Project Naruto: Shinobi X.
Disclaimer: I do not own the Naruto world or characters. Those are the property of Masashi Kishimoto. The challenge I answer here is from devilzxknight86, with all due credit for the basic concept. Foolproof does not mean proof that you're a fool.
Twenty-first Seal: Recover.
Tsunade looked at the mission requests before her as she contemplated the past weeks while Naruto had been teaching at the Academy. The children had loved it, of course, but the parents... not so much. Overall, it had been a success, she decided.
Now she had to find their next mission assignment. Flicking through the orders from the Daimyo and the requests from everyone else was not easy. There were reports from years back mixed in with this, and Hiruzen had shared with her his deduced secret to dealing with paperwork, but she didn't have sufficient reserves, what with her constant henge and the focus point on her forehead, for more than a handful of clones...
Opening the next scroll gave her just what she was looking for...
Naruto and Hinata were awake almost instantly, and were up by the time the door-chimes' melody faded away. As Naruto, quickly dressed in his 'working clothes', opened the door, Hinata was already preparing a quick breakfast of rice-balls and tea, or coffee for her husband. Naruto's shadow clones were doing a quick cleaning run, and by the time Kurenai had reached the table, a place had been set for her, as well, and the clones were dispersing, their chores complete. As they ate, their sensei explained her arrival. "The Hokage wants Team Kurenai for a specific recovery mission," she said. "She recently received a request from an old friend in Cha no Kuni, and sent Team Seven on the B-rank bodyguard mission. However, Master Jiraiya's spies have reported the movement, from Ame, of a renegade Konoha shinobi, a traitor by the name of Rokushou Aoi. He was of similar mind to Mizuki, and we believed he tricked the genin who was actually accused of the crime into running with him, although it was reported by the ninja sent to deal with them that the boy was dead." She paused, and looked at the couple in front of her. "We have since discovered that the boy is still alive... in fact, he is most likely the runner that we just sent Team Seven to guard. Morino Idate."
Both chunin gasped, and Hinata was the first to recover her voice. "I-is he any relation t-to Ibiki-sama?" At Kurenai's nod, the two looked at each other.
"Ibiki was also the ninja sent after them that day, I believe it was five years ago, plus some months," Kurenai added. "I doubt he'd have let even his little brother go if he wasn't convinced of his innocence in the theft, but he never did think Idate was suited to be a ninja." She sighed. "But that's not important now. Your mission is to deal with Aoi, and recover the artifact with which he bought his way into becoming an Ame jonin, the sword of the Nidaime Hokage, the Raijin."
"Wait a second," Naruto said, rising quickly to his feet with his hands on the table. "What do you mean, 'your mission'? Aren't you coming with us?"
Kurenai shook her head. "Tsunade-sama wants you to do this without me. Apparently the results from your last mission were... impressive. Now she wants to see if the quality stays the same on other missions. Instead of leading you, I'll be covering the basics and practice of genjutsu at the Academy for three weeks. Oh, and Naruto, Anko would still like a... how did she put it? A frank and pointed discussion with you about one group of cadets and two switched drinks, whatever she means by that."
"Uh... wow, look at that, we have a mission to do, what awful timing," he said quickly, a large and nervous grin across his face.
The forest flashed past as the three shinobi, operating as Team Uzumaki for this mission, with Hinata in charge, raced towards the border with Kawa no Kuni. Unless this Aoi was a complete fool, he would avoid Hi no Kuni like the plague, which meant that to get from Amegakure no Sato to Cha no Kuni, he would have to go through the river-studded nation and charter a boat at the port. If they could intercept him, Team Seven's job would be a lot easier, but if not, they were certain they could track him down. The silence as they ran and leapt, their pace eating away the miles, was... comforting, especially to Naruto, who didn't hear an irritated Anko coming after them...
