Naruto: My Way

The Red Hurricane Of Konoha

By Sweet Heavens

Chapter 4: The Consequences Of Violence

Disclaimer: In tribute to the mighty Uchiha clan I am issuing a new disclaimer which is this. If I owned Naruto I would have made it so Madara didn't take the piss with the super powers. Hey I'm bored I know I'll give myself the rinnegan!-Point taken no?

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Four long days had passed in Nami No Kuni. The mission to guard the construction of a super wooden bridge from the island nation to the mainland of Hi no Kuni was on schedule. Their arrival had been met with quiet fanfare, the installation of materials and the continued construction of the bridge was on schedule and Naruto had the easiest time of things. There had been no sign apart from a few minor skirmishes that didn't match the parameters of their assigned task to intervene and only one act of sabotage resulting in the loss of six workers living in nearby worker quarters.

Naruto did have to make sure they didn't get too far ahead and their arrival had bolstered the workers spirits to the point they were interfering with their deadline. They had one more day before they moved in to strike the enemy down and his orders did have the option of sabotage and blaming it on Gato if it allowed the shinobi time to execute their real mission, the one Konoha really wanted done.

But in the background of this sleepy cowardly nation the game was afoot. Behind the scenes while Naruto publicly guarded his client on the bridge by day and Hayate performed his scouting role while deceiving the very gossipy opium using daughter of the drunken builder the cat clan had scrambled nearly triple their usual complement scrounging around the country for information. No stone was unturned in the hunt for intelligence.

From the daimyo palace on the north ridge protected by an inlet wall to the poorest slum of the capital city the army of small unnoticed minions were appropriating, dissimilating and then funnelling the necessary and pertinent facts and rumours back to mission control. They planted camouflaged explosives with six month long shelf lives onto the stolen naval fleet of Nami No Kuni as they had done many times before, assassinated key figures pertinent to their operation and stalked their master's prey relentlessly at all times. No matter what Gato or his executive officer was doing they never left their sight. It didn't matter if the little dwarf man bathed or went to the bathroom, there was no privacy for Gato or his officer when they fornicated or imbibed in alcohol. They had no secret pleasures and nothing for them that wasn't memorised and revealed to the jounin in charge.

But on his perch atop one of the construction site's support towers Naruto was bored out of his mind. While Hayate ran around investigating potential sites of ambush for Gato the hurricane did his role as guardian of the bridge builder and his men. He observed their daily lives searching for insurgents in the gang of builders, analysing their habits and assigning cats at the dead of night to investigate further when needed.

So far Gato had lost two informants in the construction crew. They had been made to look like suicides, an easy factor to believe in this impoverished and downtrodden nation but the adult ninja was positive there were more of them. The information the felines had gleamed beforehand had been undoubtedly useful.

Gato was the pseudo daimyo of this nation. He pulled the strings behind the scenes and made this land his personal kingdom. He reduced a thriving shipping nation to a squall of poverty and disease. His soldiers everywhere apart from this small town where the entrance to the bridge was being constructed was drinking, pillaging, raping and collecting taxes although the latter was almost the same as the former three. They ran around like they owned the place but wisely kept their distance. So far the red head hadn't even needed to lift a finger and that led to the man dwelling on the events leading to this point.

Terumi Mei, without the surname up till now to alert the red head one of those fool beasts were still among the living was in his bingo book at the very back listed as a jounin of the hidden mist as one of the A ranked ninja under their command. She was just beneath their infamous seven shinobi swordsmen in reputation. Her file was rather slim like most from the insular hidden village that had just emerged from a civil war battered, bleeding but still alive and fighting.

His bingo book was dog eared in the section listed under independent nukenins as it was every year he was supplied with a new one. The fruitless search for Guren-sensei and his undying faith she survived the slaughter or even maybe a member of the sly Tamaki clan had always led him to misery. The mission here had brought back a collage of memories from that time. The smells, the fishing villages that reminded him of his own homeland and hell even the songs the fishwives sang when doing their daily chores were the same.

Just because he was a professional killer didn't mean he couldn't reminisce or wish things had been different. Don't take that the wrong way as Naruto loved Konoha and he had no plans to ever betray it. The place had been shelter then a reason to fight for in the third shinobi war. He had met his mentor there, his grandfather figure and his biological aunt treated that land as the last bastion of the Uzumaki clan and in this political climate with the military build up in Kumogakure and the continued resentment leftover from Iwa made anyone forming a village with affiliations with Konoha dangerous. Just the previous year an economic crisis in tiny Takigakure had made them retire several ninja just to avoid becoming insolvent.

And it wasn't like you could make a village with two people.

Naruto inwardly scolded himself for being so damn sentimental. That damn Terumi woman had opened up a scabbing wound inside his heart and damn it the red head had learned to close up emotion a long time ago. Instead he filed away those feelings and replaced them with an appreciation of the ocean view, the scent of salt and the chatter of the workers below him.

"Oyabun," Kuroneko whispered as an invisible weight landed on his shoulder.

"Report," Naruto requested, leaning back to improve the illusion that he was alone. The nervous workers had taken to watching him whenever they could like if they didn't he would find a chance to flee and leave them to their horrible deaths.

"The executive officer is leaving tonight on a boat to Kuma no Kuni. Squad nineteen heard it from the ship captain."

