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Chapter 10: Judgment Call

In the woods, miles away from the river he had fallen into, Kiba was sitting under a tree trying to take cover from his pursuing opponents. As he cradled Akamaru's injured and unconscious body he growled to himself, 'If only I'd been stronger! Akamaru would have never gotten hurt if I had been. I can't beat anyone I face, not any real shinobi anyway… I lost to Naruto twice, and now this guy? What am I doing with myself?'

He grabbed the wound on his stomach where he stabbed himself to injure one of his enemies when they attempted a parasitic jutsu to kill him. He couldn't run any further, he knew he wouldn't have gotten much distance anyway.

"So you've finally stopped running?"

Kiba saw that the connected brothers, Sakon and Ukon, coming closer to him, "You were pretty bothersome to try to take down."

Kiba chuckled humorlessly, "Well, it was a good time while it lasted huh?"

The two sound ninja stalked Kiba down to finish the job when a familiar puppet came rushing onto the scene, chattering and scattering the two brothers to separate from one another and dodge.

"Man, is Naruto the only Konoha ninja that doesn't need back-up or something? He bailed you out and now I'm getting the dog-kid out of his situation."

"I take offense to that. Naruto may have assisted me in my battle but I was far from defeated."

The two voices appeared from the trees to reveal Neji and Kankuro, who was using his puppet Karasu, "Thanks for the directions Hyuuga, I might have been a little later otherwise."

Sakon voiced their opinion, "Who the fuck is this with you two Konoha trash?"

Kankuro and Neji looked at one another and Neji gestured for Kankuro to speak, "I am Sabaku no Kankuro. A shinobi of Sunagakure, ally to Konoha, and here to kill you both."

Their attention fell on the wounded Kiba as they heard him hiss in pain due to his injured abdomen, "Go and help out that kid, I'll beat these two myself."

Neji nodded and went to check on Kiba while Kankuro, Kiba grimaced as Neji helped him get in a decent sitting position to examine him with Byakugan, "You two sure made it right in the nick of time. So did you beat that spider guy back there?"

Neji kept scanning the extent of Kiba's wounds, "Naruto arrived and ended our fight before it could escalate any further. It's a good thing too, because I wasn't sure how I would have beaten him, he was incredibly difficult to attack. We caught up to the team afterwards, but when we got there you and Lee were gone."

Kiba chuckled as he watched Kankuro singlehandedly beating back the two Oto twins, "Well it could be worse I suppose. Nobody is dead yet and I'll be fine." He looked up at Neji hopefully, "Right?"

Neji smirked, "Yes, nothing too vital was hit within your wound, it's just enough to inflict decent internal trauma."

"AHHH!"

Kiba looked over to see a second puppet full of blades that used to be part of Karasu. Kiba turned green as he could surmise what had happened, and poor Neji didn't even turn around as he pretty much saw the entire thing happen in its entirety because he had been looking inside of Kiba… Near 360 degrees of vision and x-ray capabilities… yay.

Kiba voiced the opinion of both boys, "Um, okay? Uh, nice finish I guess."

Kankuro watched the blood oozing out of the bottom of his puppet Kuroari (Black Ant) and turned back to them with a smirk, "Thanks. This puppet combination is one of my favorites." He walked over to Kiba and looked him over, "So how is he?"

Neji deactivated his Byakugan to get the picture of the brothers being impaled and stuffed inside of a puppet out of his orbital sockets, "Kiba will be fine for now but we need to get him back to Konoha for treatment, him and Akamaru. Carrying him might pose a problem and cause heavier blood loss however."

Kankuro grinned at them, "No problem." He went over to Kuroari and knocked on it once to open it as the two corpses rolled out onto the ground. Kiba held back a dry heave and Neji's eye twitched.

Kankuro looked inside his puppet, "Yeah this should be just fine, we can put him in this and carry him that way. He won't be at risk at all."

Kiba got a tick mark on his head, "Like hell I'm getting in that thing! You just killed two people in it! There's still pieces of them inside! And I think they released their bowels when you killed them too because I smell shit!"

