"Naruto vs. Super Sentai"

Chapter 7: "The Killer behind His Eyes"

Disclaimer: Naruto belongs to Masashi Kishimoto and VIZ Media. Super Sentai belongs to Toei and TV Asahi. I make no money from the use of either property or their associated characters in this story. This is all about my own personal entertainment, and hopefully that of my readers.

Author's note: Sorry for being away for five months again; this seems to be habit-forming with me. With that out of the way, this chapter is going to advance the storyline here. With Hinata down and Naruto out for Neji's blood, not to mention the lingering threat of Dezumozorya and whatever other foes from the Sentai worlds were brought into the Naruverse, who knows what could happen? What other warriors will emerge, for good or for evil? For the answers to those questions and others, let's go on!


"Where am I?" Lee wondered. The last thing he remembered, he'd been fighting Gaara of the Desert. Everything he had, he'd poured into taking down Gaara . . . and none of it had been quite enough to finish him.

"You're with me," a calm yet giddy-sounding voice replied, prompting Lee to turn and see a figure garbed in skintight green armor with silver sleeves, a gold shield around his torso, and a green helmet with a shuriken-shaped visor. "Hey."

"Who are you?" Lee asked.

"My name was Asuka Kagura," the armored man replied. "Now, you can call me Shurikenger. No, wait, you can't . . . not anymore. My time is over."

"Do you mean to say that you are dying?" Lee inquired.

"Think of it more as rebirth," Shurikenger amended. He extended a green-and-gold ball with an embedded green medal with a shuriken engraved on it to Lee. "You will carry on for me. You will be the new Shurikenger."

"But how . . . ?" Lee asked, even as he took the ball.

"Take the Shuriken Ball, thrust it out, and call out 'Tenku Shinobi Change,'" Shurikenger instructed. "The transformation will assert itself and empower you in ways you never imagined."

Lee experimentally pushed out the Shuriken Ball in his hands. "Tenku Shinobi Change!" Immediately, the medal inside the ball whirred, generating a green aura around Lee that completely consumed him before reforming him as an armored warrior identical to Shurikenger. Lee flexed his fingers inside his gloves. "Wow . . . is this . . . ?"

"Yes," the original Shurikenger, now changed back to a handsome dark-haired young man, confirmed. "This is the power of Shurikenger. It is yours now. Do not be afraid, Rock Lee. I will still be with you. Farewell for now."

Asuka Kagura faded away, and so did the world around the newly minted Shurikenger.


"LEE!" Might Guy shouted.

"Guy-sensei?" Lee asked. "I feel . . . strange."

"Strange how, my lovable student?" Guy prompted.

"I had a dream," Lee explained. "I was confronted by a man in green, and he gave me a strange ball that gave me some kind of odd armor."

"Would that be it?" Guy asked, gesturing to the round green object in Lee's right hand. When Lee noticed it, he gasped in shock.

"But . . . it was . . . a dream . . ." Lee uttered in astonishment.

"Maybe, maybe not," Guy remarked. "How do you feel?"

Lee jumped out of bed, performed an acrobatic flip, and landed on the ground. "A little bit sore, but it is nothing I cannot overcome with hard work!"

"That's great news, because Gaara crushed your arm and leg and would have done the same to the rest of your body had I not stopped him," Guy explained.

Lee had a sudden flash of memory as the ghost of past pain ran up the very arm and leg Guy had referenced. Guy placed a comforting hand on Lee's shoulder. "Don't worry about it. If that ball works the way I think it works, you should be fine. Given your new strength, though . . . how about running 500 laps around Konoha with me?"

"And if I cannot do that, I will do a thousand laps around Konoha on my hands!" Lee declared exuberantly.

"That's the spirit," Guy praised his student.

That was when the nurse came in. "What are you doing out of bed?" she asked.

"I am feeling much better, and I thank you most kindly for seeing to my care!" Lee replied.

"How?" the nurse wondered. "Those wounds should have crippled you for life!"

"It is nothing short of a miracle," Guy responded.

"Just let me give you one last checkup," the nurse requested.

One checkup later, the nurse was gaping at Lee with astonishment evident in her expression. "You healed . . . so fast, so thoroughly . . . it's incredible!"

"I, too, was astonished when I awakened," Lee admitted. "I must request, though, that I be let out of here to further my training. There is much I must do if I am to restore myself to my peak."

The nurse nodded mutely, still too stunned to say a word.