His recollection suggested according to the position of the sun that the fat argumentative old fart that passed for a sea captain had lunch soon. Maybe he should order the food to be tainted? Or perhaps sink the ship they were in?

"Remove the captain and delay the ship without making it look suspicious and then report back to me."

The weight left his shoulder and apart from a rush of air there was no more trace of his cat general.

"I wonder what they will come up with," Naruto mused to himself quietly. Those thought carried his time on guard for the rest of the day, past lunch and into the evening where he had to witness the self destruction of an entire family.

The man Kaiza who Naruto found out was a wandering fisherman who just happened to come here, settle down and become the glue that held Tazuna and his family together was a remarkable man. The simple fisherman had performed brave deeds for an untrained civilian and had foolishly died taking on a group one call to Konoha or Kiri would have eliminated them without this painful state Nami put itself in. Once dead his wife had torn his face off all his pictures on the walls and in her albums and turned to drugs to ease the pain, his father in law was drinking himself into an early grave and as for the kid…

Nobody had seen Inari since the group had arrived in Nami No Kuni. The last Naruto had heard from the kid was a half hearted shout about seeing some friends then nothing. Tazuna had despaired and drank himself stupid and his mother was more spacey than she was normally according to her neighbours Naruto had spied on to make sure they weren't informants. But at the same time apparently the annoying child was prone to disappearing for days at a time and not to be nasty Naruto, the shinobi didn't care what happened to him. Sure he emphasised with the loss of his father role model but it didn't control his life.

The crumbling of the family unit became rather obvious that every day without fail the drugged up woman publicly tottered to the bridge to feed her father some very meagre rations complete with sake for lunch. She would scold him for drinking, and then hand the bottle anyway to her father like a hypocrite. Naruto then watched the woman burst into tears when her silent question after looking around hopefully for her son was met with a sharp shake of her father's head and she would run away back to her house, to her stash she kept under the floorboards to ease the pain.

It made Naruto almost happy his family business was the shinobi trade. Random drug tests for opiates were commonplace and it was not unheard of to be tested seven times in a week as Kakashi-san had once been subjected to. Ninja addicted to drugs were not productive warriors and there was a special rehabilitation ward in the maximum security wing of the hospital built specially for drug addicts. It was sealed tighter than a drum and the intensive genjutsu therapy, drug treatments and counselling worked better when Tsunade instituted the reforms. The old chuck them into prison to rot when they could be rehabilitated was a very archaic practice only still used as far as Naruto was aware in Iwa or they used the drugs as incentive for the men to work harder.

But the peace the ninja had enjoyed was not to last. As the moon came to rise in the horizon, shining the blackened sea with light and the men were going home for the night their bridge only requiring another two days work Naruto found out when he shared lunch with his co-workers an unusual disturbance came to be.

A gigantic cloud crackling lightning grew in strength in the distance, advancing swiftly to their position while its lighter cousins lazily drifted. And strolling to the bridge on his own was a cloaked man. His hair was as grey as Kakashi's but it ran loosely down to his shoulders and every part of his bare flesh except for his head the newcomer wore bandages where bare skin would be and to top it all off wore clashing grey pants and a purple sleeveless robe.

Naruto had seen his picture in the Kiri section of the bingo book. The man was a punk dubbed a B rank for his ownership well stolen anyway of the legendary swords known simply as the Kiba. Those small short swords unusually built with two protrusions that helped form sickle like shapes on both sides supposedly conducted lightning in a similar manner as the stolen weapon the Nidaime Hokage once did only it was designed more for long ranged jutsu.

The piercing blue eyes of Kurosaki Raiga were the thing to look for according to the distinctive features section of his profile. There was the glaringly overstated fact the man was a thief and not that great as a shinobi compared to the predecessor who originally claimed ownership, the mighty Ameyuri Ringo. The original owner had a record that the red head almost envied for the exploits listed.

After four days this was what Gato had lined up to take him on? Naruto felt oddly offended that they would send a lightning natured shinobi after a notorious wind user. Didn't Gato have any clue at all about shinobi? Even schoolchildren at the civilian schools were taught the various differences in elements to smell out the promising civilians to suggest going to the academy.

He was going to collect some more prized treasures of the Kiri shinobi force today. The favours he was going to earn from the Hokage… Naruto grinned that he mockingly kept as the ninja jumped down from his nest onto the bridge properly.

"Fuck it's one of his ninja guards," Tazuna grumbled under his breath, taking sadly another swig of his booze. The man was already rather unsteady on his feet which his workers took note of with various different looks of disgust to resignation. "You get him shinobi," Tazuna commanded.

And without any word to confirm the command Naruto vanished in a burst of speed. His twin kodachi swords clanged off the infamous Kiba swords of his surprised opponent. Raiga attempted to push him back but Naruto as planned pulled the intertwined swords together and flipped up catching him in the jaw with the sole of his foot. As the red head flew back from his somersault a lightning ball created by placing the unusual swords closely together was batted aside by a pair of wind blades. The enemy was clearly stunned at the ease of Naruto's ability to neutralise his attacks.

"I am Kurosaki Raiga, former swordsman of the mist," he bellowed, trying to psych out his prey. Naruto rolled his eyes at the blatant lie of having ties to that elite force, dashed forward and entered a one sided exchange of sword blows.

