Chapter 55

In the mansion of the Hokage, Hiruzen was getting a late night bi-weekly briefing from Yamato as to the current progression of the manhunt for their pesky little spy. It had been nearly a week since the entire operation had begun, and working a domestic procedure like this never left good feelings.

But it was necessary. Security of the village was paramount, and no amount of scrutiny was too much in order to bring espionage to light.

Yamato had no real news for his Hokage though, much to the chagrin of the former.

"The only run-in worth mentioning with any of the groups I have under my command happens to be the one that occurred with the team led by Maito Gai." Yamato reported in the moonlight of the window while Hiruzen read documents by lamp in a comfortable lounge chair, "They discovered the entrance to a Root tunnel on the grounds of the former Uchiha District, but backed off of investigating it. If they had done so they would have instigated a confrontation."

Hiruzen let out a sigh at that. Of course he knew that Danzo had not fully disbanded Root the way he had commanded almost a decade ago, but they were a formidable force and Danzo's way of doing things had many supporters in the village. Directly forcing him could result in civil war or some sort of social upheaval.

The man was no fool and would know how to play the cards presented to him. Still, the audacity to set up a secret tunnel on the lands of the clan that he had indirectly orchestrated the extermination of. Let the dead lie still for goodness sake.

"Yamato." Hiruzen said, getting his subordinate's attention, "I want every ninja over the rank of chunin prepared for anything in the coming days. I'll be informing Shikaku in the morning to put the watch teams on invasion alert but with their focus pointed inward. Make sure they all know to remember to keep this quiet from the genin being taught in squads."

Of course. For genin things were need-to-know. For something like this they most certainly did not need to know anything. They would be more likely to get in the way and get themselves hurt or killed than help out.

"I can get word to the teams watching the limits of the village to do this already before I retire for the night." Yamato offered, getting a grateful smile from Hiruzen in return, "Do you need anything else from me Hokage-sama?"

"Only the continued current effort that you are giving your assignment." The wizened old man said before Yamato seemed to just about disappear from his mansion office.

Between the spy seemingly reporting on every major move Konoha had tried to make for the last three years plus and Danzo trying to undermine him from the shadows there was no shortage of trouble on the homefront for him to juggle. It was a welcome comfort that he had such a loyal force of ninjas that would work for Konoha.

XxX

(Elsewhere in Konoha – Ninja Academy – Administrative Division)

The halls of the Academy were vacant at such a late time of the night, all with the exception of one elderly man covered in bandages and holding a cane.

Walking into one of the great meeting halls for the real higher-ups of the village, Danzo went inside and stopped once he reached the middle of the room. He didn't even bother turning around to face the person he knew was there at the door, "Yes Jiraiya? Is there any reason you're interrupting my quiet reflection time?"

Indeed, standing at the open double doors was Jiraiya with a very serious expression on his face. His first instinct was to make a joke about Danzo's quiet reflection time, but now was not the time or the place.

"What the hell do you think you've been doing for all of these years?" He asked with a barely restrained tone, "Building secret paths on private property in the village? Maintaining your own standing private army? What's the point?"

"I am the one willing to do what Hiruzen is not to keep this village safe and strong." Danzo said, not raising his voice or rising to the fact that Jiraiya had cornered him for this 'discussion', "Every great tree needs its roots after all."

"Safe and strong?" Jiraiya replied, "How is outright undermining the Hokage doing anything other than making us all weaker? You're supposed to be an advisor!"

"And that's what I've always done." Danzo said, turning around with his single eye narrowed on Jiraiya's form, "I've tried to advise him for years. But in all of that time he's only heeded my advice on what course of action to take once. Just once. And if he hadn't taken my direction this village would have seen a civil war. But I wouldn't expect you to know about it with you being out and about, wasting years pursuing your traitorous teammate."

Jiraiya's fist shot out and punched the doorframe hard enough to break it and bust a metal hinge on the door, leaving it leaning, "And I'd do it again! You think I wanted to do what I did? I have a godson here! But that same teammate is holding a blade over this village's head as we speak!" He gestured out of the door through the windows lining the wall of the hallway outside, "I don't know if you've noticed, but this peace that we've spent the last ten years trying to savor is slowly rotting away like tooth enamel!"

"You call it peace." Danzo seemed to wish to spit at the thought of considering Konoha currently safe, "What I see are enemies at the gate, and enemies amongst us. And as all of this is happening I feel that I am the only man fighting the tide. You've been out there. You've seen it firsthand. But you clearly choose to ignore all of it."

"And you want to go to war with all of it."

"Jiraiya you know full well the only path to actual peace." Danzo continued to try and reason, "Even a man with all the power needed to achieve anything, such as Senju Hashirama, tried things your way when he had enough power to keep and hand the biju over to the other villages. Had he merely finished things with the upstart villages of the past, there would be no four other great villages. We really would all be one."

And that's why as long as I'm around I can never let you be Hokage." Jiraiya said with a shake of his head, "You would start a war with everyone in the Elemental Nations just to put yourself at the top, because you think you have all of the answers."

"Hm." Danzo said, walking past Jiraiya to leave the room, not even finding himself wary of giving Jiraiya his open back, "At least I'm the one trying to come up with an answer based in reality. Instead of you, waiting on the… 'Child of Prophecy' as you called it? How did that wind up working out?"

The very last thing Jiraiya needed to be reminded of in life was the results of his past adhering to the prophecy of the most elder of his summon creatures. Two students of his fell prey to what he'd been told decades ago, and that just so happened to be his 'button' of sorts.

Because he reached out and grabbed Danzo by the throat from behind and squeezed liberally to strangle the old man.

"You've got the balls to say something like that about a man that saved this village and your worthless life at the cost of his own, of his wife's, and of their own child's freedom?" Jiraiya said, refraining from lifting Danzo up. The only indication that Danzo was even choking was the strained sound of breath leaving him. His face didn't change, and his body didn't move to free himself, "You can start and win a thousand wars, and you won't be half the hero that Minato was."

With that, Jiraiya let go of his neck and walked past him first before the old man could black out, and Danzo took in deep breaths of air to keep himself on his feet as his rival's top loyal student left the room, stopping at the door that he'd originally broken to look back at him with a massive grin on his face.

"See, that's why I can't be Hokage." Jiraiya said, tone belying the bloodlust that was fully radiating from him even at that very moment, "You see, sensei wouldn't have tried to strangle you. He wouldn't have thought of trying to snap your brittle neck like a twig." He let out a laugh without an ounce of humor in it, "The only thing that kept me from doing it right here, right now was thinking of what that would do to sensei himself."

Now was not the time for people to get the idea that Hiruzen had sent Jiraiya to take out his chief competition for continued seat of Hokage under the guise of the spy mess, which was what it would be construed to look like once the inevitable details of Jiraiya killing him leaked out.

He wouldn't be surprised if Danzo had people watching over him just for that very reason. He actually was surprised that they didn't attack him when he'd gotten a hold of his neck.

Danzo just glared at Jiraiya through his single visible eye before the man left to exit the building altogether. He could still feel Jiraiya's grip around his neck, but he knew that the fool wouldn't kill him. He was too deeply seeded into Konoha's hierarchy to go missing. His death at a time like this would basically martyr him in regards to the message of how endangered Konoha was without his policies being featured.

"I will do what is right for this village whether Hiruzen and his lapdog of a student are against my methods or not."

Speaking of his policies, the patterns that the spy happened to be using to cover his tracks seemed… somewhat familiar. But that wasn't possible.

Clearing his own throat, Danzo proceeded to leave the room to return to his own home for the evening. There was work to be done to catch this spy and apparently he was the only one in Konoha with the fortitude to get the job done at all costs.

The clandestine leader of Root left the halls of the administrative building, and his hidden shadows followed him, keeping a watchful eye on their leader, but as they left the vacant corridors they missed the shine of the moonlight off of a remaining figure's circular glasses as his body slipped up from underneath the floor, a confident smile on his face, "Nice to see you again Danzo. We'll have to catch up again some other time."

Right now he had to put the finishing touches on his grand old exfiltration of Konohagakure. For good this time.

"You created this monster Danzo…"

XxX

(Countryside of Hi no Kuni – Forests Around the Outskirts of Okumizumi-machi)

So Temari had to face the gigantic Akimichi kid and the genjutsu-adept pink-haired girl that had made her and Kankurou look stupid one time each. That was fine with her. The fact of the matter remained, "No matter how big you are, you can still be cut by my jutsu! Daikamaitachi no Jutsu (Great Sickle Weasel Jutsu)!"

With a swing of her fan, she manipulated the latent currents in the air to a razor-sharp degree and sent them the way of Chouji to fell him like a tree.

Sakura gasped and jumped off of Chouji's shoulder as he shrunk in size to make himself more difficult to hit with the killer wind technique. It kept him from being shredded like newspaper for the time being if nothing else.

Landing in a roll, the pink-haired kunoichi of Team 7 hurled a pair of kunai with little bags attached at Temari only for her to blow them away as if it were child's play. Of course that wouldn't have worked, but she had to test how attentive she was nonetheless, "Tch."

Sure, if she had half a memory she'd remember how Sakura won a battle years ago with a special genjutsu that required a visual medium as a trigger. This was a more practical idea based around that one to sucker her into one of her most painful illusions. It was her favorite finish, but it wasn't to be on this occasion.

