By late afternoon, they came to the end of the trail—a cave blocked by a boulder with a large seal on it. Naruto used her Byakugan to confirm that Gaara was inside the cave.

"Gaara-san is inside," she said, describing what she saw. "I can also see Sasori and Deidara. There are seven other figures inside that have chakra signatures, but they seem kind of tenuous, like they aren't really there."

"Like the possession technique Itachi and Kisame used?" Kakashi asked.

"No, that looked like the real them, only with less chakra," Naruto said. "This looks like it may be projections? Out of the projections, I only recognize Itachi and Kisame. There's also this ugly statue that Gaara-san's chained to that's sucking out the Ichibi's chakra from him."

"What can you tell us about this seal?" Kakashi asked.

"It's a barrier seal," she said. "I can see that it's also linked to four other seals that protect it which are all roughly 20 meters away."

"So we deactivate the other seals and this one deactivates?" Kakashi asked.

"Yes," Naruto said, "but the other four seals also trigger something else on deactivation. Probably traps."

"Do you know what kind of traps?" Kakashi asked.

She shook her head. "No, however, I think I can bypass all of that by sucking the chakra out of this seal."

"That won't trigger the traps?" Kakashi asked.

She shrugged. "It might, but the only thing I can get out of the seals is that they latch onto the closest person, and we're all far out of their range here."

"Do it," Kakashi said.

Naruto activated her Rinne-Sharingan, put her hand over the seal, and activated her Preta Path. She had some natural chakra absorption ability, but using her third eye and the Preta Path was easier.

Kakashi led the way into the cave.

"We can't let them near the statue!" an unfamiliar voice called. The man had orange hair and purplish eyes with concentric circles sort of like her third eye, but with out the tomoe. He was wearing a defaced Rain Badge. "Cut the connection! Deal with them and we can finish later!"

As they entered the cavern, she examined the five that she did not know. Besides the man with what must be the Rinnegan, there was a woman with an origami flower in blue hair, a man holding a three-bladed scythe wearing a defaced Hot Springs Badge, a man whose face was covered with a gray cowl and a black face mask wearing a defaced Waterfall Badge, and a man wearing a full, orange mask that spiraled around a single eyehole.

The man in the orange mask is the man who made me attack Konoha the day of your birth, Stepmother, the Kyuubi growled, its voice quivering in rage.

Naruto halted in shock. The man in the mask waved at her cheerfully before the statue and seven of the nine disappeared, leaving only Sasori, Deidara, and Gaara—now free from the chains, but unconscious.

Deidara threw a wad of clay at the ground that expanded into a large bird. He scooped up the unconscious Gaara and jumped onto the bird, rising into the air.

"Heavenly Attraction," Naruto called, using the Deva Path to latch onto Gaara. Deidara tried to keep a hold of him, but Naruto pushed chakra into her hair and sent it toward the Mad Bomber of Iwa.

Deidara swore and let go. Naruto caught him with several locks of her hair and continued to send other locks after the Mad Bomber.

"Divide and conquer, Master Sasori," Deidara called as he maneuvered his clay bird out of the cavern.

"I've got him," Sasuke called, chasing after him.

"I'll deal with my errant grandson," Chiyo said.

"Help her, Hinata-chan," Kakashi said, "Naruto-chan, you make sure Kazekage-dono is alright." He ran after Sasuke.

Naruto examined Gaara. Examining him with her Byakugan, she could see that the Ichibi's chakra was still leaking out of him, albeit slowly. Something still tied him to the statue or whatever they were using to extract the Ichibi. There seemed to still be a lot of the Bijuu's chakra inside him, certainly more than he had of his own chakra, but much less than one ninth of the Kyuubi's chakra.

Does the Ichibi's tail have the same amount of chakra as one of yours? she asked the Kyuubi.

No, it doesn't, the Bijuu replied. I have nearly half of the Juubi's original chakra and the Hachibi has nearly half of the remaining, and so on. Of course, since your father stole half my chakra, I currently only have as much as the Hachibi, it growled.