While the Kiba were intricate weapons needing specialised training to use their unusual design clearly meant for snaring or vicious slashing tactics this man had no real idea how to use them. Naruto meticulously cut him with small shallow cuts, shifting easily through sword forms hoping to see something useful and milking the maximum amount of pain the jounin could dish out without inducing a serious injury. All it was right now was a deceptive attempt to lure any additional reinforcements out by looking weak. His chakra senses were scouring the immediate area and nothing was there. Then just after some time and nothing coming out to help the grey haired over confident shinobi the bored red headed Konoha ninja threw one of his kodachi infused with wind chakra at his enemy that went through the wooden bridge and embedded itself in the stone support column underneath with a crunching sound.

And just as Kurosaki dodged it and made to mock his enemy Naruto shimmered out of existence, his damage to the bridge was discovered to be another illusion and the cold steel of both blades was revealed to be stabbed into the lightning user's throat and out the other side just deep enough to cut the delicate flesh of his chin. Naruto was revealed as the holder of the weapons from directly behind the dying shinobi, decapitating the former Kiri shinobi by drawing each sword in the opposite direction from the other before finally slapping an explosive tag onto the Raiga's falling torso. To make sure Naruto and the bridge was clear from the blast radius the teen hurricane kicked the corpse's torso with considerable force aided by his body being propelled by wind chakra. There the body fell into the ocean minus his infamous swords where a powerful splash declared the end and cremation of the Kiri ninja.

That had been too easy and his enemy was laughable. Gato simply had to be just that brilliant at deception and blackmail as the midget had no idea how to hire competent ninja after people like the Konoha no Aka Tatsumaki. He had even allowed the short shrimp to find out very easily his true identity in the hopes of at least spooking the man and forcing the little man to deviate from his normal routine. All in an attempt to help Hayate cover up his tracks when he actually got round to the job of slaying the corrupted bastard. Ah but what could you say? It lessened his threat level and Naruto could relax a bit more.

"He was hardly worthy of breathing the same air as me," Naruto stated blandly. He barely registered sealing the Kiba swords into the seal laden paper he used for Zabuza's sword. "Do any of the Kiri no Shinobigatana Nananin Shu deserves the title as the best of their village?" The speech was to aid in the adulation and distraction of the bridge staff from Konoha's other mission and judging from the loud and infectious cheering that echoed through the bridge he was successful. It was a bonus the Uzushio native felt warm and proud of his victory. He had killed so many yet so few were given any sort of recognition for the peace they brought by the person dying.

Naruto examined the bingo book; rolled his eyes once more at the paltry payment for just Raiga's head and bit back the urge to smirk at the payment for the return of the priceless swords. After viewing the head, the cocky expression still there meaning the man had died before he knew what had happened to him and just to endear himself even more to the bloodthirsty crowd already celebrating stuffed the head with another bomb and threw it over the edge. They whooped at the wave in the sea made from the bang. And Naruto barely took any mind to it or the crimson water floating into the shadow of the underbelly of the bridge. It wasn't like he was going to run out anytime soon.

Naruto had long understood why the common people liked fireworks so much and Naruto hadn't been totally aiming to impress. That was something he made standard issue practice for all hunter ninja. But he was aware that if you gave them a bang they would worship you. He had learned the significance of that a long time ago.

"We are having a party at my place!" Tazuna declared proudly, "We have to celebrate this moment!"

Now would be the perfect time to start the real reason Hayate and Naruto came here. The ninja calculated his amendments to the plan and a day taken off the plan when the man would feel unjustly comfortable in his manor after sending the cannon fodder after him would only aid the plan. Naruto bit his thumb and ran it across an invisible seal designed to emit a powerful high pitched sound hidden under a false fingernail. A moment later the one called landed on his shoulder invisible once more.

"Tell Hayate we're having squid tonight." Another heartbeat later the mass on his shoulder was gone again.

"Come on ninja! Let's all get drunk and celebrate the death of that bastard Gato sent after us! The boss is supplying the booze!"

What a surprise that was. It seemed Tazuna was the only man with alcohol in the entire island. The rest of the nation seemed to make do with depression and hope for the bridge being completed. The food stores were bare, the bars were just there gathering dust and the last time he saw a boat it was partly submerged and covered in scorch marks.

Naruto was annoyed at the hypocrisy plaguing this world and half heartedly slapped his palms together. The resulting air current ascended into the air and dissipated the rogue lightning cloud. He would use that annoyance for tonight's festivities.

If anything the mission came first. His views on the world were irrelevant to completing the task at hand.

"Come drink with us!" one of the workers, young with brown hair enthusiastically declared being bold with the way he slapped the ninja in the back. Naruto had to resist his training not to grab and break his arm for doing the friendly gesture without warning him.

"Oh joy I have to take those foul tasting pills again," Naruto thought darkly, remembering the ton they had to consume at the fire temple to blend in, "Bring on the mission."

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He moved in the shadows as if he was part of them. His feet silently touched the branches of trees as he moved through the parched wooden plains surrounding the mountain fortress constructed by Gato. The tyrant's headquarters hugged the only high land on Nami no Kuni and on three sides the gradient made it impossible for even shinobi to climb unseen. Whispered intelligence from a pack of cat spies who had made camp at the base of the mountain which happened to be an extinct volcano informed him of several watch towers using powerful searchlights to illuminate the entire pass. Some of the watchmen were former shinobi crippled or ran out of town as failures by the smaller villages unwilling to feed them and trained to sense chakra.