"You couldn't have possibly thought that something like that would work." Temari said, directing her attention Sakura's way with a smirk. As this occurred, the sound of clicking and chattering could steadily be heard getting closer until Karasu launched itself from the forest at Sakura again, "Took you long enough Kankuro."

The Suna puppeteer was not in the mood for any snippy remarks from his older sister at the moment as he threw his voice from wherever he was hiding, "I got covered in human piss by that goddamn Inuzuka kid!"

"Well he left, so help me deal with these ones and maybe we can catch up to him or follow him back to the rest of the Konoha ninjas." Temari insisted, preparing to heft her fan for another grand swing, "Gaara should be done with their teammate any second now!"

"Right. Definitely don't want to keep him waiting, even if he is more patient."

Sakura and Chouji moved nearer to each other again, keeping an eye on Temari and Kankuro's puppet while trying to find where the man himself was, "My bags on the kunai didn't break." She expected Temari's attack to cut them open, which would have set her up for a rather devastating jutsu, but she completely turned off the cutting power of her wind jutsu, "Too straightforward?" The pink-haired kunoichi asked rhetorically.

"I think she's just really attentive." Chouji said instead of outright agreeing, "Long-range fighters usually are."

Which meant that Sakura was going to have a harder time sinking in a genjutsu since both Temari and Kankuro knew what she was capable of. That severely limited their options since Chouji was strictly close-range in his abilities, and Temari was not about to let them get close enough to make that work.

"Chouji…" Sakura said, mind turning quickly to try and come up with a solution. It wasn't a complicated look underneath the underneath Shikamaru special, but it was something she had plenty of faith in to request, "Use the Multi-Size Jutsu again for me and-…" She trailed off to quietly whisper the rest of her idea to him. It was good enough to get his eyes to go wide and get a firm nod from him that this was the move to make.

"Baika no Jutsu (Multi-Size Jutsu)!"

Once again, Chouji's mass expanded to that of a giant, though still smaller than the first time he made use of the jutsu in the ongoing battle, completely demanding attention as his body grew to unreal proportions.

Temari however, was not impressed, "This again? I can still cut you up from here no matter how big you are, and none of that will stop Kankuro from poisoning you." She was about to show this firsthand with her next move until something terrifying happened.

She saw Chouji grin evilly and place his hands together in the form of a hand-seal that she knew from doing battle with the most prolific user of the jutsu it was affiliated with in the past. Chouji's hands were stuck in the position for calling upon the Kage Bunshin technique.

And right before her eyes, seven Choujis, all as tall as trees with four times the girth surrounded the clearing, all glaring inward at her and Karasu.

Did everyone in Konoha know how to use that goddamn technique like that? As far as she knew from the fact that her village had a few people that could use the jutsu as well, even making one was extremely dangerous due to it carving up your chakra evenly between each clone, but here were six clones, splitting the Akimichi kid's chakra seven ways.

"Kankuro!" Temari shouted as she saw all of the Choujis lift their glowing blue hands with strange markings on them. She couldn't target them all, she couldn't do anything about the ones at her backside, and she couldn't dodge what that would do to the ground around her even if she could avoid the crushing palms themselves.

"Got it, just hold on!" Kankuro cried out, willing her to simply wait on him while he did something. Even if she couldn't attack them all, he could, "Kurohigi: Rakka Sora (Black Secret Technique: Falling Skies)!"

The sound of something large being launched into the air gave way to a very large container of some sort flying up into the night sky. Once it reached a high enough altitude, it exploded. Temari immediately swung her fan upward, because she knew what was happening and that she had to protect herself.

If she hadn't right when the pod exploded, she would have been impaled by a spike half her size in less than a second.

The entire open area of the battlefield was covered in the large spikes impaling into the ground, the trees, it was all a gigantic clearing of spikes littering the area. The only clear place was around Temari, since she had protected herself with powerful winds to keep the spikes from killing her.

The thing about it was though, that there were no dead Choujis around either. There hadn't been any puffs of smoke, nor was there a gigantic, dead, original anywhere around her.

What the hell? Those big, fat, slow bastards couldn't dodge that. Once that pod exploded it was instantaneous. The only reason she was able to do anything about it when she did was because she knew what was coming and how fast she needed to be to save herself.

And then it hit her.

"…Little pink-haired genjutsu bitch!"

The only saving grace to being caught hook, line, and sinker in the trap was that genjutsu affected the brain, which thought and worked much quicker than things happened on the outside.

Cancelation of the genjutsu revealed that while it was around twelve seconds while subjected to the illusion, it had been closer to three seconds in real-time. Three seconds where she couldn't notice or react to anything that her enemies were doing. And if it took her that much time to break it herself, how long was it taking Kankuro?

The reason being, that he really needed to make sure that it had been broken by now.

"Nikudan Hari Sensha (Spiked Human Bullet Tank)!"

A gigantic, rolling ball comprised of Chouji's body covered in his own overgrown, spiky hair tore through the stumps and spikes littering the area before he barreled straight into the forest in the direction he saw Kankuro shoot his jutsu off into the air from.

Trees were not an obstacle for this sphere of devastation. He rolled over any tree fool enough to not sprout legs and run away, and cut the trunks to pulp underneath his hair that served as deadly, deadly treads for his locomotion.

"Kankuro!" Temari shouted at her brother, hoping that her voice could break through what influence Sakura's genjutsu might or might not have had hold on him. Speaking of which, a sharp movement from near her blindspot caught Temari's attention and she turned, opening her iron fan to block the stab of a kunai that was directed right at her liver, "How did you do that?"

"I can't give away all of my tricks, even to an 'ally' of Suna." Sakura said as Temari pulled her fan up. She jumped back enough to set up for another move, but she wasn't going to let her swing that fan to cause any wind to fly if it killed her, 'I might not be the best at taijutsu, but if she has to carry that big thing she's got to be centered around backing off and using it from a distance.'

It was difficult to deal with though. Fully open, Temari's fan easily kept her entire body out of Sakura's view. She wasn't going to be stabbing anyone behind that thing. And Temari could always move it right in front of her dexterously to keep her at bay.

If only it was Chouji taking her on up close instead, he'd have just slapped her aside and been done with it. Sakura wasn't that strong. She didn't have any ninjutsu in her repertoire that could bolster her close-range capabilities either.

Temari chortled at Sakura's failed attempts to harm her, "You think I'd carry something this big if I didn't know how to handle it in a situation like this?" Without warning she closed the fan and in one motion proceeded to swing it like a bat at the unprepared Sakura who barely covered up to defend from being struck, "Grow up!"

Sakura's body slammed off of one of the tree trunks that Temari had previously cut down, losing the kunai that bounced out of her grip and away upon impact. She cringed and held the back of her head where it hit, steadying her vision on the fan-wielding maiden of the desert, 'Damn it! I've been doing nothing but keeping her on her heels all fight long and I can't secure anything to win with!'

It wasn't fair. She'd been doing everything right. She'd had her in dire straits twice, but the fact was that she had to get up close to beat Temari, and in close she didn't have anything that would do the trick for certain. Temari could use her fan for wind ninjutsu, to protect her entire body, and as a bludgeoning tool. What was she to do if she couldn't win at far-range and wasn't good enough in tight to do anything decisive.

"Don't you get it?" Temari said, "You're not fighting an opponent with some clear-as-day fatal flaw to their style. Any ninja worth a damn already knows what they're weak at, but they've fixed it enough avoid it being a problem. So unless you're a taijutsu-adept, you're not laying a hand on me sister."

The village of Konohagakure ninja always had it so easy from her point of view, in every way.

Their climate and geography? The most hospitable in all of the nations.

Their standards for a shinobi, even genin? In her opinion they were far more lax than Sunagakure's when it came to that.

Even the men and women that were supposed to be noted as skilled always seemed to be soft to her. Why were they the best and perceived as the strongest? Why did Suna have to play second-banana to them in their treaty? She didn't understand and she didn't want to.

Suna was doing better under the treaty once the idiotic previous Wind Daimyo had been ousted and replaced by their current one, and at the behest of the Fire Daimyo he began supporting and funding the village system better, but even so, they were still seen as inferior to Konoha.

"You think I don't know that you condescending skank?" Sakura said bitingly as she got back to her feet, "It's clear that you're still seeing me and all of our friends the way you probably did when you met us in the chunin exams years ago. But tell me, back then would you have had nearly as much trouble with me as you're having now?"

The answer was a resounding no. Sakura had some neat little tricks back then to get over with, but by and large Temari would have squashed her in short order and they both knew it.

She wanted to say that the danger aspect of Chouji was the reason that she'd lasted so long, but in reality Sakura had been the one keeping her reeling, not the big-boned Akimichi.

"It's funny how you disrespect us and think we're weak because we're from Konoha but you want Tsunade-sama. You saw Naruto and Ino and Shikamaru like that back then too when you fought them in the finals…" Sakura said with a smirk, "Then what happened?"

"Okamaitachi (Scythe Weasel)!" Temari did not need to be reminded of the last battle that she and her siblings ever wound up losing and prepared a wind that would turn Sakura's pretty little body into a set of bloody slabs.

"Nikudan Hari Sensha (Spiked Human Bullet Tank)!"

Chouji flew through the air from where he'd been steamrolling through the forest looking for Kankuro and hurled himself right at Temari, forcing her to divert her winds his way to stop him from annihilating her. The steel-like consistency of the hair that covered his body kept him from getting hurt, but he lost his momentum and plummeted to the ground with a crash.

