at having prevailed over such a powerful and troublesome opponent like Konan. No matter who they were, the moment that his Celestial Prison technique took effect on them, they would lose!
But one second later, the blue-haired kunoichi started glowing with an ominous light. Any ninja worth their salt knew what was about to happen next but, unfortunately, he was a step too late to get away. The Konan on whom he had cast his Tenro was nothing more than a paper clone... ...a paper clone consisting of a few hundred explosive tags.
A terrible explosion shook the entirety of the castle's courtyard and all the wardens and convicts fighting against each other at that moment froze in their tracks. For the inmates who had been imprisoned for a long time and for the wardens that had worked under Mui's orders for years, Mui had been solidified in their minds as a powerful, nigh-unbeatable shinobi due to his one-shot-win Tenro seal. He was one of the strongest and most capable shinobi of the Hidden Grass. To see that Mui collapsing to the ground as a corpse charred beyond recognition, they could not get over their surprise momentarily.
Knowing that everyone's attention was focused on her at that moment, Konan said:
"I will ask one more time. Where is Uzumaki Naruto?"
Her manner of speech was calm, but nobody was fooled by that false lack of danger coming from her. Having watched her demolish the large walls of the castle and then making short work of Mui, her calmness and the myriad of paper tags swarming around her made her look even more dangerous.
⁂
The moment that Mui died, Naruto felt the Tenro seal that was suppressing his chakra vanish. His hands making the familiar hand sign for summoning a Shadow Clone, a blue orb of chakra appeared in the palm of his hand next and the outer wall of the hole he had been imprisoned in was blasted to smithereens.
But as he jumped out of the cell, his steps paused when he noticed the destruction everywhere around him and the angel-like woman floating in the middle of the now-ruined courtyard of the castle.
"Konan? Why are you here?" he asked, a node in his neck.
The swarm of paper butterflies flying around the courtyard converged on Konan and she slowly materialized and floated down in front of Naruto.
"It looks like I made it here in time," Konan said.
Leaving aside his ripped and ragged clothes and the tear marks that could be seen on his dusty face, Naruto appeared to be relatively well, uninjured.
"How did you know I was here?" Naruto asked another question. "And why... Why did you come to save me?"
"Have you forgotten our promise? The Hidden Rain and I will always support you," Konan said.
It was then that Naruto remembered the words that Konan had told him several weeks ago after Nagato's death:
"Yahiko and Nagato meant everything to me. Yahiko's dream... and Nagato's dream... if both of their dreams had been passed to you, then you now embody their dreams. Nagato put his faith in you. So will I. We, the Hidden Rain, will pursue their dreams together with you."
Naruto had forgotten about those words. In truth, he had been so busy helping with the reconstruction of the village after Pain had turned into a crater that he had not really thought a second time about Konan since then. However, it looked like Konan was a woman of her word. Her promise had not been just empty words, she had really come to help him when she caught wind of his situation.
Having spent nearly 8 days in the hole, his anger at the injustice that he had suffered, the pain he felt at Konoha's betrayal, and the feeling of misery stemming from being abandoned by the ones that the had seen as his friends or even family... all those negative emotions had long since reached the point of boiling.
But the more his anger was raging at Konoha, the deeper was his gratitude for the one person that had come to rescue him in his darkest hour.
"Thank you," he said and looked down, unable to speak another word.
The two of them sank into momentary silence, the sounds of fighting and the screams coming from their surroundings taking over instead.
"Konoha had cast you out. What will you do from now on?" Konan asked eventually.
That question left Naruto stumped for words for a while.
"I don't know."
He had never imagined being in a situation like this. He had never thought about a scenario where his sensei, his baa-chan, and his friends would turn their back on him, a world where Konoha would throw him away.
"..."
After a few moments, Konan said:
"We should leave first. You can decide on your future course of action after you've had time to rest and think about it with a clear head."
Coming closer to Naruto, two large white wings formed at her back as she said:
"Take my hands. We are going to fly away."