And then there was the explosives dug into the naked mountain face. Naruto's minions weren't skilled explosive engineers but even they had been trained to look out for space time release mines that trapped you and imploded you into atoms in the same second leaving red smoke to tell anyone you used to exist. The red head was particularly fond of them himself. They were silent and indiscriminate killers but it wasn't like the ninja who had crafted them were going to come back to inspect them.

With that in mind Naruto had only one means of access and that was through the front door. The gully entrance was guarded by a series of drawbridges dug with artificial moats containing electricity tags set to go off if someone disturbed the surface. Again Gato showed his total lack of humanity by rigging them like the seals guarding his mountain walls meaning a lot of small animals and avian life were probably instantly fried for the minions' suppers. After that the cats had been driven out of their hiding place in a rice barrel destined for the kitchens and they had returned to their original positions to patrol the perimeter to make sure his target the executive officer never left the premises.

Hayate had the enviable job of attacking Gato on the open road. The executive officer had to be a paranoid bastard who preferred his fortress filled with hundreds of guards. Naruto was feeling the luck at having to capture his enemy for interrogation.

Naruto was relying on the good old art of stealth to aid him here. He stopped at the side of an empty country lane that was seeing a lot of traffic lately. The dirt road had been re-laid with fresh cement and in the distance, his final destination there was torchlight piercing the blackened void of intensive forests and the sound of horses.

The plan Naruto and Hayate discussed to get the red head past the first line of defence was crude but undeniably effective. He unsealed a small bottle with a powerful smell coming from a rag stuffed into the top from a newly made transferable seal on his elbow. The rag, a small explosive seal used for starting camp fires made his improvised chemical bomb all the more effective by its added properties to spread the forest fire he was about to begin.

Naruto set off the five second fuse and lobbed it into the dense wood directly parallel to him and activated a camouflage technique to become one with the wood.

The bomb exploded, the column of red flame rose up in a mushroom shape and before long the entire left side of the forest was ablaze. A few thrown kunai laden with incendiary paper bombs added fuel to the flames where the etched fuin engraved on the metal projectiles would explode to hide the evidence of foul play and multiply the number of fires.

Naruto waited patiently for the men on horseback to arrive and try to extinguish the red hot orange flames. They were a rag tag party, wearing workers clothing and swords at their waists. The horses were probably stolen and appeared starved showing that even animals weren't enough to make Gato care about anything but his profit margins.

Naruto snared them in a simple genjutsu allowing the grunt workers to think they had seen natives of the islands trying to run away from the scene. As expected their leader, indistinguishable from the other wretches issued some commands to his troops where all but one including the leader charged off after the imaginary targets and to where the cat clan were waiting to ambush them. The lone messenger left behind to update the fortress of the situation was snared into another sleep inducing illusion.

The red hurricane leapt down from his vantage point next to the startled horse. The poor thing was better off dead. Its ribs were poking through its flesh and what used to be a glossy brown coat was reduced to something no better than the rags the beast's rider wore. Naruto didn't want to hurt the poor animal with a genjutsu that was more likely to kill it from the shock and instead made a last minute change to his plan by releasing it. He examined the rider carefully, detailing every feature until he was sure that the blue eyed shinobi could replicate a competent facsimile.

Naruto grabbed the dazed rider, snapped his neck and flung him into the growing fire. With cold hearted ease the ninja walked away without looking back and with a puff of smoke from his transformation jutsu stole the man's form.

The disguised shinobi ran towards the main gate erratically like any would be ambushed civilian. A few subtle alterations to his transformation technique added some stray blood and the guards at the front gate ran up to him.

"Are you alright?" grunt A asked.

Naruto manipulated his guise to hide the hand seals he made to take control of his new comrades. They were instantly enthralled and extremely suggestive thanks to the takeover of their synapses. Under control the group of guards approached him, keeping the guards hanging back in the guard house from seeing the "wounded" rider from paper notes on their bodies that shimmered into the colour of their tunics. A few carefully placed words had the men carry their wounded "comrade" into the guardhouse.

The guardhouse was a simple wooden structure with a table, a bed and chair but little else. They lay Naruto to rest on the bed where the older ninja watched as the bedazzled guardians suddenly saw the untainted watchmen as enemy shinobi and attacked them.

Nobody heard the screams. The seals on his captured people's bodies together produced a powerful silencing field. Any noise was stopped in their tracks by a pulse of continuous chakra disrupting the airwaves to create a sort of vacuum at least for any vibrations travelling through the air.

Once they were done butchering their own allies Naruto drew his kodachi and mopped up the rest of the guards. They would feel no pain. A straight thrust into their hearts downed them in no time.

"That is stage one," Naruto said to himself in a monotone, his eyes darting around the small building. He unrolled a large sheet of paper hidden wrapped round the sheath to his swords and while observing for suitable sites to install his new additions to the building, rubbed his finger along the paper feeling for Braille symbols. Once he located the correct paper his chakra ignited a circuit cutting out perfect paper seals, four in one large strip plus one final note further along from the others and rolled the scroll up and returned it to its hiding place.

Naruto installed the quadruplets at every corner of the room and charged them. They were designed to sustain an illusion that had Naruto using a rudimentary genjutsu designed to hide the chaos the jounin created and snare the people who walked inside. The last one was put on the roof of the door and this was a sensor. If someone with sufficient chakras stepped across the threshold it would go boom with the power of an industrial mining charge loud enough to echo for miles. It was quite possible to deafen anyone within a two mile radius and certainly potent enough to alert Naruto in the short distance he was moving.