"I see him," Hinata said, staring out at the ship receding on the horizon. "He's out of reach, unless we could suddenly fly." Neither her summons nor Shino's that were capable of flight were able to carry anyone that far. Running on the water would leave them in the open for far too long, civilian transport was dicey at best, and they had no Hi no Kuni contacts here. If they stopped here, their target would truly escape, and likely reach Cha no Kuni before Team Seven and their civilian guide. It was frustrating.
"Hinata," Naruto spoke up suddenly, after looking around the waterfront. As she turned to her husband, he pointed at a ship that had the blue wave emblem of Nami no Kuni. "Do you think they might be willing to give us a lift?"
As it turned out, the captain was very co-operative. Their reputation as some of the people responsible for taking down Gatou gave them some credit with the sailors, and shortly thereafter, they were in pursuit of the slower passenger vessel. The Nami ship was able to keep the ferry in sight, but from the start, it was obvious that the other ship would still make port before they caught it. The open sea was too new a challenge for their water-walking abilities, something they all took note to get practice in once they got back, since they could not always be guaranteed a peaceful surface to the water they had to traverse.
As the passenger ferry began to dock, the Konoha shinobi could wait no longer. "Thanks, captain," Naruto called back over his shoulder. "We'll just have to walk from here!"
With that, at Hinata's nod, the three ninja jumped over the rail, pushing chakra through their feet to begin their run to shore.
Rokushou Aoi glared back at the Nami vessel in time to see three figures leap from the side and begin to run towards the shore... ninja! Turning to his team, he pointed. "Those ninja, I need you to scout and tell me where they're from, and what they're after. Then we can meet up with the client. Oh, and if they spot you... kill them." As he went to leave the boat, he glanced back over his shoulder. Perhaps the Wagarashi weren't the only ones hiring ninja to manipulate the race... although all the stories of the Wasabi had them as more honourable than that. Oh, well, all men bleed the same colour...
Mubi looked across at Kagari and Oboro, who each signalled their readiness. As they held themselves still, they were alert, ready to act as soon as the traps went off... The three ninja that were following them entered the clearing and froze, right in the middle of the traps, and the Ame ninja revealed themselves on the branches as their targets stood there helpless as the ninja-wire entangled them inescapably, and the explosive-tag laden kunai thudded into the ground around them. They were from Konoha by their hitai-ate, the one in the long coat and dark glasses wore his on his brow, and the other two, a boy and girl in matching jackets of orange and black, wore theirs around their necks, and all three were clad in the dark green utility vests that marked Konoha chunin.
Despite being mere genin, they knew enough of Aoi's past that he wouldn't want any Konoha nin chasing him down. They also clearly remembered these three as passing those blasted Chunin Exams last month, when the Ame nin had been disqualified from the Exams in the second round in minutes! It had to have been a set-up. "Hey, Oboro," Mubi called out, "they're your tags, what do you think?"
Oboro favoured the kunai with explosive tags, but waved to Kagari first. "More oil," he said. "Then we can have a barbecue!"
Kagari flicked his hands through the jutsu and braced, spraying the oil from his mouth over the three trapped ninja, and as Mubi lifted his crossbow, Oboro set his hands in the right seal and channelled his chakra, setting off the explosive tags. As the clearing was engulfed in flames, a roar of fire dragging the air inward for a moment, Mubi took out the directions Aoi had given him. "Now to see where Aoi wanted us to meet up..." He was distracted momentarily, by three popping noises from within the flames... he didn't recall seeing anything in the clearing that would do that...
The scroll with his directions was snatched from his grasp by a feminine hand, while another hammered him in the gut, and a hurricane of chakra powered through him. The last thing Mubi heard before consciousness abandoned him was Hinata's soft voice. "Arigato, Ame-san, we needed that scroll."
Kagari couldn't see well through the leaping flames but he thought someone had appeared on the branch next to Mubi, and was about to investigate when the swarm of insects rose from under him, engulfing the hapless ninja and muffling any noise he might have made, the crackle of their lightning chakra discharge lost in the noise of the fire in the clearing.