In one of Konoha's many forests, several trees fell, cut down by an extremely sharp blade. That blade belonged to Abarekiller, a.k.a. Naruto Uzumaki . . . and he was not happy in the slightest.

"Neji . . ." he growled. With an enraged scream, he transformed into Abare Mode and began tearing through trees in a berserk frenzy with the arrow-like blades growing from the backs of his gloves.

Neji's smug smirk, Hinata's pained face as she fought for her life . . .

"He has to pay," Naruto growled. "He has to pay!" On that final word, he generated a wave of slicing energy from his blades that nearly cut down the entire section of forest he was in.

Naruto, stop! Mikoto ordered.

"Why the hell should I?" Naruto asked furiously. "Did Neji stop? Did he?"

Giving in to your anger isn't a wise option, Mikoto warned. Or did you forget that Dezumozorya marked us? And as long as we bear his mark, any excess of negative emotion will only enable him to get a foothold in our soul. He's already made that damnable Demon Fox stronger, and the more you rage, the more you feed into its power, too.

Naruto breathed deeply, trying to calm himself. "I can't forgive him . . . I can't forgive what he did to Hinata!"

You don't have to, Mikoto answered. Just be careful when you deal with him. After all, Hinata begged you to spare him.

"I don't remember that," Naruto said.


Mikoto Nakadai slipped into Hinata's hospital room. The doctors had done their best, but they did not have the ability to completely heal Hinata. Enough to keep her alive, but the rest she would have to tough out on her own. Not if Mikoto had anything to say about it.

He'd managed to adapt his own medical techniques with the unique medical concepts this world had, and combined with his talents . . . Hinata wouldn't be coughing up blood anymore. He smiled at Hinata, so angelic she looked in her slumber. On impulse, he kissed her forehead and turned to leave, only to stop when he heard her voice.

"Naruto?" she asked.

"Yes?" Mikoto replied. After all, he technically was Naruto, or at least the remnants of the person Naruto had once been. He turned back to look at Hinata, whose pearl-white eyes stared into his blue ones.

"I'm glad . . . you came to see me . . ." she whispered.

Mikoto walked over to Hinata and took one of her hands in his. "I'm going to fight Neji in the finals. I won't show him mercy, Hinata. Not after what he did to you."

"Don't, Naruto . . ." Hinata pleaded. "It's not the answer. Neji has been living his life for the sake of vengeance and it's ruined him. I don't want the same to happen to you. You're too . . . too kind for that."

Mikoto chuckled softly. "You really think that?"

"Yes, Naruto, I do," Hinata whispered.

"What does Neji have to seek vengeance for?" Mikoto asked, his tone darkening. "What crime could you have committed against him that was so great he felt perfectly justified in trying to kill you?"

"Our family is divided, Naruto," Hinata explained, "into the main house, where my sister Hanabi and I descend from, and several branch houses, where Neji descends from. The branch houses live in servitude to the main house, sworn to protect the main house to the end of their lives. My father's twin, Neji's father, sacrificed himself for the sake of my father years ago, when we were both very young . . . and Neji never forgave the main house for that. As the years went by, he only became more and more filled with hate, until the hate eclipsed everything else that he'd ever loved. . . ."

Mikoto saw tears in Hinata's eyes, and he held her hand more tightly, to reassure her. "I didn't know . . ."

"I know you didn't," Hinata whispered, "but that's why I'm begging you . . . don't kill Neji. Don't be like him and become so full of hate you can't remember what it's like to love something."

The sad thing was that Neji sounded a lot like the man Mikoto had been, except instead of hate, it was all-consuming contempt Mikoto had felt – contempt for his fellow humans, believing them all to be fundamentally inferior to him. He'd never loved anything or anyone in his life, and he didn't know how much of it was Dezumozorya's influence and how much was his own twisted nature. Even Lijewel, sweet Lijewel . . . he'd never loved, no matter how much she'd loved him.

"Thank you, Hinata," he whispered, kissing her hand briefly before getting up and turning away so swiftly he didn't see her blush. "I'll remember that."

You were asleep at the time, Mikoto answered Naruto's unspoken question.


"What the hell?" Naruto yelled. "What did you go and do that for?"

For Hinata, Mikoto replied simply. Those doctors couldn't hack it, and I wasn't going to let her suffer like that. With any luck, she'll believe it was all a dream.

