Tale of the Setting Sun
Chapter 21: "Earth-Shaking Matter"
"You must be Nine Tails."
"What do you want?" came the rumbling reply.
"Lend me your chakra," said Naruto. "Otherwise, we'll both die."
The claws that had been futilely swiping at Naruto from between the bars froze in midair – and then without any warning, the being behind the gates burst into a deep and rasping laugh that, as it resounded across the brackish water, raised the hairs on the back of his neck. "True, if you get killed here, that'd be inconvenient for me...You've got guts, if anything. Very well then. Here is a gift for coming this far!"
"Man, I'm sick and tired of this stupid patrol duty," said the man, making a spitting sound.
Naruto felt his eyes narrow; the roiling bloodlust he was exuding was even stronger than Naruto could remember it being just two years ago in Yugakure. It could have felt that way due to the sheer vastness and emptiness of their surroundings, but nevertheless, if it had been a single storm cloud before, it was now a tempest.
"You think I want to be here wasting my time?" replied another man's gravelly voice.
"Who are you? Name - name your purpose!" Naruto heard Mayu speak up bravely beside him, and he realized she must not have recognized the man.
"We're not supposed to let ninja in this area," said the man he had identified as Hidan, ignoring the first part of her question. "So we're going to kill you. Or actually - Kakuzu, how about you stay out of this and let me have some fun?"
Naruto slowly began to reach for the tantō strapped to his back, thankful for the darkness. It seemed that Hidan had not recognized them either...but what could he mean by 'not supposed to?' And who was the other ninja – Hidan had called him Kakuzu – with him?
"From the sounds of their voices, I doubt any of them would even fetch a price at the bounty office," grunted Kakuzu, sounding wholly dissatisfied.
Rai let out a nervous laugh. "Whoa, whoa, ease up man. Let's not be too hasty. Don't you know who we are?"
"Hah?"
"The boss told us to rendezvous with you guys here," Rai continued, his voice remarkably smooth. "Well - he did mean you guys, right?"
This seemed to give Hidan actual pause; for a split second, as if a dog had just caught the scent of something other than its prey, the thick bloodlust wavered.
And in that same instant, Naruto formed the clone seal –
"Kage Bunshin no Jutsu (Shadow Clone Technique)!"
Accompanied by the sounds of exploding smoke, ten physical copies of Naruto solidified into existence, each one bearing a readied tantō in hand.
"Go," he said, and his clones burst forward in the direction where he sensed Hidan and Kakuzu. In response, as they'd practiced, he heard the high-pitched warbling of blue birds as they freed themselves from Mayu's hair and the telltale rustling of paper as Sai drew out his scrolls.
"4 o'clock, Rai!" Mayu cried out, and from Rai's direction came the sound of hissing, and then the whistling sound of deadly metal flying through air, followed up by a string of explosions. Slightly averting his eyes from the brief orange glows of the blasts, Naruto saw on the floor ink black snakes wriggling straight into the resultant smoke.
In theory, it was a simple tactic: using his clones to first surround and herd the enemy, Mayu would use her blue birds to confuse them – and in the case where they didn't have any visual information on their targets, to gain intel on their whereabouts. Rai would follow-up with exploding tags to further confuse them and in the resultant disorder, Sai would bind them with his ink snakes. Then – in theory – Naruto and Rai could go in and finish off whoever was left.
He blinked, processing the newly-gained memory of one of his clones who had just been destroyed; in the fleeting glimpse the clone had gotten from the light of the exploding tags, neither Hidan nor the other man seemed particularly perturbed by the commotion they had just set off. However, Naruto had never expected it to.
"Now!" Naruto said. As the others disappeared using the shunshin, he dashed toward the cloud of smoke with his tantō raised in his hand. In the passing split seconds as he approached its center, his remaining clones began to leap out of the smoke, their tantō at the ready. Naruto's brow furrowed as he urged a current of lightning chakra – now almost as second nature to him as his wind chakra had been – to run through his body – and then simultaneously, he and his clones thrust their tantō into the boggy ground below.