Oboro was startled by the popping sounds, and the white smoke that replaced the three Konoha ninja in the clearing immediately informed him of their actual nature... shadow clones! As he began to form the hand signs to the kawarimi no jutsu, expecting himself to be attacked at any time, he felt three sharp points against his belly, and sharp pain in both hands, which had been pierced by three exceedingly sharp claws made of some strange alloy that emerged from the hand of the male ninja in the orange jacket. "No hand seals," Naruto said quietly, "no jutsu. Please don't resist, you're in no shape for it." The Ame ninja could only agree...
The scroll was sufficiently detailed as to where the Ame shinobi were to meet the clients, but did not reveal the path this Aoi was planning to take to get there. Naruto was barely able to make out a scent on the scroll, but it belonged to the crossbow wielding shinobi. Hinata's Byakugan seemed their best bet for locating the treacherous ninja, but she had to have him in range... after divesting their prisoners of any weapons and equipment before tying them to a tree with ninja wire. Hinata was a little generous... or she was imitating Anko, as she left an emergency medical kit sitting on a log on the opposite side of the clearing from the bound ninja. Kagari had a number of senbon, which Hinata claimed, while Oboro's explosive tags were taken by Shino, and Mubi's crossbow and bolts found their way to Naruto. Leaving the secured shinobi to wake on their own, Team Uzumaki raced through the trees.
Oboro looked around at the clearing. They'd been nice enough to bandage his hands so he wouldn't bleed to death, but the bandages, in combination with his injuries, meant he couldn't make hand seals, nor could he effectively attempt escape. Mubi would likely take quite a while to wake, the girl's eyes screamed Hyuuga at him, so it looked like he was just going to have to wait for Kagari to recover. "Oh, well," he thought, "it could be worse... it could be raining."
In the distance, there was a rumble of thunder...
Aoi heard the three ninja racing towards him from the trees. He quickly hid, and observed as his genin landed... but something was off. They didn't move quite right, he thought. He'd been an Academy instructor in Konoha for a long time, and as the shinobi below him moved around, taking a break from the attempt to catch up to him, he noticed a few things about them that weren't the same as his team. The one that looked like Mubi was constantly adjusting the fit of his crossbow, the way it sat. Mubi had that down to an art. Kagari's replacement moved differently, like a woman, and Oboro's impostor didn't have that habit of stretching out his neck while resting. If they weren't his genin, that meant they'd lost... and that these three were simply going to have to die...
The hail of senbon needles that poured from the trees was not entirely unexpected, and Hinata's cry of "Poison!" as the trio dropped their henge transformations was all the warning Naruto needed to cover both his wife and his best friend with enough shadow clones to keep them from injury, although doing so left him open to the deadly steel rain. The burning sensation as the senbon struck confirmed it to be a severe poison, probably intended to be lethal in minutes. Dropping to one knee, he began pulling out the slender steel weapons, deliberately trembling his hands a little. His Sokai Katsuryoku bloodline was already neutralising the toxin. Hinata and Shino had ducked behind trees, and although he was tempted to signal the plan to them, Aoi would understand such signals as easily as their intended recipients. With a look towards Hinata, a puzzled demeanour that he hoped she could see through, he collapsed.
As Naruto fell, Hinata almost darted out after him, but forced herself not to leave cover. Naruto was down, and she wasn't sure how quickly his bloodline burned through poisons, or even how effectively. But there was nothing to be done about it at this point. Her Byakugan was active, and telling her where Aoi was... and that Naru-kun's breathing was steady, unchanged! He hadn't been that affected after all... so he was trying to deceive the former Konoha ninja, and her reaction had to be as real as possible... "Shino!" she called out. "Can you tell if Naruto's okay from there? He was hit, but I didn't see how many senbon he took."
Shino spotted the fallacy. With her Byakugan, Hinata could have counted all the senbon, and the insect-wielder quickly made the connection. "I'm afraid not," he replied, releasing a large number of his kikaichu to circle the area. "This kind of ambush really bugs me. We should have left the mission to those three chunin from the Exams." It was an improvised code, and relied on his team-mates understanding his references, but with Aoi right there, they didn't have much choice.