Kankuro sighed and moved his puppets along like a kid that was told to get up and go do his chores, "Fine, fine… I'll go wash it out in the river, alright?"

Kiba growled, "Fuck that shit! You better have some disinfectant on you goddamn it!"

XxX

As two figures flew through the woods back towards Konoha The only sound coming from them was actually coming from the thing that one of them was carrying. Tayuya had woken up on Choji's shoulder about an hour after Naruto knocked her out and wouldn't shut the hell up. From calling them pube-less rapists to needle-dick transsexuals she just kept bitching them out.

Eventually Shikamaru ripped her hat off of her head and stuffed it into her mouth as a makeshift gag to get some peace and quiet and now he and Choji were basking in the relative silence of their momentary victory. I say relative silence because she was still mumbling nasty curses through the gag.

Shikamaru was currently thinking, 'This mission went straight to hell faster than I could have ever assumed it could have. My formation was useless when we were discovered and we had to break off into one-on-one fights. If Naruto hadn't shown up we could have been in some serious trouble, those guys were way stronger than us.'

The thought came to a close as they heard leaves rustling nearby. Choji set Tayuya down and prepared to fight as did Shikamaru when Temari landed on an adjacent branch, "Whew, I finally caught up with you guys. I see you had a little scrape of trouble." Seeing Tayuya all tied up and cursing she smirked, "Looks like you didn't need back-up after all."

Choji sweated and chuckled, "Oh… Yes we did. Trust me, we did."

Shikamaru nodded, "It's true. We didn't beat her, Naruto did. Naruto beat two others, captured this girl here, and then went off further to keep up the chase. Choji said the first guy almost killed him one-on-one."

Temari blinked in surprise, "Naruto's out here too? He must have been rushed out even faster than we were. So you're saying the headless Mohawk guy that we saw on the way here and the dead spider guy with a kunai in the back of his head were examples of Naruto saving your asses?"

Choji and Shikamaru nodded. Choji raised his hand, "I was there when he started fighting the Mohawk guy. If the fight stayed the way it started off then yes, Naruto definitely killed that guy."

After picking up Tayuya they set back out for Konoha. Shikamaru spoke up, "So you guys were sent to back us up?"

Temari nodded, "Right after Naruto left Suna we got a messenger hawk from Konoha asking for assistance for an emergency so we left immediately. With the speed we were moving I thought we would have passed him on the way but he must not have been joking about how he said he could run straight from Suna to Konoha nonstop."

Shikamaru chuckled, "You'd better believe it if he told you. Naruto beat three of these guys with little to no trouble. Where are your teammates?"

Temari pointed her thumb over her shoulder, "We split up in the three different directions that we sensed your group in. They probably found the rest of your group by now."

Shikamaru sighed in relief, "That's good… This troublesome mission finally has a silver lining around a gray cloud. Let's get back to Konoha and wait for the others."

XxX

Naruto and Kimimaro stood facing off, Kimimaro using his cursed seal level one form, Naruto activating the Kyuubi's shroud. The two stood still while the wind blew across the field. Kimimaro pulled the bones out of both of his arms to dual wield swords, "Let us begin."

A short quirk of Naruto's lips was all the indication to start that either needed as they moved as blurs across the battlefield. Naruto was dodging Kimimaro's double handed strikes and attempting to counter with his claws. Naruto ducked a dual slash at his head but ended up getting kicked back by Kimimaro. Naruto ducked down low and rushed at Kimimaro's legs, shooting for his knees with a takedown attempts, sweeps, and swiping at his legs and lower torso with his claws while simultaneously avoiding low stabbing attempts from Kimimaro.

Kimimaro was the best all around close range fighter in pretty much all of Otogakure, and a good fighter can tell things about their opponent's style from watching them attack. Kimimaro saw that what Naruto gave up in poise and precise movements due to his influx of power he gained in terms of his bloodlust and ways to cause injury to his enemies. If Kimimaro didn't up his own power himself then the attack would have began to overwhelm him.