Blue and pure white sparks lit up the watery surface, as with a crackling sound, the earth broke into pieces, consuming anything still remaining on its surface. Naruto's clones exploded in sequential clouds of smoke – but Naruto himself had long since flashed away.
The night clouds had momentarily drawn back, allowing through a few stray rays of moonlight to light his way. Touching back down and running as fast as he could in the direction they'd been headed, Naruto soon caught up to the rest of his team. With chakra powering their feet, they were running in spearhead formation with Mayu at its head.
"How much of a lead do we have?" Rai hissed, as Naruto quietly drew beside him.
Naruto drew another tantō from his back. "Not much," he said shortly. "The moon's back out, and it'll be hard to lose them in open space. Where are we headed?"
"My birds tell me there's a forest about three kilometers ahead of here," said Mayu, casting an anxious eye back. Lifting his head, Naruto looked straight forward – but even with some of his vision restored, most of the horizon was still a haze of dark outlines and blackness. "But...why are they even chasing us?"
"I'm not sure," Naruto admitted. Hidan hadn't seemed to have recognized them even after their exchange, so it couldn't be some twisted form of vengeance. And it didn't seem to be out of malicious boredom either – he and his partner had some sort of ulterior motive in mind.
"Maybe they've given up," said Rai in a hopeful tone. But even before he'd finished talking, all four of them stiffened as a voice howled from behind them –
"And where the hell do you think you're going?!"
They fell silent, straining their ears as if they would be able to hear the approaching footsteps of their pursuers. The wind was blowing in their faces, and Naruto thought grimly of how it must be carrying their scents back.
"We'll be killed if we only run like this," said Sai matter-of-factly, sounding as serious as Naruto had ever heard him.
"And killed if we fight them head-on," Rai muttered. "We need another diversion – a better one. Until we can reach the forest."
"I - I can try staving them off with my birds," said Mayu.
"No," said Rai immediately in a brusque voice. "They'd break you as soon as they were upon you. Mayu, that's the guy who took on Kakashi-sensei back in Yugakure and survived...and this time, he's got a buddy with him."
Mayu's control over her blue birds worked best when she was physically near them; while they could instantaneously process information over a distance of up to five kilometers, actually channeling her genjutsu through them was only possible when she was within a radius of a hundred feet of them.
The others had all turned to Naruto for his orders. As his thoughts raced over their options, he felt his pulse rate begin to pick up.
If they continued to simply flee toward the forest, Hidan and Kakuzu would catch up before then. But at the same time, Naruto couldn't ask any one of them to stay behind in order to distract the two to make time for the others – that would essentially be condemning them to death. But what other choices were left to him then? Should they try fighting head-on with Hidan and his partner, despite not knowing the extent of their combative abilities?
Naruto glanced at Mayu and Rai's pale but determined faces, and felt his throat go dry.
"Well, Naruto?" Rai prompted him.
"This is what we're going to do," he said at last.
The Wet Dog was one of the better-known taverns along the pier, with the best sake found anywhere along the coastline – or so the drunk sailor that Jiraiya had interrogated claimed, anyways. And so, he found himself sitting down behind the countertop, swirling warmed sake around in a cup while keeping an eye out in the crowd for anyone who looked like they could be by themselves.
Soon enough, with a scraping sound, a flushed-looking man dressed in the telltale (and rather threadbare) cotton coat of a fisherman settled into the wooden chair beside him. Flagging the barman down with a finger, the man let out a loud hiccup. His unfocused eyes traveled across the bottles and flasks of sake behind the counter, before moving on to his neighbors. When Jiraiya felt the drunk man's eyes on him, he looked down at his cup, before taking a sip from it.
"You a foreigner?" The fisherman slurred, leaning his face haphazardly against his hand.
"Mhm."
"Where from? Fire - hic - country, by the looks of it."
Jiraiya made a noncommittal sound, and put his cup down on the countertop. "How about you?"
"Born and raised in Wave," the fisherman hiccuped.
"You fish for a living?"
"Among other things..." The barman had brought him a small plate of fried seaweed and octopus, and he began to chew at it, making an audible crunching sound even over the din of the tavern.
"Other things?" Jiraiya repeated.
Crunch. "Can't survive - hic - here no more doing just one thing."