Temari smirked until she saw a handful of kunai thrown up into the path of her wind storm. Okay, so that happened, "What the hell was that supposed to accomplish?" Temari shouted over at Sakura who wisely hadn't tried getting close to her otherwise she would have failed in that task.

Sakura didn't say anything and just stood up as tiny cherry blossoms floated all over to surround Temari from the air. Those kunai, were those the same ones with the bags attached? Temari immediately placed her hands in the ram seal to break the forthcoming genjutsu that she was certain was going to come her way. She remembered seeing Sakura's coup de grace back in the chunin exams when she defeated that Oto genin Kin and she was not about to let herself get caught in it.

That seemed to be what Sakura was waiting on as she quickly threw a kunai with an explosive tag burning down at Temari's feet. To avoid being hit, Temari lowered the hand-seal and leapt away with her fan, "Heh. This one's not a genjutsu like the first set would have been."

Dread filled the pit of Temari's stomach in that instant, "What?"

"Sakura Fubuki no Jutsu (Cherry Blossom Blizzard Jutsu)!"

The kunai detonated a distance away from Temari, but all of the petals that had been floating all over weren't just petals. Most of them were miniature explosive tags painstakingly designed by the resident seal-adept of the Rookie Nine for use as a secondary trap jutsu.

They all exploded all around Temari in a chain reaction, and she didn't react fast enough to blow them all away after the first explosion ripped free out.

She was at the mercy of blast after blast until it all subsided, leaving the area a smoky, charred mess.

"Wow." Chouji said as he walked over to Sakura after it seemed to be all over, "That cheap-ass, ryo-store jutsu actually worked."

"Cheap jutsu?" Sakura squeaked before punching Chouji in his arm hard, "What made it cheap? The fact I didn't make it come out of thin air or shoot it from my mouth? Oh I know, I didn't change my entire bodily makeup to pull it off, that's what's wrong!"

Chouji wanted to cover his ears, but he had to suffer through it for the time being. He should have known better really. How long had they been a team? He'd opened that can of worms when he'd made that crack at her jutsu and now he had to live with it.

He ran over Kankuro's puppet Sanshouo when he'd been dozing through the forest. He didn't break it, but it didn't move again and it was buried halfway into the ground when he saw it so he was out cold. Chouji had already tied him up. Now they just had to find Temari.

In the meantime he had to listen to Sakura, "Uh huh…"

"No, really! Do you know how hard it is to learn a strong ninjutsu when you're not clan-based? I had to get advice on that one from Tenten!" Sakura continued to complain as she and Chouji began checking over the area for Temari, "I specialize in genjutsu for a reason you know! The rest of you have the weirdest techniques that I could never match up with, except with my own imagination!"

Hopefully they would be able to find Temari before the sun came up, because he needed the change in subject.

XxX

(Sasuke vs. Gaara)

It was taking everything Sasuke had to keep away from Gaara's sand. His efforts went solely into keeping himself one step ahead, and even then it sometimes wasn't enough. He had to remove a limb more than once from the seemingly inescapable trap that was constantly being hurled his way by the expressionless Suna-nin.

He couldn't rely too heavily on his impeccable eyesight alone to do the job for him. That simply wasn't going to work. Why didn't his clan ever invest in protective eyewear? It kind of seemed like a no-brainer now that he was facing this current problem. That probably should have been the first thing they did.

The constant grains of sand floating in the air were Sasuke's saving grace and his primary detriment at the same time.

It was in the air to keep him from outright relying on his Sharingan to anticipate every path of motion that Gaara's sweeping waves of sand would take every step of the way. While it didn't cost Gaara much of his personal sand to do this, it cost him part of his focus. Keeping part of his attention on maintaining that irritant kept Gaara from concentrating fully on putting forth the effort to attack Sasuke at all costs.

'His sand is so much faster than it was back then.' Sasuke had never faced it personally until this point, but he'd seen it active in battle and just as he had grown in physical speed the sand had as well. He got a really good view of it when it chose to slam bluntly into him. Who knew that getting hit with sand would hurt so much?

"You're sweating and bleeding." Gaara remarked coldly. Sasuke could have sworn that he hadn't moved a step since he'd taken control of the battle, "I'm still waiting on the tears and pleads for mercy."

"You're going to be waiting for a while then." Sasuke replied, wishing he had Naruto's wind ninjutsu to blow the stupid sand grains away so he could stop squinting and blinking involuntarily, 'What would Itachi do?' He thought to himself, begrudging himself for even asking himself that question as he kept backflipping out of the way of Gaara's sand.

The thought had merit, whether he liked it or not.

Lightning techniques could pierce the Shield of Sand, though it would have to be one that was actually strong enough to do the job all the way through. Fire might be able to cook him on the inside of the shield, but the sand would just snuff it out unless he kept up the flame for long enough to pull it off, which wasn't going to happen.

Option number one it was then.

Well… actually there was always option number three.

Sasuke took some blood from a patch of his arms that Gaara had scraped the skin off of with his sandy attack and bolted through hand-seals instantly before slamming his hand on the ground, "Kuchiyose no Jutsu (Summoning Jutsu)!" A nonexistent eyebrow of Gaara's rose in interest at the sight of a gigantic hawk taking flight in the air above from the smoke that had risen from the summoning. Sasuke stood on its back with a confident smirk, "Let's see just what that sand of yours can really take."

"I fail to see what this is going to accomplish." Gaara deadpanned honestly. Sure, Sasuke's hawk was big enough to ride, and those talons were pretty imposing, as was the beak, but it didn't matter, "Just what do you think you can do with it?"

"Don't underestimate a ninja's summons." Sasuke said, rolling through more hand-seals before inhaling deeply, "Katon: Goukakyuu no Jutsu (Fire Release: Great Fireball Jutsu)!"

Normally a fireball from Sasuke would be dangerous enough by itself, but the moment he fired it his hawk began flapping its wings and kicking up a wind storm to push it forward and spread it out dangerously.

It created a barely controlled firestorm that covered Gaara on all sides, but for as incredible a sight as it was it didn't cause him any harm other than making him sweat a bit from the sheer heat. Was he trying to cook him inside of a makeshift earthen oven of sand?

That was just too much. And the damnable thing about it all was that it was working! Gaara's own choice to limit his mobility in battle was coming back to bite him here and now as the temperature rose rapidly to a frightening degree.

As if he hadn't been using enough sand before, Gaara sent out more than Sasuke thought he had to begin with, whipping it all around and stanching the flames quicker than they would have spread in the first place before sending it Sasuke's way in large, grabby tendrils.

Gaara learned from his battle with Naruto that while giving into the Shukaku made him stronger, he sacrificed control and much of the things that made him formidable to begin with. Losing to Naruto showed him that the tradeoff wasn't worth it and completely abandoned using his tiny Shukaku form, learning to do some of the techniques himself without tapping into too much biju chakra to lose himself.

With a series of hand-seals the sand morphed itself into a head of Shukaku that sucked in wind hard enough to steal the oxygen from the rest of the flames in the area, giving off a whistling, hissing sound as a pressurized ball of air formed at the mouth of the construct, "Fuuton: Rekuudan (Wind Release: Drilling Air Bullet)!"

Sasuke saw it coming and his hawk was skilled enough to avoid it when it shot at them in the air, 'If that had hit they'd be finding pieces of my summon falling from the sky in the nearest town. Maybe pieces of me too.'

It wasn't over though. Gaara kneaded more chakra through his sand that began to gather at the Shukaku mouth for another compressed air bullet and began shooting them off, one after another with only enough lag-time in between them to build up more for a new shot.

Going with hawks as his summon creatures might have been the best thing Sasuke could have done given the current situation. He could see how much force those large balls of wind had within them. If they made contact with anything, whatever they hit just wasn't going to exist in the same state any longer.

Sasuke's hawk swooped low enough for one of Gaara's missed shots to wind up in the vicinity of the nearby woods. The moment it touched the first trees in its way it exploded and leveled thirty yards worth of forest in the process.

Right. New plan.

Getting his hawk to go around for another pass, Sasuke dropped down in a position on his animal ride's back to prepare for a speedy rush while forming a Chidori in his hand. The Chidori seemed to extend in length to around fifteen feet, "Chidori Eiso (Chidori Sharp Spear)!" It was weaker in puncturing power than the real Chidori despite its extended range, but from where he was attacking from it would have to do.

From a bit of a distance, the hawk started coming in quickly, with the glowing electric blade stretching from Sasuke's right hand leading the way in front of its head. What was this, a joust? Yeah, it was. Only instead of a horse, Sasuke had a goddamned hawk, and instead of a lance he had a blade of pure electric chakra.

A screaming hawk flying right at them faster than most high-level ninjas could even move would have scared the hell out of most people, but Gaara was not most people.

Gaara's sand formed a thick half dome right in front of his body as Sasuke jumped off of his hawk to allow it to safely bail out without sacrificing itself for the sake of the attack. The carried-on speed that went along with it propelled him straight into the wall and with several almost unseeable flicks of his wrist he cut a hole straight through the sand and barreled straight into Gaara, whom he stabbed clean through.

Holding his Chidori hand out while crouched and sliding to a hard stop, Sasuke's jutsu pushed Gaara up into the end on the end of the electric blade where it then branched while still in his body, stabbing out of him in five different directions.

It then proceeded to crumble into sand, revealing to be a Sand Clone.