"Ok . . ." Naruto uttered. "But that's my body you were using like that!"

Mine, too, Mikoto retorted. I'm just as much you as you are.

"Fascinating conversation, humans," TopGaler remarked dryly from the Dino Minder.

"Sure, Top," Naruto responded.

"Naruto," a familiar voice called out, and the still-armored Naruto turned to see Asuma Sarutobi walking toward him. "So that's the armor Kakashi was telling me about. Not too shabby."

"What do you want?" Naruto interrogated, staring down the bearded jonin through his red visor.

"Kakashi told me you were a Wind Release user," Asuma answered. "So am I." He pulled out a pair of trench knives and concentrated his chakra into them, generating an extended blade of chakra from each one. "See this? It's a technique us Wind Release users can do. I call it the Flying Swallow."

"Extending the reach of your blade with chakra," Naruto mused. "That's pretty cool. I can already do that, though. Watch me." He slashed at a not-too-distant tree with one of his arm blades. The black blade seemingly hadn't touched the tree at all, but then the tree collapsed, its trunk completely cut through.

"So you already understand at least the basics of it," Asuma remarked. "You're really a lot smarter than most people would give you credit for."

"I picked up a good tutor," Naruto responded with a smirk beneath his helmet before powering down the Zero suit, revealing that he was wearing a white coat over a black chainmail shirt and white pants with a black kunai holster taped around his right leg. He was even wearing black open-toed ninja boots with stainless steel armor over his heels. His hands were covered by fingerless black gloves with knuckle guards and metal pads on the backs engraved with cracked eggs with three spikes on top and one spike on the bottom.

"You've really changed your wardrobe, Naruto," Asuma remarked. "You sure you're all right?"

Naruto swished his coat to reveal that the lining was a somewhat dark orange. "Yeah. What brings you?"

"Kakashi sent me to teach you all I knew about how to properly manipulate wind chakra," Asuma replied.

"So that's why that paper ripped itself in two when he gave it to me," Naruto realized. "He was testing my element. But why send you? Why couldn't he do it himself?"

"He felt he needed to concentrate on one student for the Chunin Exam finals," Asuma answered. "However, he didn't want to leave either you or Sakura in bad hands, so he went to people he felt he could trust to teach you. Hence why I'm here."

"And what about Sakura?" Naruto asked. "Who's teaching her?"

"Kurenai," Asuma replied. "Given how well Sakura threw off Ino's Mind Transfer Technique, Kakashi felt that she'd do better with a teacher that knew proper genjutsu. Hence Kurenai training her for the month."

"Oh, well," Naruto muttered. "Could be worse. You could be that pervert Ebisu."


Elsewhere, Sasuke Uchiha was practicing the Confrontation Beast Lion-Fist passed down to him by his past incarnation Rio. He could feel himself growing stronger with each and every movement, every kata, every strike . . . the power was intoxicating. His lips twisted into a dark smile as the Confrontation Ki surged through his body. Itachi Uchiha would be a dead man the day they met once more.

Watch it, Rio warned curtly in Sasuke's mind. Vengeance cannot be your sole motive for seeking power. Otherwise, this power will feed off the darkness in your soul and twist you into a monster. You've already seen where that leads.

Sasuke punched the ground, the force of the blow causing it to cave in and form a deep crater. "Let's see what happens when I try it with this . . ." Sasuke began forming hand seals, ending by gripping his left wrist with his right hand and holding his left hand out with the palm down. Concentrating both chakra and Confrontation Ki into this new technique, purplish-black lightning formed in his outstretched hand, condensed into a tight ball that engulfed the aforementioned hand.

"Ringi: Chidori no Kage."

Sasuke lunged forward, charging at a cliff while dragging the black Chidori along the ground. His Sharingan activated, allowing him to more easily perceive and evade any obstacle in his path as he reached the cliff and punched through it with the Chidori Shadow. The explosion of black lightning created in the wake of his strike nearly caused the cliff to collapse on Sasuke's head, but Sasuke saved himself with one particular move.

"Ringi: Goyu Koha."

The aura-formed black lion tore through the falling rubble, turning it all into so much dust that fell around Sasuke, who had called his armor onto his body. The Black Lion Warrior stood amongst the destruction he had wrought with his newest technique and let out a triumphant laugh.

Does everything I try to tell you go in one ear and out the other? Rio groused.


In Konoha's main medical facility, Hayate Gekko woke up to find Yugao Uzuki sitting at his bedside. "Hey . . ." he whispered.