"Economy not doing well?"
"Yeah, this place's gone to the dogs...crunch...market might as well be non-existent...lucky to get 100 ryō for an entire shipment of fish, even."
Jiraiya let out a whistle. "For an entire shipment? Sounds rough."
"Tell me about it," the fisherman let out a grunt, bobbing his head. "If I had anywhere else to go - hic - I certainly wouldn't still be here."
Jiraiya traced the rim of his cup with a finger. "Still, you sound like you're doing rather well for yourself."
"Well...I pay my dues, yea? That's the secret to survival around here...if you know what I mean." As drunk as he was, the fisherman had lowered his voice with a furtive look around, but the barman was serving another customer at the other end of the counter.
"Huh," said Jiraiya, injecting as much admiration as he could into the single syllable.
"The thing is - hic - everyone knows the daimyō ain't in control no more, yeah? It's the gangs who run the place now. It's all about staying on their good side..." The fisherman broke off to noisily pop another octopus leg into his mouth, and as Jiraiya waited for him to continue, he watched as it was crushed into bits between the man's yellowed teeth. "You don't get in their way - crunch - and you give 'em what they want...and they'll leave you alone long enough to scrape enough ryō together to buy a night's stay in bed and some sake for your belly..." The man broke into a raucous laugh, and patted his stomach. Jiraiya followed with a rumbling laugh, holding his sake cup to the other man's face.
"You seem like a sensible sort of man...say, you wouldn't happen to know, would you? If I wished to invite some fairer company into my bed without fearing for my neck around here..."
The fisherman immediately placed a knowing hand on Jiraiya's shoulder, having recognized a brother in need. "You need speak no further, my good man. You'll be glad to know that with just one word, you'll be guaranteed a restful night anywhere around here."
"Oh? And what's that?"
The man grinned, his teeth gleaming in the sickly light. "Akatsuki."
Immediately, Jiraiya had to stop himself from reacting to the name, giving the fisherman only a small nod of acknowledgement. With forcibly stilled hands, he raised the sake cup to his mouth, draining the rest of it.
Akatsuki!
The criminal organization that Jiraiya had devoted so many years of his life to researching – the organization that Orochimaru had joined after defecting from Konoha – could they truly be operating here? In Wave country?
Whatever the case, one thing was certain: his decision to stay behind in Wave country had been the right thing to do. Something big involving Akatsuki was about to go down, and there was a good chance it had everything to do with the current fiasco with Gatō. Jiraiya hadn't been sure what he would do after discerning the cause behind the country's ruination – there was a limit to even what he could do – but now that he knew the Akatsuki had a hand in this place, he knew he had to do something, even if that 'something' only involved further intelligence-gathering. That was what he had been doing all these years, after all, even going so far as to let down the Third's hopes of him taking up the mantle of Hokage. But in as much as it had been his determination to retrieve Orochimaru, it had also been for his home, Konoha.
Because no matter how many years it had been since he'd actually been there, when it came down to it, Jiraiya would never let down Konoha, even at the cost of his life.
"A-are you sure about this, Naruto?" Mayu asked uneasily, as she took off her cloak. "You do know that if they don't fall for it – "
"We'll be sitting ducks. I know." Naruto took off his cloak, and immediately, he felt goosebumps rising on his arms as the harsh wind bit into them.
"To be fair, that Hidan guy doesn't seem to be the brightest bulb in the box," said Rai, his own cloak already tucked under his arm. "His partner gave me some bad vibes though...what was his name again? Kakasu?"
"Kakuzu," Sai answered, and the others turned to him. "He's an S-rank missing-nin from Takigakure."
"How do you know that?" Rai asked, looking rather taken aback.
"He's been listed in the Bingo Book for quite some time now."
Rai opened his mouth to question him further – as it were mostly jōnin and ANBU who held bingo books – but Naruto held up a hand. "Enough. Later. Focus on the mission at hand now. Are you all ready?" He looked at each of his teammates in turn, and with focus refilling their expressions, they nodded. With a nod back, he brought his hands together in the clone seal – "Kage Bunshin no Jutsu!"