"You're right," Hinata replied, "But you know Naruto, always in the middle of things." She'd gotten the message, and hoped that Naruto did too.
Aoi jumped down from the tree he'd hidden in. The fool in the open had no chance against the toxin on his senbon, but they didn't know that. Taking the Raijin from his belt, he poured his chakra into it, and the crackling blade of golden lightning appeared. "Ah, ah, ah," he said as he poised the blade above the blond. "You two had better step out where I can see you. The poison on the senbon is relatively painless, but the blade of the Raijin is nowhere near as pleasant... and I can take my time if you don't step out where I can see you." As an example, he touched the sword lightly to Naruto's back, and the boy convulsed as the lightning of the sword poured into him... and Hinata spotted something Aoi hadn't, not knowing what he was looking for. Naruto had pushed out the bonemetal spikes on his back, and his ribs had grown small spikes at the front that kept contact with the ground... Naruto wasn't getting hurt anywhere near as much as Aoi thought, and she knew Shino wouldn't be able to see any clues... so it was her turn.
As the girl stepped out from behind the tree, Aoi levelled the Raijin at her, then saw her eyes... she was a Hyuuga... but that meant she knew exactly how many senbon had hit her fallen friend... and the responses after that had the feel of some kind of team-based code, now that he knew to be suspicious. Whirling about to his left, he saw the kikaichu and flickered his left hand through a series of one-handed seals. "Goukakyuu no jutsu!"
The fireball tore through Shino's swarm, and the Aburame chunin winced, feeling the lives of so many of his allies vanishing forever. Then Aoi spun and lunged with the Raijin, thrusting directly at the Hyuuga girl's heart. It never got there. The boy who'd been lying in the open all this time had surged to his feet, claws of odd metal emerging from his hands with a meaty 'snikt', and lacing around the blade of the Raijin, pinning it in place. The lightning was surging into the brat, but it wasn't having any... no, it was hurting him, and the smell of flash-burned flesh was there, but the young chunin was ignoring it.
Hinata saw the spikes that came from her husband's heels, and saw the lightning energy crackling through the bonemetal, grounding out in the earth beneath him, as he yelled out. "NOW!"
Hinata slipped to the side of Aoi, her eyes wide, as the traitor to her village reluctantly released his prize, and with the cessation of his chakra, the Raijin, bladeless, fell to the ground, as did Naruto, groaning as the spikes on his heels pulled loose from the dirt. Hinata's focus narrowed to Aoi and every move he made... he was going for a different weapon, maybe not one as good as the Raijin, but still...
"Uzumaki Art," the young kunoichi said, and Aoi's eyes widened... he knew that name... "Gentle Storm: Eight Winds, Sixty-four Thunders!"
No-one else there could see how time seemed to slow for her, although Naruto's whisker-marks had flared blue, and he could feel the speed at which she moved as he pushed himself up far enough to watch the finale. The path to the sixty-four prime tenketsu were wide open to her eyesight as she struck, her chakra hammering with the elemental force of a thunderstorm while leaving little physical damage, as she pretty much destroyed the renegade's chakra network, strike after strike, starting with his arms and overwhelming him in short order. As the battered and powerless form of the former Konoha shinobi crumpled to the ground, Hinata dropped to her knees. "That was more draining than I thought," she noted, panting a little as her Naru-kun levered himself off the ground and made his way to her. The faintly burned smell he gave off was fading as his kekkei genkai mended the damage, and he lowered himself to sit beside her.
Shino, too, sat down, although on a nearby rock. "My primary colony took quite a hit, it's at sixty percent, and my secondary is at eighty. If we can avoid needing to do this again..."
Naruto nodded. His vision was still a little blurry... even with a lightning affinity, letting that much power flow through him had really hurt. "As soon as I'm not seeing double, I'll seal him in a prison scroll. It'll hold till we get back to Konoha."