"I have to apologize." Gaara commented, having substituted himself with a Sand Clone once he realized that the velocity of the previous move was more than definitely going to best his Shield of Sand, "I said that you could never break through my sand. I see more drastic measures will need to be taken to deal with you."

'Crap.' Sasuke thought as he turned Gaara's way and saw a horrifying amount of sand pouring out of the ground like water from a geyser. It just kept coming, "You can make more?" When had he put together the time to even do such a thing?

Of course. When he'd been firing off shots with the Shukaku's head, Sasuke had been flying around to avoid them for over a minute. But was that really enough time to loosen up the soil enough to make that much sand? Good Lord. There wasn't any way around that.

"I can make so much more. As much as I need." Gaara said as he stood elevated off of the ground by a sand platform while he started manipulating the rest underneath him Sasuke's way with multiple hand-seals that started and ended with him clapping his hands, "I am known as Sabaku no Gaara in Sunagakure. Gaara of the Sand Waterfall. Ryuusa Bakuryuu (Quicksand Waterfall Flow)!"

And with that, Gaara sent every bit of it forward. Sasuke was not going to avoid anything like this. There was no way. Even looking at him from where he was standing, Gaara knew as much. He did his best to run, but it caught up to him and engulfed him entirely, covering over him and burying him entirely.

"Now die for me. Sabaku Taisou (Sand Waterfall Imperial Funeral)!" Dropping down from his platform, Gaara slammed his hands onto the ground and let out a shockwave that sent ripples all throughout the sand-covered battlefield.

And that was that.

So why did he hear the faint chirping of birds? And why couldn't he feel a body down there as his sifted through his sand to confirm his kill.

"Kai!" Gaara threw his hands into a seal to disrupt his own flow of chakra and found that the sound wasn't faint, it was loud and clear. Turning around he saw Sasuke standing there charging up a Chidori before streaking his way the moment he turned, "How?

"Eye contact!" Sasuke shouted, alluding to a Sharingan genjutsu as he dashed at Gaara with his arm poised to strike out at him, "Now die for me! Chidori (One Thousand Birds)!"

Gaara couldn't home his sand in on Sasuke's footing enough to stop him with a wall, even on the now sandy field they stood on. He was too fleet-footed, too quick. And he had the jump on him thoroughly. There wasn't going to be any slight deterrence like some sand in the eye to deter this strike.

Well sometimes one did have to take their own defense into their own hands after all. You couldn't always rely on the basic stuff to get the job done. Just in front of Gaara, a tall and wide replica wall of Shukaku formed, complete with markings on the body from the sand that he had created just as Sasuke's hand shot forward to finish him off.

Even with the Chidori surrounding it, Sasuke's hand did not pierce the gigantic solid shield. It actually broke his hand from the force that he hit it with. Recoiling promptly with a visible cringe that belied just how much breaking all of the little bones in his hand had hurt him, Sasuke backflipped away.

"Do you now see that 'absolute defense' isn't just a catchy title for my jutsu?" Gaara said as he saw Sasuke cradling his Chidori hand, "The hardest minerals that I could find went into that shield. And now you can no longer make hand-seals."

Sasuke winced and left his injury alone. Yeah, his fingers weren't going to be making seals for a while. Even so… "Can that thing move?"

"What does it matter when you're right in front of me? If you go around you will be going to your death either way."

"KEEEE-AAAAR!"

From behind in the air, a massive brown blur plowed into Gaara with one pulverizing, 200-plus mile per hour divebomb, shooting sand high into the air and then a large puff of smoke. True to Gaara's word, his Shukaku shield really was made of the best stuff, because it didn't budge.

That was bad for Gaara though.

Because he'd just been hit with a gigantic summon hawk's full-speed dive from high altitude, and if Sasuke was right about the trajectory it had taken, Gaara wound up being sandwiched between hundreds of pounds of hawk and that damn shield he'd put up.

Granted, that was not exactly what the hawks were meant for since it probably nearly killed it before it sent itself back to from whence it came, but it wasn't his idea to begin with and it seemed to work out for the best.

Just in case though, Sasuke quickly vacated the bit of land that was completely covered in sand. He didn't need any 'beyond the grave' surprises, even though he was sure that someone like Gaara wasn't used to being hurt, and what had just occurred would have had to have been punishing.

As long as he didn't do that full-biju thing that people said he did in the chunin exams after Naruto defeated him, things would be fine.

Still though, he could hear Gaara breathing raggedly and had to hold back from cursing when he saw him walk out from behind his shield.

"How are you not dead after that?" Sasuke asked, not bothering to mince words. Seriously, he really wanted to know. The term 'Ultimate Defense' was really not supposed to be taken as a literal statement.

"My sand cushioned the impact and everything else to go along with it."

"Hn."

"And now your summon is gone, with you out of options."

That was for the most part true. Sasuke still had more techniques left, more jutsu up his sleeve, but he couldn't do them without both hands. Hands as in plural, more than one, minimum of two. His hawk had saved his ass.

Either way, he pulled his gunbai from his back and held it at the ready to do battle once more until he seemed to disappear in a torrent of petals.

…Okay?

In a matter of seconds the petals all disappeared and Gaara was left with the sight of his two siblings tied up with varying degrees of injuries having seemed to be dealt to them and quickly treated before they were moved to that spot. Kankuro was awake and seemingly cursing up a storm behind the gag that had been stuffed in his mouth and Temari was still unconscious.

Without moving from his spot initially, the red-haired, ring-eyed jinchuuriki noticed that Sasuke wasn't anywhere around anymore and he proceeded to uncharacteristically palm his face.

They were so lucky he was past killing the whole 'killing them' phase at this point.

XxX

"I didn't need your help." Sasuke insisted as he and the rest of Team 7 proceeded to run away from Gaara after hoping that tending to his siblings would deter him from immediate pursuit. They didn't seem to be afraid of his presence anymore, so Sakura and Chouji felt that it was a possible out to break Sasuke out of situation, "Just heal my hand and let me go back. I'll finish it."

He was not going to let it stand like that. He had him on the ropes. If he had his right hand back in action he'd be able to find a way to wrap it up. He knew he would. Gaara was a man! Gaara wasn't a machine! He could be hurt!

Damn it, he'd taken forever to turn the tide of that fight and it was over just like that? He felt so robbed!

"That's not a good idea Sasuke-kun." Sakura replied, knowing that Sasuke's idea of finishing the battle would have been potentially lethal, even if Gaara wasn't the one that would have wound up winning, "Even if this wasn't a fight we really started, if we wound up killing the Kazekage's children and the jinchuuriki of Shukaku that would end badly for Konoha."

Full-scale wars had been started over less after all.

Besides, they needed to stop so that Sakura could apply a medical jutsu to his hand, and she and Chouji weren't particularly fans of staying still just in case Gaara ignored Temari and Kankuro and went ahead to chase after them.

"I hate running away from a fight I can win."

"Call it a strategic withdrawal then!" Sakura snapped back in turn. This was not her night. Her relaxing bath had been interrupted and she hadn't even gotten five minutes to soak. Her hair got all wet. She had to fight against some seriously powerful wind ninjutsu and only won because Chouji was punctual and made for a seriously scary distraction when he needed to. Then Chouji insulted her winning ninjutsu. And all of that without getting a lick of sleep in almost twenty-four hours, and sunrise was going to be upon them within three hours, "Problem?"

So yes, she was rather miffed at tonight's turn of events.

Sasuke just stared at her for several seconds until she turned to the side to glare right back at him, "…I think I liked it better when you'd just shut up and wouldn't argue with me." He then turned his eyes straight ahead when he swore that he saw her eyes roll hatefully into the back of her head.

"Can we just get back to Tsunade-sama now?" Chouji asked, stomach growling at the fact that he'd missed his midnight meal due to their circumstances of having to run.

XxX

(Hi no Kuni Countryside – With Tsunade and Team 8)

Kakuzu's fire mask seemed to only exist outside of his body for one reason and one reason only; to seek and destroy Tsunade with extreme prejudice shooting off blast after blast of fiery chakra that erupted upon immediate contact with anything.

"So glad…" Tsunade said tensely, literally outrunning the expanding flames of another shot that was aimed her way, "…I stayed in shape."

"Well what they say about you is true." Kakuzu remarked, keeping his eyes locked on Tsunade to try and find an opening to attempt another attack on her while his fire mask tested her capabilities, "You really are quite difficult to hit."

She could dodge all she wanted as long as she didn't get close to him to try and lay him out with one of those killer punches of hers.

And right on cue she diverted her path right in his direction, either to try and get close enough to hit him, or manipulate his stupid mask into shooting off Katon: Zukokku in his direction before she moved out of the way and left him to survive the shot somehow on his own.

Not tonight.

Of course, before he could do anything, his mindless mask proved itself as he had correctly perceived it to be as it let loose another fire attack at Tsunade's back. And that was fine, it was just that by the time it hit her it would be danger-close to him as well.

The look on her face told him that she knew that full well. The bitch, 'Fine, let's play chicken.' Kakuzu thought to himself, waiting until the last possible moment before flipping through hand-seals to stop her, "Suiton: Suijinheki (Water Release: Water Encampment Wall)!"

Pulling down his facemask, Kakuzu spewed out an obscene amount of water that blew out around him in a circular flowing pattern, highly forcefully. Tsunade was caught between a wall of water in front of her and an oncoming torrent of fire from behind her.

When presented with that decision, there wasn't much of a choice to make.