With puffs of identical clouds of smoke, a dozen Narutos fell into place on the ground beside them, matching their punishing pace. Naruto – the real one – flung his cloak at the pair nearest him, and one immediately tugged the hood over himself. At the same time, Mayu and the others also threw their cloaks at a pair of clones, until there were four clones wearing each of their cloaks.
With every cloaked clone paired with one without, all twelve of his clones shot off into slightly different directions – but headed ultimately for the forest.
"See you two soon," Rai muttered, before turning sharply on his heel and heading east,away from the forest. Sai – with a reluctant glance back at Naruto – quickly followed suit.
"Stay safe," Mayu whispered back, her voice shaking like a leaf in the wind. Naruto heard her step into place beside him as they ran in the opposite direction, west.
The forest was large; even though they weren't headed directly for it, the black mass of trees grew rapidly bigger and bigger as they closed the distance. Without their cloaks, the chilly night wind struck harshly into their faces as they raced along the marsh, the cold bog water seeping into their sandals.
Naruto looked back, but there appeared to be nothing there beside the long stretch of marshland they had just crossed. The bloodlust too had faded, leaving behind just the beating of his heart in his chest, and the shallow breathing of Mayu running next to him.
"Have your birds found them?" he asked Mayu, who brought her hands together to make the bird seal.
"They can't get near without being detected, but it looks like Hidan is headed straight for the forest," she said, her voice tinged with relief.
"And Kakuzu?"
"None of them see him."
"Alright. Keep the bird on Hidan, but make sure it's not detected, and keep the other birds searching for Kakuzu. Have Rai and Sai reached the end of the forest yet?"
"They've just reached the other end," Mayu confirmed. "They'll be out of range soon."
"Good, keep your birds with them for as long as you – " Naruto broke off and his eyes widened. Without even enough time to shout, he raised up his tantō to protect himself.
With a grunt, Naruto had just barely managed to raise it in time before a powerful kick slammed into the flat side of his blade, sending him flying backward. Still struggling to hold his tantō in front of him, Naruto dug the heels of his sandals into the ground and felt the wet earth wedging alongside his soles from the sheer force behind the kick. Finally, he came to a stop, his legs covered with cold slabs of mud.
"What happened?" he heard Mayu gasp.
The dark figure that had attacked him out of seemingly nowhere hadn't followed him, choosing instead to cross his arms and regard Naruto with an almost leisurely interest.
"Hm...you're quite fast on your feet," said a deep voice; it was the one who had been with Hidan, the one named Kakuzu. It was still too dark to make out his features; all Naruto could make out in the dim light was a dark, bulky outline.
"How did you find us so quickly?" Naruto asked, his heart pounding in his ears.
"I commend you for thinking of using the wind in your favor as quickly as you did. I'll admit, I was fooled at first, thinking the four of you had split and headed separately for the forest. In fact, I'm pretty sure my idiot of a partner is even now still headed for the forest. But unfortunately for you two...I'm not him." With that, Kakuzu suddenly shot forward, heading straight toward them – but this time, Naruto was ready.
He held his hand out before him, urging his chakra together. Rapidly, streams of blue light began to encircle his palm, swirling faster and faster until it had formed a tight ball.
Digging his heels into the earth, Naruto sent lightning chakra into his feet, igniting his nerves – and with an explosive sound, he too kicked off, raising his hand into the air to meet Kakuzu.
"So you're a ninja, big guy?" The girl he had fondly nicknamed 'grapefruit-breasts' slapped lightly at his knee, rubbing her namesake against his arms. She was dressed in a chinese-style qipao dress that was slit dangerously high up along her thigh.
"Gwahahaha! I'm not just a ninja," Jiraiya let out a loud laugh, his face flushed red with sake. "I'm one of the legendary Sannin – they call me Jiraiya the great Toad Sage!"
"Wow, a Sannin," gushed the identically-dressed blonde girl on his other side, who he'd tenderly nicknamed 'bubble butt.' She paused, tapping a manicured nail against her plump lips. "What's that again, Fukumi?"
"Gosh Fukuyu, don't you know? It's like - like - you know, that communist guy."
"Stalin?" said bubble butt dubiously.
Jiraiya had no idea what they were talking about.