"Don't speak right now," the purple-haired woman pleaded. "You still need to recover your strength."

"The last thing I remember . . . was fighting Baki, the jonin instructor for the Sand siblings," Hayate murmured.

"Why would you be fighting Baki?" Yugao asked.

"Something bad is going to happen," Hayate replied grimly. "The Chunin Exam finals are going to be a distraction from what they intend to do."

"They? Who's 'they'?" Yugao interrogated.

"I need . . . to get to Lord Hokage," Hayate answered. "He needs to know, what's coming."

"I suspect he already does," Yugao mused, "if you're talking about what I think you're talking about."

"What do you mean?" Hayate asked.

"Kabuto Yakushi, one of our genin, turned out to be a spy for Orochimaru," Yugao replied. "We caught him trying to assassinate Sasuke Uchiha, and when we tried to detain him, he proved himself a lot stronger than he'd ever let on before. I suppose, now that I look back on it, he was hiding his true capabilities so as to render himself beneath our notice. That's not all . . ."

"What is it, Yugao?" Hayate wondered.

"He held some kind of object, something that looked like an ammonite shell . . . and it expanded into some kind of black armor that made him even harder to fight than he was already," Yugao replied. "But, it seemed like he wasn't entirely in control of his faculties. While in the armor, he went berserk and butchered several ANBU. Now he's on the run."

"I found Kabuto talking with Baki, the Sand siblings' jonin instructor," Hayate explained. "From the sound of their conversation, the Sand and Sound Villages have formed an alliance of some kind . . . an alliance meant to destroy us."

"Why?" Yugao wondered. "The Sand and Leaf were allies!"

"Yeah, I know," Hayate murmured. "That's how I ended up like this. It's a miracle I'm not dead."

Yugao looked more closely at Hayate's side, and spotted a white dao with a hilt that strongly resembled a tiger's head and a cross-guard with a medal inside that vaguely resembled a tiger's face. "What's this?"

"My sword," Hayate replied. "It changed into this, just as Baki struck me down. I don't know how . . . but it's probably the only reason I'm still alive right now."

"It's beautiful," Yugao remarked, admiring the sword's construction.

"Thanks," Hayate answered, "but I've got a far more beautiful sight for these sore eyes." He smiled at her.

"Hayate . . . you haven't coughed once since you woke up," Yugao observed.

"Just my luck," Hayate spoke wryly. "Whatever power this sword has, it must have healed me of that, too."

"Get your rest," Yugao advised, kissing Hayate on the cheek. "You'll need your strength when you meet the Hokage and tell him about what happened to you."

"Thanks," Hayate murmured as he watched Yugao stand up and leave. After she was out of sight, he turned to one side and saw something that made him curious. The object was a white-and-gold bracer with a centered opaque screen, and next to it was a golden key with a ring-shaped end and an engraving that resembled the very symbol on his sword's cross-guard. "Well, this certainly makes things more interesting."

"Finally," the sword spoke. "I thought she'd never leave."

"A sentient weapon," Hayate murmured, stunned but doing his best not to freak out and draw attention to himself. "Who or what are you?"

"The Byakko-Shinken, at your service," the sword replied, and Hayate noticed that the "mouth" of the tiger-headed hilt was moving as the sword spoke.

"White Tiger True Sword . . ." Hayate uttered. "How long have you been hiding inside my katana?"

"It's not a matter of hiding," the Byakko-Shinken replied. "Our souls are bound together, Hayate Gekko. I've had many wielders, but my favorite so far was this boy named Kou. Quite the little pervert, but he had a good heart in spite of that. Maybe that's why I'm with you; you are his reincarnation, after all."

"Reincarnation, huh?" Hayate murmured.

"Yes," the Byakko-Shinken confirmed. "You are he as you are you. That device on your bedside is the Kiba Changer. Put it on, insert that key into it, call out 'Kiryoku Tenshin, Kiba Changer,' and you will be transformed into the White Tiger warrior known as Kibaranger."

"Why choose me?" Hayate asked.

"Besides being Kou's reincarnation, you're a skilled swordsman," the Byakko-Shinken answered. "And you're certainly going to need a way to even the odds against someone like Kabuto Yakushi, given what your girlfriend's said about that encounter with him."

Hayate's grip on the Byakko-Shinken's hilt tightened. "Whatever Sand's involvement with Sound, Orochimaru's pulling the strings somehow."