That was a relief to Naruto. They had gotten less of the Ichibi's chakra than she had feared at first. She interrupted the chakra drain, and pulled on the trail of chakra. Since she had a high affinity to Bijuu chakra, she did not even need to use her Preta Path. She felt a pull on the chakra, which she resisted and it released as the drain stopped. Gaara went into seizures as the pulling on his chakra system stopped and his chakra snapped back. His own chakra rushed in to fill the void left by the Ichibi's. He was not in danger of chakra exhaustion, but chakra shock was a real danger. Chakra shock happened when a person lost a lot of chakra all at once. For the most part, lower-ranked shinobi did not get chakra shock because they would go into chakra exhaustion first. Strictly speaking, Gaara had not lost a lot of his own chakra, but his body thought it had. The removal process itself did not trigger it, because while he was connected to the statue, his body had thought it was still there.

She synched her chakra to his and re-filled his chakra reservoir until it reached equilibrium. This stopped the chakra shock he was experiencing from being potentially fatal, but he would still be out of commission for hours, if not a day or so. Luckily, she had been present to stop the chakra shock from being worse than it was.

Once the Kazekage was out of danger, she caught up on the other fights. Hinata and Chiyo were doing better than Sasuke and Kakashi. Hinata had managed to destroy a particularly effective puppet that could control iron particles by using the Tenseigan's Chakra Mode. She was currently holding holding off dozens of Sasori's puppets with her Eight Trigrams 64 Palms Shield. Chiyo was backing her up with two realistically-human puppets.

Sasuke was trying to pin Deidara down with the Heavenly Attraction while harrying him with his Animal Path hawk summon, but the Mad Bomber had too much room to maneuver and too many bomb animals to successfully catch him. Sasuke was destroying his clay bomb animals with the Divine Will Technique, but was running into issues with the cool-down. Kakashi was destroying those that got too close with a lightning technique, but had had to resort to using his Mangekyo technique twice to protect themselves. The technique seemed to absorb the bombs, causing them to fade away.

Naruto wanted to help Sasuke and Kakashi since they needed it, but she did not dare leave Gaara unprotected. She decided it was best to help take down Sasori quickly. She formed four Shadow Clones and sent them to help Hinata. Since the clones had their Rinne-Sharingan active, she shared their senses and controlled them real time. She and Sasuke had discovered that the number of Shadow Clones they could control this way without disorientation corresponded to one less than the number of Rinne-Sharingan paths they had mastered and that each clone and their original bodies could only use one path at a time with a several second cool-down before they could switch the paths between the clones. She kept the Deva Path for herself in case she needed the gravity manipulation to defend Gaara.

She did not intend to use the abilities of the paths themselves. She had something special she had not shown anyone yet that she wanted to use. She had first conceived of the idea after she had first learned her father's second-most famous technique and once she had the chakra control to try it, she had practiced it in secret. Her four clone bodies spread out on either side of Hinata, who was beginning to look tired. She pushed chakra into each clone's hair and then manifested a Rasengan on the end of six locks of each clones hair. She had originally wanted to use all ten locks, but six was actually more effective unless she had to defend from the sky as well. She swung the Rasengan locks through Sasori's puppets, splintering them. The four Narutos plus Hinata made short work of the remaining puppets.

A blow from a swinging Rasengan shattered Sasori's tail and Hinata landed a chakra-enhanced palm strike to his chest that smashed him against the wall. A smaller figure leaped out of the ruins of his body. The new figure looked like a teenage boy.

"He hasn't aged a day!" murmured Chiyo. "What have you done to yourself, Sasori-chan?"

"My art is eternal," Sasori proclaimed. "It only seemed right to make myself my greatest masterpiece."

"He made himself into a puppet!" Naruto exclaimed through her Human Path Shadow Clone.

"Let me deal with him," Chiyo said. "He's my responsibility."

"Very well," Hinata said. "We'll back you up, Chiyo-san."

The old woman advanced her puppets against the man-turned-puppet. Sasori had blades and other tricks built into his puppet body, but he found it hard to face off against two puppets wielded by someone of his grandmother's skill. A couple of times it looked like he might have been able to flank one of the puppets, but Hinata prevented it.

Outside, Kakashi used his Mangekyo for the third time. Naruto could tell that he was flagging.

"I need to back up the others," she spoke through her Animal Path Shadow Clone. "I'll leave one of my special clones—just in case."