After dodging a slash at his face Kimimaro cut into Naruto's hip on both sides with a cross-slash and cut into his chest with rapid slashes that sent the demonically charged blonde backwards. Naruto picked himself up by his sword that he landed by and looked back out at Kimimaro while holding the handle. Where there was momentarily blind rage in Naruto's eyes, cognizant thought made a return, 'Wow… I almost started losing it there for a second. I need to train more using this chakra or else I might not be so lucky next time. I forgot about what too much of this stuff would do to me, one tail is overbearing.'

Naruto pulled the sword from the ground and smirked at Kimimaro before the two vanished and began clashing once again. The sound of bone clashing with steel echoed around the area, as they crossed blades with one another again. Naruto's attacks once again became a fluid match for Kimimaro's sleek movements as the two dealt an equal amount of grazing wounds to one another as they met in a stalemate in kenjutsu.

When they broke off again Naruto threw his sword like a javelin at Kimimaro and at the relatively close range that the two were at it thudded directly into his breastbone, however in barely sunk in at all despite the force used. Naruto scoffed as Kimimaro pulled the sword out and threw it aside, 'Those are some seriously tough bones… that would have run anyone else clean through.'

Naruto backed away and rushed in again, this time forming a Kage Bunshin as a feint to engage with his hands while the original leapt over Kimimaro to end up behind him. Naruto quickly molded wind chakra around his fists and held his fists together before shooting them out to utilize Fuuton: Fuujin Seiken (Wind Release: Divine Fist of the Wind God). Kimimaro looked back when he felt the influx of chakra, but this allowed the clone of Naruto to kick him off of their physical clash, hard, sending him into the crushing force of the wind jutsu.

As the attack hit Kimimaro and began pushing him forward at the clone he was kicked by the clone in question formed the exact same jutsu and shot it off at the incoming Kimimaro. The two attacks smashed into one another with Kimimaro in between them. For the time that the jutsu held up Naruto could see that Kimimaro's entire frame visibly compressed under the crushing pressure of the powerful attack.

Kimimaro landed on his feet, panting heavily from the intensity of Naruto's jutsu. Naruto audibly sucked his teeth as he and his clone fired off the attacks once more, smashing Kimimaro between them with even more force this time. Naruto hit him so hard with the attack that he clearly heard the sound of bones cracking on Kimimaro's figure. Naruto's eye slightly twitched, "Tough bones or not… You should be human paste after that, I put a ton of chakra into that one. Nothing short of some kind of metal can stand up to that kind of pressure."

Despite not being killed by Naruto's double Fuuton: Fuujin Seiken it still did damage. The pressure did end up having an effect on Kimimaro. Naruto saw the whites of Kimimaro's eyes turning blood red, meaning that the intense pressure popped blood vessels up there. Blood ran from Kimimaro's ears and nose, even from underneath his finger and toenails. Kimimaro didn't seem to be in any pain, but it was obvious that such internal damage had left him in agony.

"Do you see?" Kimimaro dropped the swords in his hands as he began to transform again, "Orochimaru-sama and his ambition… That is why I fight, for his goals and dream. I am his weapon, and I will allow myself to be broken if it will prevent someone like you from stopping him."

Kimimaro's skin turned brown and six large bone spikes protruded from the sides of his back. In addition to that, a spiky tail emerged from his back and upon seeing that Naruto just could not help himself. He pointed at Kimimaro with a dull expression on his face, "Is that a motherfucking tail? Seriously? You grew a tail?"

Kimimaro stood back up and looked at Naruto with a superior gaze, "This is Orochimaru-sama's gift to me. And with it, I will repay him for all he has done by vanquishing the ones that stand in the way of him and his grand plans."

Kimimaro pulled out his spinal column to form a flexible, spiky chain-staff, "This is the Tessenka no Mai: Tsuru (Dance of the Clemantis: Vine). You are quite skilled to push me this far, but you will not win. Orochimaru-sama has plans for Sasuke Uchiha, it is most unfortunate for you that you will not live to see them come to fruition."