But just as Naruto and Konan clasped their hands together and were about to take off, the pavement underneath their feet cracked and a tree branch sprouted seemingly out of nowhere. It grew out at an alarming rate and it attempted to capture both of them at once, splitting in two from the middle and getting more branches as it continued to grow.
Konan swiftly dispersed into a swarm of papers and Naruto jumped away just as fast as well, avoiding the Wood-style technique effortlessly.
Back in the hole that he had broken out of, one of Naruto's Shadow Clones disappeared with a popping sound and a red pigmentation appeared around the real Naruto's eyes, his pupils transforming into horizontal bars. While he had been stuck in solitary confinement, at the cost of the terrible pain that came with forcing himself to use chakra while under the effects of the Tenro seal, Naruto had created a Shadow Clone to slowly gather natural energy. It was going to be his ticket out of this prison but Konan ended up coming to his rescue before he could attempt to break out a second time.
Entering his Sage Mode, it took only a moment for all the chakra signatures in the vicinity to appear clearly in his mind's eye. While the wooden branch that had tried to entrap him and Konan had already been an obvious giveaway, his Sage Senses confirmed his suspicions: beyond the smoke, fire, and dust that obscured one's visibility in the castle's courtyard, just outside the castle's collapsed walls there were over a dozen people with whom he was very close to. Or he used to.
"Naruto! Why are you with the Akatsuki?! Get away from her as fast as you can!" an overly familiar yell came from beyond the heap of debris that had once served as the castle's walls.
Barely a moment after he heard that yell, a huge octopus tentacle split the air as it slapped in Konan's direction. Konan was just about to evade it by turning herself into a swarm of paper butterflies again but Naruto unexpectedly jumped in front of her and stopped the enormous tentacle with his body, catching it in his arms.
A grunt of exertion came from Naruto as he pulled on the tentacle with all the might his Sage Mode was capable of and all the smoke and dust filling the air were suddenly dispersed as an enormous being was lifted in the air and slammed into the other side of the courtyard, demolishing an entire pagoda as it crashed into it.
With the smoke and the dust in the courtyard dispersed by the sudden movement of the gigantic tailed beast, Naruto could finally see the appearance of the ones that attacked him. Most of them were wearing either Konoha's or Kumo's standard uniforms. Apart from the Kumogakure shinobi and kunoichi that he wasn't familiar with, Naruto easily recognized Yamato, Kakashi, Tsunade, Sakura, Team 10 and Team 8, Team Gai, Shizune and Sai.
"What are you doing, Naruto?!" Tsunade shouted. "Why would you attack Killer Bee? Why are you protecting that woman?"
"That's all you have to say?" Naruto asked through gritted teeth. "You fucking sent me here to rot in jail and that's all you have to say?! I'm protecting her because she was the one who rescued me! She came to save me after you threw me in prison despite being innocent!" he yelled at her incensed.
"Oh, would you stop whining already!" Sakura said in a fed-up voice as she stomped towards him and cocked her fist back to smack the crap out of him, just like she always did.
"Not this time, Sakura," Naruto said, not using the usual honorifics, as he caught her punch with his hand.
"Let go of me, idiot!" she screamed at him and cocked back her other fist, this time intending of using a chakra-enhanced punch to make Naruto come back to his senses.
As he was currently in the Sage Mode, however, Naruto noticed that and the rage that had been fermenting inside of him for nearly 2 weeks blew up at that moment. Before Sakura could hit him with her devastating punch, Naruto yanked her towards him from the hand that he was holding and smashed his knee into her gut, making spittle come out from her mouth. Still holding her by her right arm, he threw her violently into a nearby building, completely destroying the wall with the force of his throw.
The pink-haired girl slumped on the pavement unconscious.
"What is the meaning of this Naruto?!" Kakashi screamed in disbelief. "Why would you attack your comrades?!"
But when Naruto turned his head at him Kakashi involuntarily tensed when he saw the slit crimson pupils in his eyes.