Tsunade punched at the oncoming water wave with one hand, the other one drawn back in preparation as if she knew that it wasn't going to stand up to her. Indeed it did not, as one punch from her split the flowing wall a path straight through to Kakuzu while the fire behind her ran into the rest of it.

A second punch soon followed that liquefied Kakuzu's head. Well that wasn't right, 'Water Clone.'

"Of course I knew you could muscle your way through that." Kakuzu remarked from a different distance, "Your reputation really does precede you, a little too much in this case. You're much more impatient than Hashirama ever was."

'Kiss my ass you wrinkly rag-doll.' Tsunade thought to herself at that very instant before she felt the presence of a second mask drifting around the battlefield, 'Another one?'

"Raiton: Gian (Lightning Release: False Darkness)!"

A second mask with a deformed bipedal form comprised of black threads charged electricity at its mouth, and Tsunade was surrounded by water from Kakuzu's last jutsu that had been meant to defend him. The electricity fired off in a single, straight bolt that was too slow to hit her directly.

That was the reason for the water.

There wasn't anywhere she could run fast enough to avoid the contact shock from the electricity touching the wet ground. Kakuzu's abnormal eyes danced in mirth as sparks spread freely across the ground and Tsunade's body recoiled and went into spasms while she held back any sounds of pain and anguish she felt from the electricity passing through her muscles.

Ah, it reminded him of money.

XxX

Hinata and Shino would never claim to be experts in their field of the ninja arts. They had seen a lot since they had graduated from the Academy, and they had had their share of successes and experiences, but seeing a man walk straight through fire as if it didn't bother him after watching Tsunade apparently kill him with the damndest heel drop they'd ever seen kind of took the cake.

"Feh." Hidan spat, his own blood covering Tsunade's jacket that she'd thrown over his head to blind him before smashing him into the ground with her foot. He hurled the green apparel back into the fire that he'd just walked out of and faced down the two Konoha chunin that he'd wound up walking towards, "Since I've got to walk through more fire to get to your big-titted babysitter that kicked me, I guess I'll just kill you two for now and hope there's some left when Kakuzu's through with her."

His cloak was in smoking, singed tatters, but he didn't seem to care one bit.

The three-blade scythe in his hand was a little bit more important at the moment.

"I wonder. If I cut you in half would bugs fly out?" Hidan asked bluntly, bloodthirsty eyes staring at Shino before he moved forward to attack him.

"I hope that you don't get to find out." Shino said, hands in the pockets of his hoodie as bugs filtered out of his clothes in abundance, "Bousui no Jin (Spindle Formation)!" They flew at Hidan in a spiral motion to make their trajectory harder to anticipate.

Immortal or not, if he didn't have any chakra, he wasn't going to be able to do anything, even move.

Hidan licked his lips and didn't stop his rush, instead choosing to dive straight through the middle of Shino's spiral bug attack, leading with his scythe, "Gotcha brat!" Upon reaching Shino he sliced him up, but instead of blood his body collapsed into a mass of insects, "What the hell?"

Taking advantage of Shino's Insect Clone catching Hidan's attention, Akamaru dove at him, spinning like a drill to pulverize his body, but Hidan showed off incredible agility and acrobatic ability by deftly backflipping over and out of the way of the ninken's killer attack… not that it would have killed him, but it would have been very inconvenient.

'If he's really immortal…' Hinata thought to herself as she moved in to attack him herself upon his landing, 'I might as well not even bother aiming for an organ. Shino-kun had the right idea in draining his chakra.'

As was previously stated, immortal or not, if he had no chakra he would be useless.

Hidan caught her coming his way out of the corner of his eye and lashed out with his scythe, getting a few strands of her long hair when she ducked the move, "Hakke Kushou (Eight Trigrams Vacuum Palm)!" With a thrust of her palm, Hinata blew him back and away with a strike without even hitting him with her hand.

"Little Hyuuga bitch!" Hidan complained as he flew through the air and righted himself upon landing, "I'm so killing you first!"

Hinata wasn't so sure that she could risk an attack like that again. That scythe was long enough to give him the range that even a jutsu like the one she just used wouldn't be able to safely avoid each time, because it was still taijutsu and she needed to be close.

He knew that too, because he was quick to attack her all over again. Shino hurled more insects his way, but a skillful mastery of his scythe allowed Hidan to fan them out of his way without breaking his stride one bit.

It wasn't a matter of trapping or outsmarting a man such as this. That wasn't the issue for one as intelligent as Shino. What could you do when your enemy was such a berserker that it wasn't enough to do so? Hidan allegedly didn't have to worry about dying. And what stronger deterrent was there for a ninja to act than the threat of death?

Instead of swinging his scythe normally, Hidan held onto the cable attached to the end of it and used it like a flail with odd angles of attack gifted to him via this method of battle.

One particular patterned movement came dangerously close to hitting them both, barely splitting the ground between both Hinata and Shino. It was a move of misdirection however. When they both turned their eyes down to the blades stuck in the field the scythe was suddenly ripped back out, turning their gazes forward once more to see Hidan closer than they would have ever perceived that he could move in just one second.

Until then his speed had been dangerous enough to take note of, but they had either severely misjudged his short-range swiftness or he'd been sandbagging intentionally the whole time.

Either way, he was in, with his weapon right back in his hand and a manic grin that let them know he was well aware of how much of a position he had on them. That was put on hold when he saw the living drill that was Akamaru moving on him again, "That goddamned mutt!" Hidan broke off and turned to block the Tsuuga with the pole of his scythe, being driven back before finally deflecting Akamaru off of him with great effort.

But over the wall of flames all over the field came a second drill, coming in far faster than Akamaru had been. Hidan was aware of it and moved to dodge, but he was unable to evade it entirely and wound up getting the right side of his body caught up in the attack.

After smashing Hidan into the ground, jumping out of the attack was Kiba, landing in a very heroic pose while breathing very heavily. He'd run all that way to catch up with them as fast as he could and was very pleased by his own timing.

Seriously, he couldn't have timed that save any better if he'd been waiting for something like that to happen, "Feel free to worship me… now." Akamaru was not shy to do so, immediately bounding up to reunite with his partner.

"Kiba." Shino said, sounding somewhat relieved to find that he was alright and there to help, "Wait. We need you and Akamaru to go on ahead to the bounty station."

"What?" He'd spent all of that time catching up to them and now he was supposed to go ahead? And what about the fight? They were all about to get filleted until he showed up, "I just got here and you want me to run away?" Kiba licked away his own blood from three long cuts he'd received on his arm during his attack against Hidan, "Give me one good reason."

"You're the fastest. Out of all of us. Even the people that aren't here."

Okay, that was a very good reason.

"But what about that guy?" Kiba asked, pointing at Hidan who was beginning to get back up, "That should have killed him. Why didn't that kill him?" He seemed significantly alarmed by that.

"Because he's immortal."

"…And you're sure you want me to leave?"

"Kiba-kun." Hinata said, grabbing a hold of his arm to make sure she had his attention, "If all of us stayed here but none of us could kill him anyway… what would that accomplish?" He seemed at a loss and blinked in confusion, "At this point, all we can do is keep him at bay and hope that Tsunade-sama can defeat her opponent."

Maybe they could incapacitate Hidan, maybe they couldn't. But that wasn't the point.

Someone had to make sure the mission got accomplished. Shikamaru and he had split up the moment he realized that the team had fractured off, separating Team 10 from Team 8 and Tsunade, so that meant that they were the group that was the farthest forward, and that would look to him being the lead man going to the bounty station

"Go, and remove the bounty from Tsunade-sama." Hinata urged him, turning off her Byakugan momentarily to look at him meaningfully, "We'll catch up with you when this is over, or you can return after you've finished. Trust us."

Kiba frowned but nodded and whistled for Akamaru before both of them took off back through the wall of fire that spanned most of the battlefield, "You guys had better not do something stupid like get killed!" He shouted back as he left them.

There wasn't a clan in Konoha that knew of Hi no Kuni's backwoods and wilderness than the Inuzuka. Travelling with everyone else was probably just slowing Kiba down. Alone he'd knock off a quarter of the time he'd have made moving with others at the same distance pace.

Hidan's entire right side was badly torn up by Kiba's last attack, "How many of you vermin are gonna come out?" He asked blood pouring down half of his body entirely, "Any other surprises? Anyone else planning on dropping in that I don't fucking know about? No? Okay, let's get to the fun part!" In his left hand he held up his scythe that had some blood on the blades and proceeded to lick the red fluid off.

Hinata held her hand up to her mouth in shock at seeing someone actually ingest an enemy's blood like that. What was with these people? One with five hearts and a body composition of black threads inside, the other unkillable and bloodthirsty… literally.

These weren't humans. They couldn't be.

And when Hidan started drawing some strange circle on the ground and his skin change appearance altogether she felt serious belief in this fact, "Jujutsu: Shiji Hyouketsu (Curse Technique: Death Controlling Possessed Blood)!"

XxX

(Miles Away – Decrepit Fishing Village – With Team 10)

Okay, so almost knocking Darui into the next life with pure taijutsu and clone tricks pissed him off. Good to know.

He had a strong ninjutsu base, and this was coming from Naruto of all people.

"Suiton: Hahonryuu (Water Release: Tearing Torrent)!" A whirl of water formed in Darui's right hand before he shot it out at Naruto in a powerful burst that the latter dodged. It wound up plowing its way through every single shack and homes and home in its way, plowing straight into the nearby massive lake that was a geographical trait of the area.