Once finished his booby trapping Naruto stole the face of a slaughtered guard and casually walked up to the first drawbridge.

"Now to begin stage two," Naruto sighed. This was moving at an infuriatingly slow pace. That genjutsu on the party of workers back at Tazuna's place was only rigged to remain active for an additional nine hours.

The structure was crafted into the gully stone walls itself. It shone in the torchlight from all the fire retardant paint painted on its black wood surface and the actual gate was barely big enough to admit a wagon. With no guard in sight he happily added another explosive note on the doorframe rigged to blow up just like the one on the door of the guard hut.

Inside intelligence was accurate. There was a gradual winding slope that curved into three blind spots. In these points hidden archer points were stationed and every guard post from here on out had ninja training of some kind. The sheer walls were designed to repulse precise amounts of chakra shinobi used for tree climbing or in this case rock climbing up slopes and every inch of the usually shadowed valley walls were bathed in light from the powerful spotlights.

Naruto could see the castle fortress at the very top. It was a gaudy mansion like structure shaped like a ziggurat disguised to look like part of the mountain with attack dogs from what the cats had heard and a barrier jutsu that shone almost opaque and impervious from standard forms of warfare. You needed an army or a bomb the size of a hidden village to destroy it from the outside. The points of power for the entire system were encompassed and isolated by sections of the barrier in four substations. These small artificial caves powered the barrier by fuin drawing power from what little the poor bastard civilians captured in the neighbouring villages had in their bodies and stuffed inside until the life was sucked right out of them.

The only weakness was yet another drawbridge, the very place his cats were exposed and scattered. There was no more shinobi inside the building at this time which helped but the cats had picked out a lot of feet coming from behind the solid steel door. Apart from that it was totally unknown outside of knowing the target was definitely inside the building.

The ship captain's sudden brutal murder with a harpoon through the eye had seen to that. Naruto never wanted to find out how a feline could throw something that heavy so accurately and without leaving a trace and without making it seem suspicious… Well too suspicious anyway. The entire ship crew apparently had a motive resulting in them all being locked down in the hold and the investigation was going to take days if Gato didn't just cut his losses and execute the whole sorry mob.

"And no weakness to penetrate," Naruto groaned. Well apart from the position of the place where it had been dug into the natural rock to provide a grand carnivorous cave like opening that hid everything that went on in there. By the position of the moon Hayate was soon to be working for the first time on this mission. His little scouting runs were barely daily exercise for a rehabbing ninja but the act had to be maintained. "I'm going to enjoy my week off after this."

Naruto trudged up the steep gradient calmly reaching and passing four checkpoints that only popped up during the night for extra security. His disguise passed muster with three more drawbridge gateways and Naruto was even given the honour of watching electrocuted rats in the watery moats being fished out with plastic hooks as food for the inmates of the prison nearby. There had been no mention of any facilities like that and assumed the chambers used to power the barrier were those places.

Naruto did all this in his usual professional cold as steel attitude he applied to all his duties. On a mission his second personality stirred. It was a mind forged as a necessity from the third shinobi war that slumbered when not in use. The mindset of a killer had driven the tangible insanity, the unrelenting guilt and deep grief, the horrible graphic recollections of war and pain of brothers and sisters killed back with frenzy. The mind suppressed the villages ravaged simply by being built in the middle of a battle zone and Uzushio vanished from his thoughts to be replaced by an all consuming one minded desire to finish his job as efficiently as possible.

The hunter Naruto as rational Naruto liked to call him was the product of a childhood haunted by the early loss of both friend and family. He staved off the insanity and balanced the see saw of mental stability in his mind.

Naruto took an hour to get passed all the checkpoints. His one handed seals inducing genjutsu were his pass codes when work papers were demanded and thankfully his mastery of illusions had no problem snaring these "trained" shinobi like they were mere puppets. He was actually ahead of schedule mentally disappointed about his earlier complaints about the time scale once he arrived at the final door at the very top.

What came to greet him there was a big surprise.

His last guards to bypass were smarter than the rest, earned a listing in the bingo books and not mentioned in the intelligence reports supplied by his feline associates. They were actual fully trained shinobi wearing forest camouflage shirts with light brown coloured jackets on top. They wore Uchiha style large collared black cloaks and had scratched forehead protectors depicting their former allegiance to Kirigakure no Sato that possessed horns or fangs on the top. But what identified them weren't their face masks or their brown spiky hair. On their hands, right and left respectively were large cylindrical metal claws with nine inch talons on each finger.

"Paperwork," one of the infamous demon brothers Meizu or Gōzu asked.

His genjutsu was not guaranteed to get him past these people them both being actual real shinobi and a change of plans were in order. Naruto silently moved into action, reaching into his disguise's imaginary pockets and pulled out several kunai. It was rare for him to use naked kunai and threw them in an ascending pattern up to the nearest window.

"Fuck alert the guards!" one of the brothers shouted. They had no idea Naruto had pulled a fast one and made those simple kunai planned to be used to climb on had fuin designed to dull any sound his feet made. What could he say? The ninja had a lot of time on his hands these past few days. The effect spread for around a hundred feet creating another bubble where sound waves couldn't travel into.