Women, he thought affectionately.
Following the advice of the fisherman he'd met at The Wet Dog, Jiraiya had soon managed to find himself in the shadowy region of the harbor city, where he'd been welcomed with open arms into the private room of a slightly more trashed bar. Guzzling down fried squid and vats of sake with a beautiful woman on each arm, Jiraiya was having a hard time remembering what he'd been so serious about just hours ago.
"So what're you here in Wave country for?" Grapefruit-breasts had returned her attention to Jiraiya, and was now lazily stroking his chest with her long nails.
"What else but to meet you ladies?" Jiraiya said as smoothly as possible – an effect that was slightly ruined by his missing his mouth with his cup, spilling some sake on his shoulder instead.
"Oh, you're so silly!" Bubble butt giggled. "Let me guess - you're on some super top-secret ninja mission, aren't you?"
"I can't say," Jiraiya said regretfully, closing his eyes in sorrow. "If I did tell you, I'd have to kill you. And if you two ladies were gone from this world, what meaning would be left to living?"
The two women burst into high-pitched giggling, clutching at his arms.
"You can tell us! None of us will remember in the morning, anyways," Grapefruit-breasts said in a sing-song voice, this time rubbing her breasts along the nape of Jiraiya's neck.
"Not after what we plan on doing with you, anyways..." Bubble butt breathed into his ear, her breath coming out hotly against his skin.
At her words, Jiraiya's eyes widened and he fell into a fit of coughing. When he'd finally regained his breath, he wheezed, "So - where were we?"
"But first - what's the magic word?" Grapefruit-breasts jumped up on his back playfully and wrapped her arms around his neck.
"The magic word?" He blinked.
Bubble butt wrapped her arms around his arm possessively. "You know...the word you have to say to get anywhere here."
"Wahaha! Oh, that one!" he said, thinking back to the fisherman with bad teeth.
Grapefruit-breasts' cold fingers caressed his face. "Yes, that one."
"'Akatsuki,' wasn't it?" Jiraiya said lightly.
"Wrong," Bubble butt hissed.
Jiraiya's eyes widened, but before he could do anything, Grapefruit-breast's weak grip on his head immediately turned iron-strong and she twisted her hands, snapping his neck. At the same time, with a flash of gleaming steel, Bubble butt's hand slashed across the front of his exposed neck. Warm blood spurted out, dotting her expressionless face with red.
The two women let go of the Sannin and backed away; with a thud, the body dropped to the floor of the room. The white hair fanning around it added a sense of finality to their deed.
"See?" said the blonde, looking down at the body with a slight sneer on her face. "There was nothing to be nervous about."
Her partner poked the body with the heel of her pumps. "Zabuza-sama said he'd be strong, though."
"Give a ninja a woman and some sake and he's only a man," the blonde said sagely.
"I guess so...are you sure he was a Sannin?"
"That would be 'is' not 'was,'" said a voice from behind them.
Stiffening in shock, the blonde let out a cry of alarm, but before she could do anything else, something long and white had wrapped itself around both of the girls' bodies, immobilizing them. Squirming fruitlessly to free themselves, they saw before them the ninja they had just killed regarding them with a grave look on his face.
"But how?" cried out the blonde. She looked down at the ground – just in time to see the dead Sannin and the puddle of blood explode into a cloud of smoke, leaving nothing behind. Her heart pounding painfully against her ample chest, she slowly raised her eyes to meet the other ninja's, and what she saw there made her tremble.
"Now ladies," said Jiraiya. "Where were we?"
Missing Kakuzu by what felt like the width of a hair, Naruto's Rasengan slammed into the earth, sending out a great wave of mud. Before Naruto could move out of the way, his face crumpled in pain as he felt a crushing force slam into his ribs, sending him flying backwards. Then even before he'd landed, Kakuzu was right in front of him again – moving as fast as he could, Naruto ducked low below his leg, and kicked out sideways in a leg sweep, but dodging that, Kakuzu jumped high into the air.
Grimacing in pain, Naruto propelled himself after him with another crackle of lightning chakra, flashing into the air just above Kakuzu. With his teeth gritted, he concentrated on the ball of blue chakra materializing in his hand, determined to take advantage of his aerial position.