Naruto drew his sword once again, "Well in order to make that happen you're going to have to come over here and fight me, unless you think you can kill me by talking me to death."

Kimimaro snapped his new weapon in a test of sorts, "For the future of Otogakure and Orochimaru-sama you will die today!"

Naruto set his sword in a ready stance and gazed out at Kimimaro coldly, "For someone that seems to have a fetish for saying that they're going to kill me, you sure do a lot of talking."

Kimimaro began whipping his chain-staff at Naruto who found that Kimimaro was far faster in this form than before, 'It looks like this transformation of his isn't just for show.' Naruto took a lash on his shoulder that ripped into his flesh deeply. Kimimaro then hit Naruto with the whip and had it wrap around Naruto's right arm and pull him forward to sink a kick deep into his ribs that freed him from the weapon at the cost of flesh and blood being shredded from his arm.

Naruto held the injured limb and watched his blood drip off of his body and onto the ground before he heard hissing signifying that he was healing somewhat. Naruto growled as he stood back up, keeping his eyes locked on Kimimaro. He decided to go on the attack this time, but every time he took a swing at Kimimaro he ended up getting a lash on his hands. Eventually Naruto roared as he went for a heavy overhead swing, but a strike from Kimimaro's whip sent it out into the distance far from the point of any kind of retrieval.

Kimimaro backed off and began whipping Naruto, cutting into his body and drawing blood with every shot. He struck Naruto across his chest, his back, his arms, wherever he could hit Naruto cleanly he did hit Naruto.

After an endless barrage of strikes from the whip of his enemy Naruto dropped to the ground shaking in pain as blood fell from his body to the grass below, staining the green blades red. His shirt was in tatters and was utterly un-wearable any longer. Kimimaro wrapped his chain-staff around Naruto's arm and jerked him forward, dragging him across the ground on his left side. Naruto eventually regained his footing and Kimimaro's eyes widened as he saw what had been hidden in Naruto's left hand, but he had given Naruto too much momentum and by now Naruto had a full running start heading his way.

Thrusting out his left hand that had a threatening blue sphere spinning in the palm, Naruto shouted out the name of his attack at the top of his lungs as he slammed it into Kimimaro's body, "Rasengan (Spiraling Sphere)! Die you son-of-a-bitch!"

As the jutsu drilled into Kimimaro's body, flesh visibly flew from the point of contact. The force from the attack sent Kimimaro flying away at a high velocity, pulling the whip with him as it pulled itself from Naruto's arm, taking yet another bite out of Naruto's already heavily wounded body.

Naruto fell to the ground clutching his bloody arm before he started crawling towards the direction that Kimimaro flew in, trying to confirm his kill.

"What an incredibly destructive ninjutsu. If I had not grown a layer of bone underneath my skin that most certainly would have ended our battle." Naruto saw Kimimaro standing and walking over to him from the far distance that he had been sent. Where Naruto hit him in the body there was the area where Naruto ripped through his skin, a spherical circle of brown and within there was a visible film of white with a spiral groove carved deeply into it with blood slightly seeping through the cracks that the mark formed, the bone he had been talking about.

Naruto punched the ground hard with his injured arm and stood up again, "Just fucking die already goddamn it! I should have killed you four times already and you're fucking standing like a goddamn zombie! I hit you dead-on! I heard it, I felt it! I heard and felt the fucking Rasengan grinding into you, that was a kill shot! You should be split in half! Fuck a kekkei genkai, that shit isn't right!"

Naruto was using as much of the Kyuubi's chakra as he safely could and Kimimaro was outclassing him. It wasn't that Naruto didn't have what it took to go up against him in his second level form, it was the fact that Kimimaro seemingly had nine lives or something, because the Shikotsumyaku (Dead Bone Pulse) kept Kimimaro from taking the brunt of Naruto's attack damage. He couldn't cut through his bones, he couldn't slip a weapon through the ribs for a stab at his organs, hell he couldn't even crush him with enough pressure to bend iron because Kimimaro could just manipulate his skeletal frame to protect his vital points.