The other demon brother bullishly charged forward weapon first as Naruto ditched his disguise and slashed wildly with his clawed hand. The red head read the telegraphed assault with ease, throwing up an illusion that replicated the bunshin technique creating doppelgangers of him. The attacking man's brother soon joined him unaware his continuous frantic calls for aid were unanswered going after copies that wouldn't fade when touched. Meanwhile Naruto invisible ran past them in one massive burst of raw speed by the two men getting behind them while they engaged the fakes. Naruto inwardly chuckled at the repeat of his earlier strategy against Kiri ninja and chucked four kunai bearing barrier tags. The invisible barrier entrapped them before they were even aware they had been captured.

"I'm over here gentlemen," Naruto deadpanned egging them on with a provoking gesture It was just more of the same cheap chuunin trash. It was getting embarrassing for Gato, the man who hired the worst instead of the best. Couldn't he buy any useful help at all? Were all the good missing ninjas on holiday or something? Couldn't he squeeze some cash from his ill gotten gains to purchase some worthy protection?

The men stopped and charged headfirst into the barrier and were repelled. They had been moving so fast the duo who was working in synch through this had struck the barrier so hard they bounced into the field behind them. They were like pin balls until their momentum slowed down enough for them to lay bedraggled somewhere in the middle dazed and confused.

Naruto spared them just a glance in morbid humour before dislodging one of the kunai and atomising them just like he had done to that Zabuza person. Naruto watched as the chain reaction destroyed the evidence of there ever being any demon brothers and after picking up two of the kunai recharged the seals etched on their metal edges on the other two. Naruto rigged a simple wall barrier invisible to the naked eye to help slow down any help that may come if he were discovered in this next unknown part of the mission.

Naruto then climbed on the kunai climbing frame and arrived at the open window of the next floor. The coldness from the seals detecting motion on the walls also sapped chakra like a starved lion devouring an antelope. He had to wait for the right moment and slipped into a spiralling corridor with nothing but steps.

The corridor was bare and exposed to the elements with only two directions. There was down below with the echoes of drunken men and screaming women or upwards where Naruto could not sense a thing at all. At this point there was absolutely no chakra his sensor skills could pick up. The intelligence was eerily correct. Naruto had had his doubts that Gato would allow his main base to be left unattended by any sort of shinobi backup… What was he missing here?

Anyway Naruto silently climbed the stairs to the very top. Every aperture he came across was used for aesthetic purposes this high up for views of the ocean and moon when it was night. The opulence expected of a sprawling mountain estate was there if you knew what to look for. The occasional sweet smelling scent of scented candles grew more powerful, soft Koto music was drifting lazily downwards guided by the echo naturally created by these hollowed out caves.

The red head reached the very top of the staircase to an open courtyard with an exposed roof. The ninja cautiously ventured inside the inner workings of the building.

"After all the money spent on security," Naruto muttered. The perimeter security system, the barrier jutsu, the complicated and rather over the top traps had mislead him into thinking Gato had both money and taste. But seeing the interior of his den the red headed shinobi couldn't conceive anyone having such horrific taste in interior and be rich enough not to have an excuse. "Did he run out and have to skimp on the luxuries?"

The gaudy factor ticked all the right cliché boxes. The upper tier seemed to be offices or some kind of apartment that ranked of rich people with no taste. There were bear skin rugs, antique paintings, gold absolutely everywhere and a roaring fire. The golden chandeliers alone could have probably paid for a small army to come here and destroy Gato and his hold over this increasingly miserable monument to people who had too much money to know what to do with.

Naruto walked across the empty space, examining the items in the room and watching for danger. His ears while not as great as Inuzuka or his cat clan were sharp enough with practice. His danger senses compensated for his redundant chakra senses as there was nothing at all emitting chakra in the inner chamber of the enemy's sanctum.

Hell Naruto was half tempted to strip the place down. There was a standing order at the moment due to the Kyubbi attack badly draining the village coffers to rebuild that if you could steal from an enemy do it. It was just a shame that the barrier shielding this mansion prevented summoning techniques…

His eyes sensing chakras noticed a spike just under a nearby alcove. Naruto passed a dodgy painting of a eunuch cavorting with a priestess and hugged the wall when voices could be heard.

"Are you sure about this report?"

"Yes my lord," a brownnoser declared with a hiccup, "Gato-sama has definitely been killed."

"Well just damn," Naruto thought, "He jumped the gun a little didn't he?"But what would spook a professional assassin to speed up his schedule? Naruto had once tried to spook Hayate while the man was wearing ear muffs and the man didn't even blink when Naruto snuck up from behind. It made Naruto worry nonetheless with possibilities that proved unsettling.

Naruto decided to speed up his own plans and listened closely to the oncoming footsteps and tried to pick out the direction of the voices. With Gato dead there could only be one person called lord and that was to be his target.

"Do you know by whom yet?"

"That is just it sir," the man said sounding afraid, "There are claims both Kirigakure and Konohagakure were involved and…"

Naruto slowed his heartbeat; his breathing slowed and with a powerful surge of chakra rolled around the corner, drawing his kodachi just in time to see the humungous bodyguard of Tetsu no Kuni samurai silently marching in line around the two people.

"I should've used my genjutsu first," Naruto thought, kicking himself for getting complacent and cocky. Of course there had to be some muscle this high up. But what were the chances of anyone using samurai as bodyguards? The same people who wore chakra absorbing armour to render their signatures all but impossible to detect?