Naruto was impressed, and that wasn't a good thing. Splinters, dust, and old loose fishing equipment flew through the air, clouding the vision of both Naruto and Darui until a gleam of steel could be seen behind Naruto.

Pulling his machete's blade from the sheath on his back just enough to protect his neck, Naruto blocked a swing of Omoi's katana that would have beheaded him. He never thought that he would be the one to complain about something like this, but fighting more than one opponent was annoying.

One was very powerful, and the other one was dangerous enough that he couldn't ignore him or he'd lose his head.

Naruto aggressively kicked Omoi away hard enough to send him sliding right into the lake with a crash, through the pathway that Darui's previous jutsu had created in the small ghost town.

"You can't have Tsunade-baachan." Naruto said, taking his machete back out and pointing it right at Darui, "She wouldn't come with you, so just go home. I'm totally serious and I'm about to get pissed. We've been getting chased by Iwa ANBU, you, and Suna ninjas all night long. I'm so not in the mood to do this right now."

Ino was busy fighting with two other Kumogakure kunoichi, and who knew what else was happening wherever other bad things were going on.

"Sorry, but why should I care if you're in a bad mood kid?" Darui asked, holding up his large cleaver sword to prepare another attack again, "That doesn't mean anything when it comes to bailing on our mission. The Boss would kill us if we just quit like that, and we've got the numbers on you and your girlfriend. Why don't you just quit?" At that moment, Ino's battle against Samui and Karui could be seen by the two men with the three women darting over the rooftops, "Do you really want to take your chances four-on-two?"

Ino seemed to be doing okay since Karui appeared to be utterly focused on getting close enough to cut her down with her sword. The Yamanaka girl was extremely light on her feet in staying away from the attack, lithe, like a dancer even.

He hadn't seen her in battle since returning to Konoha… and she was stunning. So graceful. So much more confident now when it came to her every move. So completely certain that Karui would not, could not hit her. That she was in full control even though the numbers were against her.

She was beautiful.

And Darui could see, even in Naruto's passing glance in the direction of Ino and his own two Kumo teammates, that he was captivated by the girl.

A target was presented.

At best it would end the battle altogether. At worst it would throw Naruto off so badly mentally that he would never recover and would be easy pickings from that point forward. He was talented but he was young, and a young ninja could easily become compromised by his own emotions. All you had to do was find their berserk button.

His was more than likely going to be the pretty little thing fending off Karui and Samui. The look in his eyes was something that he couldn't hide from a shinobi as attentive as him; he was sweet on her.

Getting Naruto's attention once more, Darui quickly rolled through four hand-seals before holding his hands in the final dragon seal, a circle of bright energy surrounded his hands before even more covered them, "Sorry, but we're getting what we need to get." No matter what they had to do, "Ranton: Reiza Sakasu (Storm Release: Laser Circus)!"

'What the hell is a Storm Release?' Naruto thought to himself, preparing to move in order to avoid any potential attack coming his way.

From his hands, through the aiming point of the halo, Darui fired off more than a dozen trailing, flowing beams that Naruto didn't even have to avoid. They bypassed him completely, missing entirely and moving past him to target Ino.

Who was unaware that they were headed for her.

It was a shot that was at least fifty yards away, and she was involved with her own problems at the moment, so she wasn't exactly knowledgeable of something coming her way from such a long range, from Naruto's opponent especially.

"Ino!" Naruto shouted as loud as he could muster, desperate for her to hear him and find some way to avoid an attack with so many angles on her that she wouldn't have had much of a chance if she'd seen it coming in the first place.

She turned upon hearing Naruto's voice yell for her and saw the many laser blasts coming her way from Darui. Her mouth opened in a gasp and she tried to feel for something around that could help her, but her ninjutsu skills weren't destructive enough to dredge up a move that could stop such a thing. She wasn't a powerhouse of a ninja like Naruto was.

Her life flashed before her eyes in the blur of the lights coming her way.

And then she found the building she was standing on collapsing, sending her down to the ground below and forcing Darui's attack to miss. Inexplicably, that and four other entire buildings found themselves sliced down by the foundations.

"Ugh…" A rather disgruntled yet lazy voice said, slowly walking onto the scene while holding his fingers in a rat seal, "Did I really have to blow my whole element of surprise to save Ino like that?"

Shikamaru's shadow slinked back over to him, reeling back in from where he had used it to cut down the flimsy dwellings that Ino and the Kumo girls had been fighting on. Good old Shikamaru. Reliable as hell when it counted.

Naruto's relief quickly gave way to mounting anger as he glared back at Darui and formed a Rasengan in his hand in preparation to attack, 'That jutsu. That's the Yondaime Hokage's signature move isn't it? This kid knows it?' It was pretty surprising, but it was also a well-known melee attack. He had to get close enough to touch him with it for it to do anything.

Naruto wasn't focusing on him though, instead holding out his right hand toward the lake that he'd knocked Omoi into, he added a second hand behind the first and the Rasengan began to take a warped form as he blew ash onto it. It began to develop a grey shell, cracked with specs of hot orange in it, like a dying planet with a visible blue core inside of it.

"My turn." He said with a flash of red to his eyes before they turned back to blue, "Rasentekidan (Spiraling Grenade)!" With one might push of both hands, Naruto sent his strange jutsu out at Omoi who just gotten out of the water and was clearing his cobwebs on the wharf from Naruto's earlier landed blow.

Much like Ino, he did not see this one coming.

Unlike Ino however, there was no one that could move him aside or distort the battlefield in some way to save him.

The Rasentekidan detonated upon contact with the first thing that it touched, blowing up the entire wharf and what was on it in a powerful shockwave that sent ash billowing out from the center of impact. A large, black-sooted figure flew out and fell into the water with a splash, and nothing moved from there from that point forward until a body could be seen floating on the surface of the water.

When Naruto turned his eyes back to face the stunned jounin that he'd been locked in battle with moments before, Darui was forced to look into his eyes which told the whole story, just like they had before to how he was enamored with Ino.

Only this time they spoke in a different kind of manner than the fondness for another that they'd once held.

'You started this when you attacked us. You escalated this when you attacked her. So I'll finish this by any means necessary.'

Those eyes couldn't hide any secrets. Not that he was trying to hide in the least what he was thinking at the moment.

"How could you…" Darui started to say before glaring hatefully at Naruto. If that was really the route that this fight was going to go-, "He never saw it coming! He was defenseless!"

"Ino wouldn't have seen it coming either!" Naruto snapped in return, a blood red cloak of chakra covering his body with two tails of energy visible behind him. His physical features roughened and turned more feral right before Darui's eyes, "Now take him and leave, or shut up and fight!" He barked with a gravelly tint to his voice, "You can't just change the rules back whenever you feel like it asshole! You started this!"

Surprise filled Darui's eyes at the sight of an aggressively assumed chakra cloak for Naruto. He couldn't be the right-hand man of the Raikage without knowing what that was from personal experience, and it left in him a feeling of having screwed up that he couldn't shake, 'A jinchuuriki. This is the Konoha Kyuubi jinchuuriki.'

Granted, he wasn't as famous as the jinchuuriki of most other villages since Konoha had done a very good job of keeping him as under-wraps as they could. But even so, there was no way Omoi would have been ready to face someone like that, even if they'd known that they'd be stepping on one's toes during the course of this mission.

Still, he was a kid. And he wasn't as completely comfortable in his own skin so to speak as Killer B would have been. He was strong enough to handle taking Naruto on. He knew that he was, he just couldn't fight with revenge on his mind or he'd wind up playing into the hands of what a jinchuuriki specialized in, toe-to-toe slugfests.

"Whatever you want kid." Darui said, face hardening into a stony expression, "Show me what you've got."

Both of Naruto's chakra tails shot forward on both sides of Darui to pincer him in while Naruto himself came straight down the middle for a three-pronged attack.

Darui readied himself to move while whipping through more hand-seals before he jumped directly into the air to avoid Naruto's three-sided attack. That wasn't going to stop anything though. All it would do was postpone Naruto's barrage until he fell back down to the ground.

That was what the jutsu was for, "Ranton: Reinbouinzadauku (Storm Release: Rainbow in the Dark)!"

Quicker than the last one, Darui formed the light around his hands and threw it down at Naruto, not surprised at all when he dashed aside and dodged it. That was not the point of the jutsu.

It hit the ground, but instead of exploding or just vanishing it began to spin before letting off dozens of small beams in every direction, quickly synching up to target Naruto and pursue him. If Darui's last attack against Ino was inescapable, Naruto had perhaps thought prematurely as all he could do was turtle up defensively while they started blasting off of his form.

From his point of view, Darui watched his jutsu faithfully chase Naruto down and hammer him relentlessly with so many of the small village's hovels and shacks being annihilated in the process. When the smoke cleared, nothing of those things would remain. Three-quarters of the ghost town was now destroyed as a result of the battle, and his jutsu wasn't even finished yet.

"Naruto!" Ino cried out now that the shoe was apparently on the other foot and Darui was blowing him into the next life as opposed to him doing it to her. Her initial wish was to get up to try and attack Darui herself, but she found herself more concerned with rolling out of the way of a sword strike that cut an entire building in twain.

"He'll get what he deserves and more!" Karui exclaimed, gripping the handle of her sword so hard that her hands were actually bleeding onto the ground, "I guess Kumo really is the only village with a jinchuuriki that isn't a soulless killer!"