"What kind of comrades send one of their own to the worst prison on the continent without any evidence, just because some rival Hidden Village demanded so?" Naruto shouted, his voice sounding rougher than normal, a dark tinge to it.
"Naruto, this is a misunderstanding," Yamato tried to reason with him. "It was our strategy to find out what the Hidden Grass had been plotting this entire time by sending you here. We've been stationed close by the entire time in case anything happened."
"I see, so it was a mission," Naruto said as if everything finally made sense.
"That's right!" Yamato was quick to confirm, relief settling on his face when he saw that Naruto was convinced that easily by his words.
"You really thought I was going to believe that bullshit? Do you think that I'm that stupid?" Naruto said, his voice quivering as he barely held his rage in.
Outside of his control, the birthmarks on his cheeks thickened and darkened, the nails of his hands grew into claws and a red aura visible even to the naked eye appeared around his body.
"He isn't lying, Naruto! It was a plan created by Konoha and Kumo together. Trust me, Naruto-" Shikamaru began to say only for Naruto to cut him off midway.
"Trust you? We played shogi the entire night before I was arrested. You could've vouched for me but you didn't."
Shikamaru became silent, understanding that no matter what he said at that moment, considering Naruto's current mental state, it would only worsen the situation.
"How many times have I risked my life for the village? How many times have I saved Konohagakure? Who among any of you has done more for the village than I did?!" Naruto screamed this time, finally releasing all his pent-up anger and frustration. "And what did I get for it? You threw me in prison despite that I was innocent! You cast me out!" he said, tears falling from his eyes but evaporating in the corrosive chakra surrounding his body long before they could roll down his cheeks.
He had always been an outcast. Ever since he was a young kid, the villagers treated him like a menace, they talked badly about him when they thought he couldn't hear them, he was shunned by the parents of other kids in the academy and told to stay away from their sons, and it wasn't just once that he noticed the hatred and contempt in their eyes when they looked at him. However, after graduating from the Academy, he had saved the village more than once, culminating a bit over a month ago with defeating the leader of the Akatsuki and convincing him to bring all the casualties of his invasion back to life. He had thought that things were finally coming around for him. Especially after saving the village from Pain, he had been praised as the Hero of the Leaf.
"It was all a sham," he said, his voice now calm and his tears dried. "I've had enough of Konoha."
But when Naruto turned around, Tsunade shouted after him:
"Do you realize what you're doing, Naruto? Are you going to defect from the village?"
"I know exactly what I'm doing," he said without turning around.
"What about your promise? You swore that you'd become the Hokage! Are you going to renege on that?"
Naruto said nothing in return. Instead, he told the Konan:
"Let's go, Konan."
Receiving a nod of confirmation from her, the two of them jumped away, intending to leave.
However, it was not going to be that easy for them to escape. Having recovered by then from the brutal slam, the transformed Killer Bee sent half of his enormous tentacles at them and he wasn't the only one attacking them. Yamato cast another Wood-style technique to entrap them and Kakashi slapped his palm against the ground, summoning one of his dogs.
"You must be crazy if you think you can escape from all of us! Gatsuga!" Kiba yelled before he and Akamaru cast the special taijutsu move of the Inuzuka clan.
Naruto cancelled his Sage Mode and quickly put his hands in a cross as he ran:
"Tajuu Kage Bunshin no Jutsu!"
Over 1000 clones suddenly made the large courtyard of the Houzuki Castle appear crowded and their voices made the air shudder as half of those one thousand clones shouted together:
"Henge!"
Five hundred clones took on the appearance of Konan, imitating her perfectly before they all partnered up with one of the normal clones and scattered in pairs of two everywhere.
Despite initially having superiority in numbers and combat strength too on their side, Konoha and Kumo's shinobi and kunoichi could only watch helplessly as the stupidly high number of clones scattered in all directions two by two. They didn't even attempt to stop them anymore, it was impossible to catch over a thousand clones that had Naruto's capabilities with only so few of them.