"Are you going to warn your Hokage?" the Byakko-Shinken asked.

"Yes," Hayate replied, swinging his legs out of the blanket over his body and off the hospital cot to land on the floor. Standing up, Hayate was about to leave when his sword spoke up.

"Aren't you forgetting something?"

Hayate turned to the nightstand and found the Kiba Changer staring up at him. Briefly putting down the Byakko-Shinken, he picked up the changer and attached it to his left wrist before changing back into his jonin uniform. When that was done, he hooked the golden key that accompanied the changer onto one of the scroll pockets on his vest.

"Thanks." With a Body Flicker, Hayate Gekko was gone from the hospital.


On Team Guy's training grounds, Tenten was examining a pentagon-shaped object with the kanji for "fire" inscribed in bright red. Planted in the ground beside her was her usual katana, but it practically vibrated with a strange power that she simultaneously recognized and found utterly unfamiliar. As if that weren't enough, she also had a strange high-tech pen that resembled some kind of communications device.

"What is all this?" she wondered.

The power of the Shinkenger, a voice whispered in her mind.

"Who the hell are you, and what the hell is a Shinkenger?" Tenten asked irritably.

The Samurai Sentai of the providence, the voice replied, the warriors sworn to protect the world from the menace of the demons known as Gedoushu.

"Gedoushu?"

Tenten suddenly had flashes of memory, of rampaging demons and armored swordfighters that bravely defeated those demons one after another. They are the Samurai Sentai Shinkenger, empowered by the force of mojikara to protect the world from the Gedoushu. Mojikara can be channeled through that pen you hold, the Shodo Phone.

"You never explained who you are," Tenten retorted.

Kaoru Shiba, the 18th lord of the Shiba clan, the voice replied, and Tenten suddenly found herself in a forest of cherry blossom trees, standing before a woman in traditional samurai garb with her dark hair tied back in a short ponytail. Hello, Tenten. It's good to meet you.

"What are you doing here?" Tenten asked.

I'm here because I am you, you that once was, Kaoru replied. Evil is threatening this world, the same evil that threatened mine. If it is to be stopped, it must be with the power of the Sentai Senshi. You will meet others of our kind, and they will be your allies in warding off the evil that threatens this world. They are from different worlds, different Sentai, but they will all fight to protect this world.

"Seriously?" Tenten wondered. "Hey, wait, samurai? I'm a kunoichi!"

Yes, but you have the honor and pride of a samurai, Kaoru answered with a gentle smile. That'll be good enough. Now, take up my sword – and become ShinkenRed.

"Ok . . ." Tenten murmured, still not sure of what was going on. When the cherry blossom forest faded back to the training ground Tenten had been on, she found her katana firmly in one hand with the Shodo Phone in her other hand. "Let's go." She switched the Shodo Phone into its brush mode and swiped it through the air to make the kanji for fire. "Ippitsu Soujou!"

Upon completing the brush strokes for "fire," Tenten pressed the blue button, and the fire kanji bonded with her, forming a skintight red-and-black fighting suit over her body. The red consisted of a tunic that ended in a skirt with boots, while the black consisted of leggings underneath the aforementioned skirt, plus a design on the tunic that resembled the lining of a closed gi. Her face was concealed by a hard red mask with the fire kanji acting as a visor for her to see through. Completing the ensemble were a gold belt with a circular buckle and white gloves.

Almost on instinct, Tenten removed a black Secret Disk from her buckle and slotted it into her katana. Immediately, the blade morphed into the black-and-gold weapon known as the Shinkenmaru, the Perfect True Sword. Brandishing the newly empowered sword, the red-armored Tenten stood proud.

"ShinkenRed – Tenten!"


End Notes: There you have it; more Sentai warriors have unveiled themselves. Hayate is the inheritor of the Howling New Star, and Tenten has become the new Samurai of Fire! In the meantime, how will Naruto's training under Asuma in the Wind Release proceed, especially with the vengeful thoughts Naruto has toward Neji for what he did to Hinata in the last chapter? How will Sasuke's developing powers in the Confrontation Beast-Fist shape his actions in the future, especially given his ambition to kill his brother Itachi for the slaughter of their clan? And just what's going to happen to everyone else? For the answers to those questions and others, you'll just have to wait and see – but hopefully not as long as I made you do so the last two times! Until then, let's go on!