'Well at least they've forgotten about Tsunade-sama for now.' Ino thought to herself. And anger was always an emotion that she could take advantage of, "Goldie-kun isn't soulless. For what? Doing what that other guy was going to do to me anyway?"

"That was different!"

"Like hell it was!"

Still angered, Karui attacked Ino directly, looking to cut her asunder with her katana. The lovely Yamanaka girl formed two quick hand-seals and inhaled deeply, "Dokugiri (Poison Mist)!" A dark fog spewed from Ino's mouth, but Karui was quick enough to move out of the way of the airborne substance.

She didn't realize that Ino had expected her to avoid that move the entire time, and angled her attack so that she was forced to go in one direction instead of another. A direction where Ino was already aiming with something else altogether.

Upon avoiding Ino's poison, all Karui got was a quick view of Ino's hands held in a new hand-seal that made it look like she was taking aim at something. Her. Omoi's death made her emotional enough to forget Samui's original advice in dealing with her at the outset of the battle, "Shintenshin no Jutsu (Mind Body Switch Jutsu)!"

Karui's body stopped moving forward mid-stride and violently jerked involuntarily upon having Ino's consciousness supplant hers so that the latter could have complete control of her body. Ino's own body collapsed to the ground, fainting due to the current lack of a cognizant mind in it.

Dropping the katana and looking at her hands as she got her bearings quickly within Karui's body, Ino then frowned as she got a feel for what she had to offer, "I think I was better off staying in my own body."

In the entire block of wrecked homes that Shikamaru had destroyed the foundations of to bail Ino out of danger from Darui's jutsu, the lazy genius managed to locate Samui lying amongst the wreckage of one of them with a rather large shard of jagged wood piercing her left leg.

She wasn't making any loud noises to reveal the kind of pain that she was in, but she would let out little sharp intakes of air to bite back any outcries that might have occurred. It was a very nasty wound and she was doing what she could to nurse it on the spot.

Her eyes tilted up to see Shikamaru crouching down just staring at her with an unreadable expression on his face. The fact that it was still extremely dark in the early dawn probably didn't help her try to read his expression, "So, are you going to kill me?" Like how Naruto killed Omoi.

"Surrender and I won't." Shikamaru said, "I really don't want to have to, but…" He pointed at the sash around his waist before forming a few more hand-seals, "…Me and Naruto? They really made us not care about killing the people we have to fight since they'd kill us first. So I'll do it and won't lose a wink of sleep over it."

Omoi was dead. Karui was indisposed. She couldn't walk, much less run or fight on her injured leg. Darui was the only one of them left and he was still dealing with Naruto. As angry as she was that her teammate had been ended, she had to stay cool. There rightfully wasn't anything that she herself could do to make these people pay.

That, and Shikamaru's shadow seemed to be setting up to impale her from many different directions in the dark, "And you'll allow us to leave?"

"If you leave now? Yes. Ino will stay in that girl's body and take you and yours as far as she can before letting her go of her jutsu."

"As I am I can't walk."

At that moment, a loud noise sounded out from the direction of the lake that the town was initially built right by. No one else was really aware of what it meant, but Shikamaru was. He'd only seen it in person once, but one time was all he needed to remember the feeling that came with it for life.

"Then you'd better hope Naruto's feeling in control enough to win without killing your other friend."

He wouldn't count on it though. Not with the track record that came with it.

XxX

(Moments Earlier – Nearby)

Darui's self-sustaining Ranton jutsu eventually ran out of juice and left the battlefield a smoking, battered mess. But he could still feel that same pressure of anger and harm coming from nearby. It didn't take a sensor at all to locate Naruto. Anyone with half a feeling for malevolent chakra could feel out his foul signature.

Standing out on the lake itself was Naruto, only now he had a third tail available to his fox chakra shroud. His eyes were pure blood red and the entire form seemed to be bubbling. The water around him directly appeared to be beginning to boil and push waves away from his body just from him standing there.

'Focus.' Naruto thought to himself, trying to control his own breathing at all costs, 'You're fine. This isn't as far as you can go. Just be cool.'

Fuu taught him that pure willpower and experience was what it took to control a biju's chakra, and Jiraiya made sure that he learned how to center himself and remain calm on each stage of drawing upon the power before he ever wanted to see him practicing fighting with it.

"…Didn't hurt." Naruto blatantly lied before letting out a cough as his body betrayed him. The chakra had patched up all of the injuries that Darui's last nonstop jutsu had dealt him and the cloak itself had protected him from quite a bit of devastation. But it most assuredly had hurt. Very much so.

"Then why did you tap into more chakra?" Darui asked dully as he walked closer to the site of the fight, "I know what the tails mean kid. Killer B is Kumogakure's perfect jinchuuriki that can use his biju's full power. You can barely tolerate as much as you're using right now."

"Well maybe his biju isn't a douche like mine is?" Naruto replied, feeling a pull on his own chakra from inside and he knew what the reasoning was, 'What? You know I'm right! You're a jerk even when I try to be nice to you!'

"You know what'd really be nice? LETTING ME OUT YOU WHELP!"

'But then I'd die…'

"Well wouldn't that just be a national tragedy?"

Internal sarcasm aside, there was a conflict still going on. And Darui was wary, but he didn't seem concerned. Naruto wasn't flying off the handle the way that most of history's jinchuuriki were noted for doing when tapping into their fouler chakra.

Yet at least.

That wasn't a good thing. He wanted him to lose control.

"Tell me." Darui said to Naruto who seemed to tilt his head at being asked a question in the midst of their battle, "Do you know what chakra natures you need to create Storm Release?" All he got in return was a look from Naruto, exhibiting that he didn't care, "Water and Lightning." Really? Well it sounded appropriate, but Naruto didn't feel like he'd been getting shocked when it hit him, "You've already seen that I can use one. And guess where you are?"

On a damn lake.

Naruto and Darui seemed to be at a momentary standoff, until Naruto ran for shore as fast as possible, whether Darui was there or not. He saw the man quickly making five hand-seals and forced all three of his chakra tails forward to drill into him to intercept whatever move he was about to make.

Darui had to make an audible and drew the cleaver sword from his back to swing at Naruto's chakra arms, cutting through them with the lightning-infused blade before throwing it into the water.

The discharge stopped Naruto in his tracks before his sandaled feet could touch solid ground, "GRAAAAHHHH!" Lightning was officially his least favorite element. It was the fastest out of the five, and the only thing that hurt more was fire.

He was quite certain that in another reality his dislike for lightning would remain the same for an entirely different reason, but for now he could definitely say that it altogether sucked.

'He won't die.' Darui thought to himself, watching Naruto scream in pain and still remain standing atop the water without a heel or an ankle submerging beneath. He was still able to keep his chakra under enough control to water walk, 'It shouldn't be this difficult to finish someone.' His hands met in the ram seal as he started drawing upon so much chakra that it was visible and black, 'Even a jinchuuriki!'

He had to hurry and kill him. Naruto's own chakra output had grown so intensely visible that his own skin began to burn from it. A black sphere of energy surrounded his body, and broke open with a massive roar/yell, that could have echoed out for miles.

From his body, Darui forced out a large amount of black lightning chakra that took the form of a massive panther, bigger than the first by three times. It looked as if it were alive as it went straight for Naruto.

That roar let Darui know that Naruto had lost it. He'd gone berserk, and now was the time to strike at him and end the battle. Once his ability to reason was lost, the instinct to destroy that made up for it simply wouldn't be enough.

Instead of staying in the water, Naruto's form leapt high into the air, far over Darui's head, and landing on the ground hard enough to break a crater into it upon impact. A massive amount of lake water was covered in black jolts of lightning from where his attack had spaced out upon missing Naruto.

But Darui would wait and prepare another Black Lightning ninjutsu. He would wait for the berserker rush from the lost jinchuuriki, however it never came. There was no desperate rush from Naruto to claim his life. He was just standing there, shaking every few seconds.

Naruto's chakra cloak mixed with his own blood to give it an eerie black and red glow, shaped in a more streamlined fox formation around his body. His eyes were solid white. His teeth were bared, but he wasn't snarling, nor was he hunched or raging. He was entirely focused on his breathing, and it was apparently hard to keep level from the sound of it.

"Yeah." Naruto said, with a drastically warped voice that seemed to be marred with unseen suffering, "Try that Black Lightning stuff now…" He said as all four of his chakra tails shot out in corner positions and began to rotate around like blades on a fan, smashing through the ground easily to make extra space for easier spinning, "…I dare you."

Omake: Guardian Days 11

(Two Years and Two Months after Shikamaru and Naruto's Acceptance)

"Let me get up." Naruto complained. He'd been confined to his room in the Guardian Quarters for two days after a little… 'incident' occurred a few miles away from the capital city. Luckily Jiraiya had the practiced foresight to take him far, far away from civilization before making him push certain limitations of his, "Come on. I'm fine."

"All of your skin burned off." Shizune said, sitting guard nearby Naruto's bed with Tonton. A watch needed to be kept over him lest he find some way to escape again. For an added measure he was sealed in with tags on the four corners of the bottoms of his bed and the ceiling. He wasn't good enough at fuuinjutsu yet to break it from the inside himself even though his hands were free, "You're not getting out of that bed until Tsunade-sama gives the okay."

Jiraiya was a jerk sometimes. And all of the other Guardians sucked too, Shikamaru included, for not letting him out. He tried to summon something so that he could send a message to Gamakichi to reverse summon him out, but the barrier blocked space-time ninjutsu.