"Who are you!" an older gent with a greying beard and wearing the finest clothes money could buy. He also happened to be his target. The milksop beside him was a young wimp with glasses and a shiver that could get him work as a pneumatic drill if he wanted to. "Samurai attack him!"

The men obeyed, drawing both of their distinctive swords and sweeping towards him in formation. They wore armour with no regalia proving they were renegades but that didn't matter to Naruto at this point in time.

Naruto weaved a few hand seals, inhaled and then exhaled a powerful cyclone of wind at his enemy. The chakra using soldiers held their ground, sticking to the floor and using their heavy armour to support their grounding on the rich carpeted floors. One fool, a young one as it tended to be lost his grip and helplessly bounced off a smarter comrade when the young man tried to stick to a rug. The youngster nearly hit his target until a bear like male, taller than the rest and built like a mighty oak tree grabbed him like the younger one was a flea and threw him out of a nearby window with a snort that made his handlebar moustache even that bit more ridiculous.

If Naruto was a normal man he would have been intimidated by the casual show of power but the red head knew how to deal with samurai. It came with the turf of being a bomber and a saboteur that he had dealt with samurai of all shapes and sizes. Not from Tetsu no Kuni specifically where they took the piss out of embodying shinobi training with samurai techniques but they still were essentially the same.

Naruto whacked them a genjutsu making them think they were still under the influence of the powerful gusty wind, ran up the wall drawing his kodachi and landed in the centre of their lines next to his target. Both blades gleamed silvery in the candlelight and heads rolled. As those bodies came to fall, wind chakra extended on the tips of the blades to increase their width and a powerful hurricane of sharpened wind blades chewed up and swallowed then spat out another number of the tightly packed guards.

But there were two people with some brains or luck take your pick. The nerd had hit the deck prior to the genjutsu activating and was busy soiling himself and the tough old samurai had dispelled the genjutsu and was awakening some of the few that had escaped the free body modification. Naruto's prey had been spared on principle and only the red head's powerful command of the wind had prevented the man from mastering his sliced sashimi impression. Instead the older samurai had snatched the frightened male and pulled him into a wall of armoured bodies.

"You can't get to him now Konoha shinobi," the old soldier boldly stated, getting into stance with both swords curved over the other to make a scissor shape. To a samurai this man would be formidable but to a sneaky red head the outcome was already certain. There were few shinobi who epitomised stealth. While most relied on flashy ninjutsu that anyone with enough basic chakras control and chakra reserves could manage Naruto had managed to keep a long career of blowing shit up hidden by his sheer talent in the field of genjutsu.

Naruto dropped his swords with a clang. If the man was expecting the usual flashy fire breathing hooligan with no finesse boy was the old guy in for a treat.

He was no Yuuhi Kurenai, his best friend who preferred the flashy and overdramatic genjutsu Konoha had to offer generating multiple fixtures of illusions at once to end with a simple kunai strike nor was he clinical Inuzuka Rin who used it to get the job done while her delicate chakra scalpels slashed the enemy's trachea. Naruto was in a league of his own who had mastered flair and subtlety plus whatever the sacred scroll of sealing could throw at him.

To this end Naruto rarely used hand seals openly but this was the beauty of this genjutsu. By employing the tiger seal first the samurai expected the extremely common fire jutsu native to Konoha and predicatively moved to protect their client.

Instead they were swallowed by a pit of utter darkness. They would see, hear, taste, feel and hear nothing in this unforgiving void of nothingness created by the Nidaime Hokage, something dubbed a kinjutsu for the sheer impossibility some felt in shattering it before your opponent killed you and one of the few genjutsu in the world with ten layers woven in from the start. While most genjutsu were applied in layers there were fewer as you went up the scale of difficulty that automatically resulted in multiple weaves of chakra done all at once.

"What are you doing this for?" the milksop spoke. Naruto snarled at forgetting that his new genjutsu needed a general direction to use and generally dispelled any other genjutsu currently active from the abnormal power transferred compared to other genjutsu arts that relied on precise chakra control. It was also rare for an illusion that it ate at your chakras a lot more than most others.

"I'm busy," Naruto dismissed, picking up a sword. "Shut up." He threw the blade, throwing it into the air until it caught the man by the throat and pinned him against the wall. His frightened face was an ironic death mask but Naruto barely gave it a second look and went back to the writhing men on the floor.

The once proud moustached gentleman had his eyes bulging as the darkness refused to be dispelled. Naruto was a bit more generous to this adversary sparing him a glance methodically slashing his throat and then finished off the other survivors the very same way.

The red head watched for other people coming and relaxed when nothing reached his ears. He took the time to examine the target, watching the yellow stain on his fancy trousers with a rare showing of amusement. Naruto took out a seal tag and slapped it across his mouth. An additional tag was slapped on each of his joints and one more over the old man's heart. The ninja touched the old man's forehead and dispelled the genjutsu.

"Make one noise and I blow you up to ashes," Naruto warned cheerily. The executive officer froze halfway through trying to pull the tag off his mouth and nodded dumbly. Then he lost the power in his legs after seeing all the bodies around him. Naruto snorted at the coward, sheathed his swords, making a point to squelch the blade out of the leader's assistant's throat to further the hopelessness of his situation. "Now is there another way out of this place?"