She left her Human Path with Hinata and the Animal, Preta, and Asura Paths left the cave. By the time her clones reached her other teammates, Kakashi had used his Mangekyo absorption technique to deal with some bomb animals that were swooping in on them. The effort caused him to slump to the ground unconscious. Sasuke was scowling as he alternated between shooting fireballs at the bomber and crushing the bombs with Divine Will.

Animal Path summoned her owl and giant crow to join Sasuke's hawk in harrying Deidara while Preta Path rushed to examine her sensei. Asura Path fired missiles at the bomber. She determined that Kakashi was suffering from Chakra Exhaustion and that his transplanted eye was still demanding more chakra. She synced her chakra to his and transferred chakra into him. She frowned as she examined the stressed Sharingan eye. If it were natural, she could fix it, but since it was a transplant any enhanced healing of the eye might cause his body to reject it. Instead, she turned off the optic nerve to that led to that eye. Any journeyman medic could turn it back on if she were not available.

Another wave of flying bombs came at them as Deidara yelled, "Art is a blast!" Naruto had her three clones intercept the bombs with her Rasengan hair—using all ten locks each.

"Really, Naruto-chan!?" Sasuke grumbled. "Thirty Rasengan at once? From your hair?"

"I thought you'd be happy for the help, Emo-chan," she said with a smirk.

"It's not that I'm not grateful, Overkill-chan," he responded. "It's that whenever I think I'm catching up to you, you pull some new, ridiculously overpowered technique that takes at least twice as much chakra as I use in a week."

She laughed. "Don't feel bad, Emo-chan. You can still be a great shinobi, even if you can't be as awesome as me."

He rolled his eyes and grunted.

Inside the cavern, Hinata maneuvered behind Sasori and struck his puppet body, disrupting the flow of chakra from his core, which caused him to halt. Chiyo's puppets pinned him with blades that emerged from their hands. One of the strikes damaged the cylinder that was placed where his heart would be if he were still human. Naruto could see chakra leaking from the cylinder.

Chiyo looked sadly at her grandson.

"Don't feel sorry for me, Obaasan," he said. "That puppet boy, the Kazekage's brother, did he live?"

"Yes, he did," Naruto's Human Path said. "I cured him."

"Good," Sasori said. "He was using some of my old puppets. That means that my art will endure. My only goal has been to advance my art."

"What does Akatsuki want with the Bijuu?" Naruto asked.

"Leader-sama keeps the ultimate goal a secret," Sasori said.

"Who is this leader?" Naruto asked.

"He calls himself Pain," the puppet man responded.

"What an odd name," Hinata said.

"You were close to your Hokage, weren't you, Kyuubi-girl?" Sasori asked.

"I was," Naruto answered. "What of it?"

"I have a meeting scheduled with my main spy in his killer's camp in eleven days at noon on the Tenchi Bridge."

"Why would you tell us this?" Naruto demanded.

"As a reward for defeating me and. . ." he said, his voice diminishing.

"And?" Naruto prompted.

"I hate Orochimaru more than you. . ." he said. His voice trailed off into nothing as he expired.

Chiyo's puppets released him and let him slump to the ground. She stood over him with her head bowed.

Outside the cavern, Naruto said, "Try the Heavenly Attraction again. I'll stop his bomb birds from interfering."

Sasuke grunted and stretched forth his hand and pulled with his Deva Path.

Naruto sent forth her hair from all three clones, forming a bomb-free corridor around Sasuke's technique—which snared the bomber's clay bird. She pumped chakra into her hair to make it strong enough to endure the bombs. She grunted as shockwaves traveled down the length of her hair, but she did not let up.

As the giant bird jerked toward them, she formed two Rasengan at the tips of two of the locks of her Animal Path and shoved them into the bird. The clay bird tore apart, causing Deidara to fall. A lock of her Preta Path's hair grabbed him and yanked him toward them.

Deidara spat out a wad of clay into his other hand and slammed it onto his arm just above where her hair had latched onto him. "You'll never stop my art!" he yelled as the clay exploded, severing his arm. As he fell, he spat out more clay which swelled into another giant bird that swooped underneath him and carried him away.