"I don't remember that."

"Of course you wouldn't from what we heard."

"What happened?"

"You kind of almost rampaged toward a village and destroyed it." Shizune seemed extremely uncomfortable in informing him of that fact, as signified by the shifting of her heeled-sandaled feet even while sitting still in her chair. Even Tonton oinked concernedly.

"…"

Naruto didn't say anything, because how the hell did you respond to something like that? So that was what Jiraiya and Fuu had always kept talking about when they said that he could wind up relinquishing control of the Kyuubi's chakra? Yeah, it had been difficult to keep his head when he started using more, but he never figured he'd actually lose it.

Wow.

"Uh..." Naruto said, licking his lips while wondering what to say next, "Well, I've just got to learn how to work it out and control it to that point then don't I?" He asked, trying to keep things positive while wondering just what kind of a beast he became when he'd gone under, "The next time I'll-."

"No." Shizune said, immediately cutting him off, "No, no, no, no, no. No 'next time' for that. Never again. Do you know what you did to yourself, aside from going on a tear?" The blank look on Naruto's face answered the question, "Your chakra was so intense that it burned through your skin. You were destroying your own body and healing it so quickly… the constant creation and destruction of new cells shortened your life."

"But I'm an Uzumaki, so…"

"That doesn't mean you can just cut chunks of years off of your life whenever you feel like it!" Shizune actually got up and threw her own chair at Naruto, and because the seal only stopped things from getting out and not from getting in, so that they could feed him amongst other things, it sailed in but didn't get out again, much to Naruto's consternation, "Kami, you're just as bad as Tsunade-sama! You two really are related to each other!"

She realized that she'd presented Naruto with some extremely new information that she wasn't the one to rightfully inform him about. All he did was stare at her with a wide-eyed, confused expression, "Say what now?"

Shizune just started edging her way out of Naruto's room with Tonton in grasp, "I'll go get her. I think she'd be better to talk to you about this than me."

As curious as he was, Naruto accepted this. Shizune wasn't a pass-the-buck kind of person and had his complete, unconditional trust, thus he accepted this. Even so, "Okay, but can I ask a question before you leave?"

"Yes."

"Why is she here?"

The 'she' in question was the Shizuka girl that wanted to take him home with her not too long ago. Word had it that she'd been hanging around in the capital after their first run-in, but he hadn't seen her since. And yet here she sat, confidently in seiza at the foot of his bed, looking right at him with an unreadable expression of partiality in her eyes.

Shizune pitied the boy, but there was a reason for it, "She is a high-ranking diplomat from Nadeshiko Village, so she was able to negotiate a stay within the court as a good-faith guest of the Fire Daimyo."

Damn it! That old man was so easy to sway with pretty words. He was a nice guy and good at his job of ruling more often than not, but any half-assed speaker could influence him if there wasn't anyone to go against them.

Shizune wished him luck and left Naruto alone to go retrieve Tsunade. The girl couldn't get him out of his temporary prison without a relatively good mastery of fuuinjutsu, and even if she did, absconding with Naruto like a thief in the night would be next to impossible.

All Naruto could do was sit in his bed and stare at the dark and lovely girl with an odd method of obtaining a spouse, "So…" Naruto started to say, not wanting the awkward (in his opinion) silence to continue any further, "You didn't go home."

"I can do no such thing until I've determined that my would-be husband is unworthy by defeating him." Shizuka said, lowering her head slightly in what could be perceived as a momentary bow, "But I accept the fact that you are more powerful than me Uzumaki-san."

Oh, Naruto had to find a way to excuse himself, because his ego was showing, "Really? Nah. Well, go on if you insist." He said, almost preening like a peacock despite being confined to the limits of a king-sized bed, "Tell me more."

"Really. I cannot defeat a jinchuuriki that can do what you managed to do to the countryside." Shizuka conceded freely, green eyes never leaving his form, "That asserts that you are the stronger of us. My efforts will now be focused on getting you to return to the village with me. We will be wed as soon as possible."

Okay, that really made him lose the overinflated self-esteem and then some. She already didn't seem to care that he figured that he would be a terrible significant other, so he had to try to appeal to other avenues of escaping this fate, "What if I said I had a girlfriend already?"

A fire set itself in Shizuka's eyes as she brandished a trio of kunai between her fingers, "Then I will have to emphasize to her that I am the only kunoichi worthy of betrothal to someone this strong. Do not concern yourself with such a trifle. I know that you will be very happy once we return home. What is this girl's name?"

'No! I am not going to some other village, especially one with customs like this!' Naruto thought to himself frantically. Granted, at the moment he was totally safe, since she couldn't just snatch him up and leave lest she begin a war, but she could always talk the Fire Daimyo into it. That was a very realistic and terrifying chance.

"So what is the name of this other girl so that I may prove my superiority over her?"

Naruto's first idea was to say 'Kotoko', but that would be infinitely too vindictive. It would solve his problem more than likely, but it was far too cruel of a fate to inflict on a young woman just trying to fulfill the customs of her home.

No one deserved to die like that, even if he had been in the malicious mindset of putting Shizuka to sleep forever, which he wasn't. Kotoko would try to butcher her from the outset without even asking why she'd been challenged or attacked, and she'd do it with a lovely smile on her face that would make it all the more chilling.

So why do that?

But she was waiting on an answer, eyes filled with hope that it would be something she could handle that would prove to him that being wed to her would be for the best for the both of them.

He had to give her something. Even if it was something that she could never try to go for, for whatever reason. And only one name filled his head due to some of the letters that he could still see on his nightstand by the bed.

"…Ino." Naruto eventually said, trying to keep an even expression on his face to hide the outright lie, "Her name is Ino." Any further conversation had to come to a close as the door opened to reveal Jiraiya poking his head in, "YOU!"

"Yes, me." Jiraiya deadpanned as he walked into the room, "Is that how you thank the man that risked life and limb to keep you from renaming a village into 'Big Smoking Crater in the Ground?'"

"No, that's how I thank the man that got me engaged." Naruto replied, crossing his arms over his chest, "I mean it's not her fault, and it isn't mine either. Seriously, what am I gonna do, stop being awesome?"

"I feel the same way every day." Jiraiya replied, noticing that the Nadeshiko Village girl was still sitting seiza on the floor in front of Naruto's bed, "Mmm." He said to himself, sizing up the lovely young lady. And she actually openly wanted to get with his student? "…You know, if you did go I could still train you and everything. I can go wherever and do whatever I want after all-."

In response, Shizuka's eyes lit up and Naruto leapt at Jiraiya with intent to tear him apart, but the seal holding up the barrier around his bed came into play and an invisible wall caused him to collide with seemingly nothing headfirst. The chair that Shizune had thrown at him earlier then came into play when he picked it up and tried to break free of his jail with an impromptu weapon.

'I came here to let him out since Tsunade-hime finished checking over the damage that the four-tailed form does to him…' Jiraiya thought, stroking his chin in contemplation while Naruto continued to wail away at nothing with a piece of small furniture, 'But if I let him out he's just gonna come after me with that chair, and I don't want to beat his ass right now.' Jiraiya mindlessly touched at a still fresh and sore scar that lay behind the confines of his shirts.

Maybe loosening the seal for access to more power wasn't the best idea yet? Because he was extremely aggressive.

Oh well. He'd get over it.

Jutsu List

Kurohigi: Rakka Sore (Black Secret Technique: Falling Skies). A-rank ninjutsu, offensive, all ranges. From the mouth of his Sanshouo (Salamander) puppet, Kankuro propels a heavy pod into the air that contains a large amount of heavy spikes. Hundreds. The pod will explode and send the spikes shooting all over to cover the battlefield. As it is the technique of a Sunagakure ninja, the jutsu is most effective in the desert, where cover from such a devastating attack would be perfectly nonexistent, but when taking on large numbers of enemies it is still a highly effective attack that can 'thin the herd' on any sort of terrain, not just in open areas.

Magen: Osore no Kagami (Demonic Illusion: Horror Mirrors). C-rank genjutsu. Creates copies of an intended target, but not in a similar manner as a common Bunshin. The copies created can be of anything in the area; people, objects, etc., and after the initial illusion takes hold on a foe(s) they can then be freely manipulated and distorted to the user's liking. This should be exercised with caution. Treating the manipulation of the illusion too cavalierly will result in the enemy seeing through it. The illusion(s) cannot cause physical harm to the enemy. It is only a jutsu intended to fool them.

Rasentekidan (Spiraling Grenade). A-rank ninjutsu, offensive, all ranges. Using the principles of shape manipulation that come with the original Rasengan, the user (Naruto) combines that with the nature transformation of the ash-based ninjutsu to allow the Rasengan to maintain its form away from the body, turning it into a projectile. This is fortunate since it can only safely operate as such, as it explodes upon contact with anything else. While not an incendiary, it will release the power generated from the Rasengan process in a shockwave and will send large amounts of scorching hot ash and tar all over for a splash-damage 'smash-and-burn' type of effect.

Ranton: Reinbouinzadauku (Storm Release: Rainbow in the Dark). A-rank ninjutsu, offensive, all ranges. A fire and forget attack in the branch of techniques known by those with the Storm Release kekkei genkai. The jutsu after leaving the hands of the user will be self-sustaining for the life of the technique, firing off smaller energy beams that will hone in on the nearest formidable target, discriminate by the level of chakra of the would-be victim.