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Naruto and his new prisoner slipped out of the small cave exit with ease. The convenient hollowed out secret tunnel through the top of the fortress to the bottom near to an empty wood made his trip outside all that much easier. His prize had been cooperative enough, not resisting but those eyes were scheming potential ways out of this. Maybe Naruto would be bribed? It wouldn't be the first time they attempted it and he snorted at the old chestnut of businessmen who knew they were boned. His loyalty would cost a country's treasury to pay off.

Naruto examined the cave entrance, intrigued by the disrupted genjutsu hiding the mouth and let his eyes see the explosive notes laden in the tunnel glimmer malevolently with red Kyubbi chakra. It was one of his more impulsive ideas while watching Konohamaru learn how to use the chakra of the fox one day under the watch of the entire fuin squad, oba-san and Jiraiya. He on a whim collected the remnants of red chakra slowly decaying the grass around the kid and integrated them into his explosive notes. Sometimes it paid to sow confusion among the ranks of countries when Konoha required the nation being damaged to be confused.

And what worked better than leaving traces of a bijuu? There was no confirmation of this of course but both the Iwa Jinchuuriki and one of the Kiri ones had defected and gone on the run. Naruto could only imagine what this would do to relations between Kiri and Nami if Naruto leaked out that little fact with Tazuna with all those riches they could have gained to help resuscitate their economy.

Tsunade-sama was going to owe him big for using these tags. They were bloody hard to make, the chakra needed was in short supply since Kono was a little hesitant to train in his tenant's power and the siphoning seals allowing absorption seals to transfer energy from one focus to another were next to impossible without getting the blood from both parties. That meant both scared of blood until he was ten Konohamaru and Naruto the less than patient uncle had some interesting conversations/negotiations when the older ninja wanted some life blood.

Naruto activated the detonators with a pulse of his own chakra and escaped knowing the chakra wires linking each charge would run up the height of the escape tunnel and blow up everything from the inside. The executive officer was dragged boneless through the forest just before the explosion rumbled through the land.

He would just see before disappearing into the shadow of the night the fall of a mighty mountain forever altered by the actions of one man.

The trip to Tazuna's house took very little time at all through the main streets. A simple cloaking genjutsu stopped anyone who had come out to investigate the source of the massive bang from seeing him on their rooftops. The clamour of voices suddenly murmuring then gasping before speculating with their neighbours on what the smoke cloud spewing ash into the air was all about hid his less than stealthy movements on their rooftops until Naruto had arrived at the house in question.

The occupants of the house were still asleep inside in the lonely house and it was still dark, the stars providing the only source of illumination. Naruto dropped the body of his prey with a complaining grunt and snapped his fingers. Kuroneko appeared from out of nowhere spooking the old man with its spiked tail dangling around his jugular though the jounin had heard the man scrambling to his feet as if to try and escape.

"Oyabun," the cat greeted respectfully, "We bring bad news."

Naruto didn't show it but the man was perturbed. Hadn't Hayate killed Gato? That had been what those men had been speaking about in the mansion. Hayate or someone from Kirigakure no Sato…

"What happened?" Naruto snapped. The conclusions he was coming to was not boding well. That one factor he had written off was coming back to bite them on the ass. Why hadn't he demanded they tell him what Terumi Mei was doing in the area? His stupid anger had clouded his reasoning. Damn this entire mission Naruto had had his head floating in the clouds and his mind stuck in the past.

"Team Delta observed Hayate-san intercepting the target and his convoy of guardians but was beaten back by a woman with red hair. We tried to aid him but another kunoichi with senbon drove the observation team back and when I personally managed to slip past I found your associate oyabun or well what was left of him before the lava enveloped him sir." The cat wailed and a fast moving object shimmered, dropped a half melted sword he knew very well and then vanished again. "All we could retrieve was the sword but the target had been eliminated along with his personnel."

Naruto tentatively picked up the melted weapon, his gloved hands felt warm as the heated metal still carried the heat from that witch's foul power. Naruto's eyes welled with tears as the echoes of old memories of what this sword represented to his friend but they were bitten back by the warrior within him. The shaking desisted, yanking, shaking his body and his anger swallowed by cold rationality. He threw away his personal feelings, stalked up to the executive officer radiating killer intent and removed the covering over his mouth.

"Kuroneko collect all the data every team has gathered and retrieve anything you can of the situation. Try and track down the enemy who eliminated Hayate-san the best you can. I have to prepare our new friend for Ibiki-san."

"Of course oyabun," Kuroneko agreed with a short bow with his eyes closed. The cat was there one moment then in another the darkness had swallowed him whole.

"Now," Naruto declared, his red hair matching his ferocity, "Let's get you ready for Ibiki-san to interrogate and have you confessing your guts for us." His face mask was pulled down and his pearly whites were bared like a wild beast.

"You can't do this!" the man complained pitifully, "The fire lord will have your…" Naruto had heard enough and activated the seal paper on the man's heart. The spasm induced had the old guy screaming into the empty night. It was just a shame the nearest coherent person was loudly distracted by the destroyed gully fortress.

"My mistake," Naruto said off hand, walking past the man and slapping four paper tags on the ground to make a large rectangle, "Forgot the silencing barrier." The powerful shield shot up and turned the wide open field into an interrogation room. "Now where was I?" Naruto said coldly. "Ah yes I was softening you up wasn't I?"

At least there was something to vent his anger on.

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A/N There is chapter four. Um review please as I am not really feeling the love here people and constructive reviews please and flames… Try not to but it's a free country well mine is anyway lol

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