Naruto sighed and picked up a taijutsu stance once again to attack, 'How the fuck can I kill him? He just keeps coming. I know I'm hurting him, I have to be, every attack I'm landing would leave anyone else in critical condition if not kill them outright.'

Naruto didn't have time to ponder too much as Kimimaro brought his whip back out and began attacking again. Naruto did his best to avoid getting anywhere near the bony barbs of the weapon, but Kimimaro kept picking up the pace of his attacks and hit Naruto in his legs, sending him to his knees.

Kimimaro slung the weapon out once more to wrap it around Naruto's body it was stopped by a burst of sand that squeezed between the whip and protected Naruto from further harm. Even more sand then appeared and came at Kimimaro who jumped back and put distance between himself and Naruto.

A smile broke out onto Naruto's face as he felt the familiar presence of his desert friend, "Hey Gaara. What's up?"

Gaara slowly walked up to Naruto, who was still on his knees, and stared out at Kimimaro, "Nothing."

Gaara was suddenly surprised by a bloody Naruto wrapping Gaara in a hug, "I'm glad to see you. I thought I wouldn't get a chance to go after Sasuke. What are you doing here anyway?"

He shrugged Naruto off of him after a moment, "My siblings and I were requested by your Hokage to assist a retrieval team for Sasuke Uchiha. Are you having trouble with this one Uzumaki?"

Naruto was relishing this moment of reprieve from combat due to his injuries and talking with Gaara was allowing him time to heal and regain some energy, "Great, now someone can go back up Rock Lee. I sent him to chase after Sasuke before he could get away. I need you to go help him out."

Surprise was not evident on Gaara's face except for the raised eyebrow, "Are you not having trouble with your opponent?"

Pulling off the remains of his tattered red shirt Naruto chuckled lowly, "Yes, but this is a duel Gaara. I don't get all out of shape about this kind of thing often in a fight, but I need to beat this guy myself to get some peace with myself. Just go and help Lee. I'll be fine."

Gaara looked at Naruto for a moment as the smile left Naruto's face and his stare turned chilly, "I wasn't really asking you Gaara. Either you go after Lee and let me finish this or I'll kick your ass off into the woods until you can't even see the field anymore, and you know damn well I'm capable of that."

Gaara stared back until he stepped back and ran off towards the border, "I will go Uzumaki, but you had better not lose." Naruto waved over his shoulder as Gaara left the area.

Kimimaro strode forward swishing his tail, "That was honorable of you to elect to continue our battle one-on-one in order to keep your comrade alive and safe from my wrath. I will make your death as honorable as I can for trash such as you."

Naruto grinned at Kimimaro evilly, "I didn't make him leave because I thought he would die fighting you, hell I won't die fighting you, because you can't kill me. I made Gaara leave because while I am fully capable of killing you here, it's going to cause me to go a little overboard, and I don't need too many witnesses for this, I catch enough crap without people knowing I can do this."

The Kyuubi stopped focusing on Naruto's fight when he realized what Naruto was going to do, "Kit no! Wait! Your body isn't sturdy enough to handle the stress that it will cause you! You don't even have enough of your own energy and chakra to attempt it!"

Naruto didn't answer, instead choosing to undo the bag on his waist and empty its contents into his hand, grin still in place. In the palm of his blood stained hand were three soldier pills. Naruto looked at Kimimaro defiantly and popped all three at once.

After a second Naruto began to twitch as the veins on his head began to pulsate. Kimimaro was curious as to what Naruto was doing at this moment, all of those pills would require an immediate outlet for his chakra or else he would die within less than five minutes.

Naruto expelled as much of his chakra as he could, enveloping his body in an aura of blue, he then channeled as much of the Kyuubi's chakra as his body could handle generating at one moment. The red glow from his body raised up high into the sky. As suddenly as it was all expelled it was all sucked right back into Naruto's body. It didn't dissipate, it didn't fade away as if he had just stopped using it, no. He sucked it back into his body. You could literally see the chakra entering through his pores, turning his skin the color of an angry red, as if his entire body was irritated greatly.