Travel back was at a more leisurely pace, and the captain from Nami was happy to deliver them to a port in Hi no Kuni. From there it was a matter of days to return. As they crested the hill to see the gates of Konoha before them, Naruto embraced Hinata. They were home.
Ibiki was very happy with the 'souvenir' they brought him, although Rokushou Aoi... not so much. The suggestion that he share breaking this traitor with Anko won Naruto the kunoichi's forgiveness for the pranks. Tsunade was pleased to receive the Raijin, and took them to a training ground to show them why it was considered a treasure of Konoha. "What size blade did Aoi make?" she asked.
"Approximately the size of a katana, by my estimation," Shino supplied.
"That's because he didn't have a lightning affinity, nor did he have large reserves of chakra," Tsunade explained. My great-uncle used to say that Raijin's size was based in those. I myself don't have a lightning affinity, but my reserves are larger than his..." The blade she managed to generate was a good foot longer than Aoi's.
When offered the chance, the three chunin jumped at the chance to see how big they could make it. Since all three had the affinity, it was decided that Shino would go first. The Raijin in his hands was somewhere between the Hokage's effort and the size of Aoi's, but a large part of Shino's chakra flow did go to his kikaichu. Hinata focused on the weapon, and her blade resembled the sword Zabuza used... before Naruto had truncated it. When Naruto lifted the hilt, he managed a blade of twice that size easily.
As she locked the Raijin away, Tsunade hoped that Naruto never needed to take up this blade... and that he never needed to use the Kyuubi's chakra through it...
"Bring him to me," they were ordered. "I have no patience for his wants and desires. Go into that pitiful village, find him, break the seals binding his curse-mark and bring him to me. I will have those eyes." And so the remainder of Orochimaru's elite set forth. Their target was Uchiha Sasuke, and there was no room for them to fail. The three who'd survived the Chunin Exams and the botched Invasion were joined by their predecessor, who had been recovering his strength for just such a need. Kaguya Kimimaro was again leading the Oto Elite. Time was short.
Sasuke sat in the tree contemplating the future. His brother was no longer a factor, caught and blind as he was, and rebuilding his clan was a matter of his own choice now. He still trained hard and the missions he was selected for were a decent challenge, but there was something missing. He had no-one to measure himself against, not really. Kiba was a good friend, a decent second in command, but his progress was in a direction that Sasuke couldn't duplicate, lacking a partner like Akamaru. The last mission had been fairly easy, and the three Ame nin who had shown up were woefully unprepared. Sakura had dealt with one of them herself... It actually surprised the young Uchiha how much he noticed her, once she finally stopped chasing him. She'd begun to knuckle down and study medical jutsu and genjutsu, and was performing exercises intended to expand her chakra reserves, and her growth since the Chunin Exams was already surprising.
He lay back against the trunk as he watched the Academy students emerge from their classes for the day. There was a familiar pattern down there every now and then, but a small group of four cadets seemed to have pretty much become the self-appointed protectors of the playground. As they paused for a moment at the lighter earth near where that shrk freak had been taken down, Sasuke realised who he was trying to measure himself against, and the shock nearly had him plummet from the branch.
Naruto. Ever since his abduction all that time ago, Naruto had been improving. He was getting stronger so fast, that no-one realised exactly how strong he really was. Sasuke recalled the way Naruto had been treated in the basic schools, and how a lot of the village had kept treating him, right up until the Chunin Exams, and Orochimaru's attempted invasion. After that it was like a lot of adults were waking up from a bad dream, and seeing what was actually in front of them...
He jumped down from the tree, and started to walk in the direction of the Uzumaki district, as people had started to call the neighbourhood next to the Hyuuga estate. Naruto had flatly forbidden any kind of massive walls like around the old Uchiha compound, saying it promoted pig-headedness and arrogance. Individual yards were better.
As he passed an alley, no different from any other, he felt a dart strike his neck, and knew no more...