Sasuke looked at her and gestured with his head toward where Deidara was fleeing on his bird.

She shook her head. "Both Kakashi-sensei and Gaara-san are unconscious," she said. "I should stay with them and I don't think we should split up. He could lead us into a trap."

He grunted in acknowledgement.

"Pick up Kakashi-sensei and bring him inside until we're ready to go," she commanded.

Sasuke raised an eyebrow.

"I'd do it myself," Naruto said, "but I'm too short to carry him easily."

Sasuke snorted as he picked up their sensei.

Naruto watched as Chiyo ended her silent vigil over her grandson's body. She pulled out a storage scroll and sealed any of the salvageable puppets into it, including the one Sasori had used as his own body.

Naruto had sent her Human Path Shadow Clone outside, in case any other Akatsuki showed up. Hinata had joined her actual body at Gaara's location while they waited for Chiyo to finish.

When Chiyo finished and approached them, she reached down to lay her hand on Gaara's chest.

Naruto grabbed her hand to stop her. "What are you planning to do to my patient?" she asked.

"Your patient?" Chiyo said with a snort. "Not yet, he isn't, girl."

"What do you mean?" Naruto asked with a frown. She would have thought that the old woman would prefer to have the best medical care available for her Kazekage.

Chiyo frowned. "I have a technique that can bring him back."

"Back from where?" Naruto asked, confused.

"The dead, you foolish girl!" Chiyo growled.

"He's not dead," Naruto said patiently. One thing that Tsunade had insisted on was that Naruto learn patience in dealing with her patients and their families, which Naruto thought was ironic considering Tsunade's well-known temper. "We got here quickly enough. He's unconscious because he suffered chakra shock, but it was a relatively mild case. He should wake up by tomorrow morning, if not sooner."

Chiyo looked startled and said, "I knew that!"

"You know a technique that brings back the dead?" Naruto asked interestedly.

The older woman huffed. "I'm positive that it will work. I've never tested it due to its side effect."

Naruto had a pretty good guess as to what the side effect was. "Can't cheat death, huh?"

Chiyo nodded.

"You would do that for Gaara-san?" Naruto asked.

Chiyo looked down at the Kazekage's unconscious form. "He's a good Kage—much better than his father. He's worth more to Suna than I am." She hesitated. "I also regret that I went along with the Yondaime's plan to turn him into a weapon."

Naruto took a moment to realize that she was talking about the Gaara's father, the Yondaime Kazekage, rather than her own father, the Yondaime Hokage.

"It still surprises me how drastically he's changed in the last few years," she continued. "That was you, wasn't it?"

"I like to think I played a part," Naruto said. "I know something of how hard his life was growing up. I just couldn't let him think he was a monster. Then he did the rest himself with help from his sister and brother."

Naruto's clones that were still outside noticed four shinobi approaching. "We have company coming," she said.

Sasuke was had almost made it to the cave mouth with Kakashi when Naruto's Shadow Clones saw the four shinobi approaching. "Four incoming," she said through her Animal Path.

"Akatsuki?" Sasuke asked as he set down their sensei.

"Should be able to tell in a moment," she responded. "They're moving incredibly fast."

After a moment she smiled. "They're friendly."

Not much later she called out, "You're late, Gai-sensei! We've already rescued the Kazekage."

"No!" exclaimed Lee. He and his teammates accompanied their old sensei. "How will we make our Youth explode now?"

"Lee-kun!" Gai admonished. "There are always opportunities to fan your Flames of Youth! Do not be discouraged or your Springtime of Youth will end!"

"Gai-sensei!" the boy exclaimed. "My Springtime of Youth will never end!"

"Lee-kun!" Gai exclaimed. "Now you get it!"

"Gai-sensei!"

"Lee-kun!"

With practiced ease, Naruto ignored the Green Beasts and turned to Neji and Tenten.

Hinata's cousin asked, "Did you have many problems?"

"Not too many," Naruto replied. "Gaara-san has chakra shock, but will recover completely. Kakashi-sensei overused his Sharingan, again. Sasori was killed and Deidara fled, having blown off his arm to escape us."

"Is it a sign of being around Gai-sensei too much that I too, wish we had not missed the fight with two S-class missing nin?" Neji asked with a sigh.