Naruto fell to his knees as he began scratching at his skin and screaming in pain as a vulpine snout began extending from his face while he gritted his teeth, now becoming fangs. Naruto's ears retracted into his head and reappeared on top as his hair turned red. His pores, which were still wide from absorbing so much chakra, began to quickly sprout red hair from them, covering his body in fur. Naruto's muscle mass increased to an added one-half of what it already was, pumping him up considerably. His claws extended even more than they already were. Naruto's spine pushed downward out of his pants and skin and split into two before muscle and skin grew over both segments, followed by more fur to make bushy, white-tipped fox tails. In the end he looked like a werewolf, only as a fox instead of a wolf.

Naruto was kneeled over on the ground panting heavily following the violent transformation. He slowly rose to his feet, looking at Kimimaro with pupil-less glowing red eyes with one black slit in the middle. Naruto chuckled painfully in a warped voice, "Wow… Ugh, I didn't think it would hurt that much. I guess Kyuubi was right, my body can't take this transformation yet. I'm glad I didn't try the real one, just the bastardized version."

Kimimaro tried to make heads or tails of what he had just seen. It looked like a level two cursed seal transformation only… it looked natural. The transformations of the cursed seal were entirely generated by the dark, tainted impure enzymes that the seal always had pumping throughout the user's body. Going with the feelings and suggestions that the enzymes would invariably provide you with made you mentally weak, but it was like a drug. Fighting what the seal gave you however could hurt you, as Anko Mitarashi could definitely attest to. But still, it was all an artificial amplifier.

What Kimimaro had just seen Naruto do had not felt dark or unnatural at all. It felt like it was supposed to happen. The only time throughout the entire sequence of events that he felt hate and bloodlust and darkness was when Naruto flared the oppressive red chakra that he then absorbed. From that point it was like watching a natural metamorphosis. He was absolutely amazed, "What are you?"

Naruto scratched his head sheepishly, "I'm whatever you want to call me. It doesn't matter because you're going to die here all the same anyway so for the next few moments you can call me what you'd like." His fox-like grin that was on his human visage chilled Kimimaro as it showed on his true fox-like features, "But for the sake of me separating myself from you cursed seal assholes I guess you can call this the Kitsune Trigger."

Naruto flexed his claws and tested his tails out, smiling as he easily manipulated them, "Alright enough chit-chat, you've seen one of my trump cards and now you must die."

Naruto vanished. There was no blur, there was no streak of red, there was only an afterimage that simply faded out of existence. He left no trace of his former presence there, no broken grass, no sound of footsteps, nothing. Kimimaro's eyes were darting all about as he whipped his body all around, there was no way that there was someone that was that fast, fast enough to reveal nothing!

Well he kept that theory right until he ended up taking slashes across his body that cut through the skin and muscle straight to his bones. He recoiled from his deep cuts and ended up getting cracked directly in the face and Kimimaro couldn't even tell you what had just hit him. A fist? A shin? A knee? An elbow? What?

The impact of the attack sent Kimimaro rolling back like a rag-doll. He stood and spun around rapidly with his arms out. As he gained speed he let off an endless amount of bullets from his fingers. All around him the field was littered with misfired bones that he was letting off like shells from a mounted machine gun.

Kimimaro was stopped when his legs were taken out from under him, sending him head over heels to the ground. He jumped back up to his feet, "What the hell are you!"

"Your executioner."

Kimimaro didn't have time to turn and face the voice in his ear before his arms were grabbed from behind and jerked out of the socket as Naruto had just jumped over him from behind while holding his arms and landing in front of. Naruto leaned far forward, using Kimimaro's weight to keep him grounded and started smashing savage single-leg mule kicks into Kimimaro's torso, as if he were trying to rip his arms off of his body. Naruto then jumped off of the ground and planted a vicious twin-legged double mule kick to Kimimaro's face, letting go of his arms at the same time, sending him flying off backwards.

Naruto looked at Kimimaro, whose arms were backwards at his sides, "Fix that you bitch."

Kimimaro simply rotated his arms with a sick crackling noise until they were back in place. Naruto sweat-dropped, "I didn't really mean do it."

Naruto then vanished again and hit Kimimaro again and again. He couldn't see Naruto's attacks but they couldn't kill him, it was the ultimate conundrum of combat. Kimimaro couldn't hit Naruto to save his life at this point, but on the flip side Naruto couldn't end the fight himself. Naruto was too fast to be caught by anything Kimimaro could do and was utterly battering him in addition to him having an almost inexhaustible battery at his disposal, but he couldn't fucking kill Kimimaro. It always came back to that, he would not die. It was the embodiment of the unstoppable force meeting the immovable object and the fight just would not end.

Naruto was getting sick and tired of Kimimaro getting up from everything he did and just walking forward to try again. After knocking Kimimaro down again Naruto began jumping on Kimimaro's back like a trampoline, savagely flattening him deeply into his own body-shaped crater that was getting deeper and deeper, "Why! Won't! You! Just! Fucking! Die! Die! Die! Die! Die! Die! DIE!"

Naruto jumped high into the air and landed as hard as he could with his knees into Kimimaro's spine. He scoffed to himself as he knew he would just get right back up. Naruto crouched down on Kimimaro's back as low as he could muster, and jumped with all of his might into the air intent on eradicating the last of the Shikotsumyaku bloodline.

"Kit!"

'What Kyuubi? Can't you see I'm getting my kill on here?' Naruto was still rising into the air as he spoke, with eyes locked on Kimimaro set to crush him like an ant.

Kyuubi roared from inside Naruto's head, "Listen you whelp! You directly went against me once already when you used the Kitsune Trigger, you will listen to me now!" Naruto kept his ascent into the sky as he was now getting stuck in the clouds, hell he could see the Valley of the End from where he was, "Your body is breaking down. You weren't properly conditioned to use this form yet as you already knew before you did it! You need to end this. NOW! Use the Imari (Menacing Ball)!"

Naruto would have slapped himself if it wouldn't have looked silly for a humanoid fox hanging almost 300 feet in the air to slap himself, "Why the fuck didn't I do that from the start? He ain't gonna get up from that!" Naruto channeled raw demonic chakra in his hands and formed a sphere before consuming it, 'Yuck… I forgot this chakra tastes like crap…'

Naruto yipped loudly as he fired a beam from his mouth, instead of a ball, that just ended up hiking him even higher into the air as it careened down at Kimimaro, who was stuck inside of his body-sized crater. As it hit Kimimaro it vaporized the entire landscape around the point of impact in a hellacious explosion that rocked the earth and sent debris and other things high into the air with a horrible sound.

XxX

(Konohagakure – Hokage Tower)

Tsunade was sitting in her office with a bottle of sake while massaging her temple, 'This job is going to kill me one of these days…'

BOOM!

The entire tower shook with earthquake-like force as Tsunade fell from her seat onto the ground. Everything on her shelves and on her desk shook and fell to the floor from the force of the tremor. As quickly as it came it passed and she shot to her feet to look out of the window on the ruckus that it caused throughout the village. People on the ground, windows broken, potted plants littering the sides of the streets.

Tsunade listened to all of the panic, "What the hell was that?"

XxX

(Gates of Konohagakure no Sato)

Temari, Shikamaru, and Choji hit the ground and covered up the second the tremors hit. Tayuya had fear in her eyes as she was still bound and utterly helpless. As the bout passed Temari voiced the thoughts of all of them, "What the hell was that?"

XxX

(Forests around Konohagakure)

Neji rubbed his head as he had fallen out of the tree he was jumping from during the shockwave. Neji looked up to Kankuro who had latched onto the tree branch he was on like a sloth to avoid falling, "Is everyone alright?"

Kankuro let go of the tree and landed on the ground, "What the hell was that?"

"What happened!" They both turned around to see Kuroari upturned and heard Kiba beating on it from the inside, "Why did I land on my head? Shit! I'm bleeding again!"

XxX

Naruto drifted down to the ground easily with the use of his tails as a propeller. Upon landing he grabbed his tails and rubbed them, "Kami what a workout… My tails are gassed."

Naruto then looked around at the destruction from his attack. He was standing in the middle of a crater that was three miles wide right on top of a pile of ashes that he kicked around, "I got you this time you dirty bastard." Naruto gestured to the wreckage that he created, "Regrow that motherfucker."

A second tremor happened that was smaller than Naruto's, not that he was on the ground to feel the first one, but it shook him up. Naruto's eyes widened as he heard the voice of a dead man, "Sawarabi no Mai (Dance of the Seedling Fern)!"

A forest of bones jutted from the ground suddenly, catching Naruto off-guard. The jutsu filled all of the immediate area with sharp bones that extended high into the air.

"Yip, yip, yip! No, NO!" Naruto was slowly hovering down from the air, tails spinning furiously to slow his descent as he again jumped high into the air to dodge the deathtrap that Kimimaro had set out for him. Naruto eventually latched onto one of the bones that stuck out higher than the others, "Damn this is one hell of a suicide jutsu! But too bad sucker! You missed!"

Kimimaro then suddenly emerged half of his body from the bone Naruto was attached to with a bone drill around his arm. His skin was missing and seared off on multiple areas of his body, revealing muscle and parts of his skeleton. Time slowed down as Kimimaro thrusted his bone-drill at Naruto, "Die! I will not lose for the sake of Orochimaru-sama!"

Kimimaro drilled into Naruto before he burst into smoke as a broken ninjato dropped from where Kimimaro had made contact. Naruto was nowhere to be found. Kimimaro's eyes quivered as tears came to the forefront. Blood seeped from his mouth and he slumped over lifelessly. Blood and tears fell into the forest of bones as Kimimaro left the world of the living with one regret, he could not finish off Naruto Uzumaki.

Naruto sat on the outskirts of the bone forest panting in relief, "Oh Kami! That was close… I love that sword soooo much, I need to come back and get it! Kawarimi is amazing!"

Naruto sighed and let his were-fox features from Kitsune Trigger recede. Naruto began to walk away before he collapsed to the ground in pain, 'Gah! What happened? Why am I in pain?'

His questions were answered by the Kyuubi, "I told you that your body wasn't ready to use the trigger again and this is the result of your ignorance. Prolonged use of the Kitsune Trigger has cracked every single bone in your entire body. That's what you get for using a technique you weren't ready to utilize… that, and you pretty much almost overdosed on soldier pills."

Naruto laid out on the ground, twitching occasionally from the pain of his entire body, "I'm aware of that now… And I have to say, after considering everything that just happened…" A smile came on his face, "It was totally worth it."

"Uzumaki."

Naruto's vision was filled with a red-headed jinchuuriki standing over him, "Did you win?"

Naruto gave him a dry look, "Does it look like I lost? Or does the graveyard of bones with the motionless body of the teme I was fighting stuck inside one of them signify that he kicked my ass and killed me?"

A mouthful of sand was given to Naruto as a reply, who painfully rolled over and spit it all out, "Gross! You fucking crush people with that shit!" Naruto noticed Rock Lee's body held by Gaara's sand, "Is he-?"

"No." Gaara used his sand to help Naruto stand up to get a better look. Lee had scrapes and bruises on his face. His spandex suit had holes in it around his shoulder that had sealed itself up from the Chidori. He was still breathing clearly though, "He is still very alive. The Uchiha defeated him, but not without a massive fight from the looks of where they did battle. I believe he even used the technique that he used on me during our fight to match power with the Uchiha."

Naruto punched his own palm, ignoring the pain for the time being, "Fuck… I'm sorry Lee… I just couldn't finish my opponent off to help you fast enough." He turned to Gaara, "Come on, let's go back to Konoha, we both need some hospital time." Gaara helped up in the same manner as he assisted Lee and leapt off for Konoha.

XxX

Kakashi stood still at the Valley of the End. A Konoha hitae-ate was at his feet with Sasuke's scent washed from it by the rainfall. He looked past the statue of Madara Uchiha towards the border of the country, "I failed again…"