The moonlight was just behind him, and in that instant Naruto could finally make out what Kakuzu looked like. Dressed in a large black cloak that was fluttering in the wind, the man's face was mostly covered, but Naruto could see a pair of green pupil-less eyes staring straight back at him. They widened, as Naruto's hand plunged straight for the man's heart –
But in a smooth motion that seemed almost impossibly fast, Kakuzu's arm struck out at Naruto's hand, driving it outward so that it missed him, and with another turning kick that connected on his shoulder, sent him crashing down into the ground.
With another grimace, Naruto managed to twist on his hands to lessen the impact – which still sent out even more waves of mud in every direction, separating him from Kakuzu. As they waited for the mud to settle, Naruto hastened to clamber to his feet. Seeing tiny stars circling around him, he swayed – and then almost jumped, as suddenly, a raucous sound – was that squawking? – filled the air.
"Naruto!" He heard Mayu call out urgently. He turned and saw not only Kakuzu bearing down on him, but further back, what looked like a dense, dark cloud descending upon them. Immediately understanding her intention, he struggled to gather himself together – and then flashed away, dodging just in time Kakuzu's leg.
Landing a safe distance away, Naruto saw the flock of shrieking birds set instead on Kakuzu, screeching and nipping at the ninja. Impatiently, the man batted at the bird, ripping it in two – but instantly, the parts recombined back into a whole bird once more. This time, Kakuzu kicked out widely, destroying almost half the flock – but again, the birds reformed, and continued to peck at him. Lowering his leg, Kakuzu made a tsking sound of impatience; seemingly deciding to ignore the birds for now, he instead returned his gaze back to Naruto.
"I didn't realize," Kakuzu growled, sounding as if he were talking to himself. Whereas he had only regarded Naruto with passing interest before, his concentration was now wholly on him. For some reason, his eyes seemed especially fixated on Naruto's hair.
"What is your purpose for attacking us here?" Naruto called out, with a pant. Kakuzu took a step toward him, and his eyes narrowing, Naruto lowered himself into a defensive stance before continuing.
"You're an intelligent one, aren't you?" said Kakuzu, not sounding even the slightest bit winded. "At least, more so than the last jinchūriki we captured."
Naruto froze. As if an eraser had wiped across the chalkboard of his mind, everything went blank.
From a distance, he heard Mayu speak up, her voice tight with anxiety. "'Captured'? What do you mean?"
Kakuzu opened his mouth as if to answer – and then suddenly, he stumbled. A look of fleeting surprise flashed across his face.
"What's this...?" Kakuzu held a hand up to his head, as if holding himself steady. A shadow of a bird's wing flashed across his face, and as he looked around at the birds, understanding filled his expression. "Ah...the birds."
"My birds have poison on their beaks," Mayu said shakily. "And once a sufficient amount reaches your heart, it'll stiffen the heart muscle until it becomes so hard, it completely stops pumping blood, rendering it useless."
"I see," said Kakuzu. His hand dropped to his side. He looked at Mayu, his strange eyes glinting. "How fortunate for me, then, that I have multiple."
Before Mayu could react, Kakuzu exploded forward. He ignored Naruto, and as if in slow motion, Naruto blankly watched Kakuzu go straight past him. His eyes trailed from the moving ninja to, just ahead, the target – a pale, shaking form with widened eyes.
Where have I seen this before?
The nostalgia of the scene, as if clubbing Naruto in the head, brought him back into his senses.
"Mayu!" Naruto cried out. With a painful crackle, lightning chakra swept through his entire body, and he flung himself forward.
Moving faster than he could ever remember moving before, Naruto got in front of Mayu – but before he could do anything else, Kakuzu's kick connected with his chest, making a terrible crushing sound. The force behind it was powerful enough to send the two of them flying into the air before careening into the muddy ground.
With the wind knocked right out of him and his ribs screaming at him – he was fairly certain they were at the very least fractured, if not broken – it was all Naruto could manage to land on his two feet. To his relief, he heard Mayu land on her feet as well; with Naruto having taken most of the impact, it seemed that she was unharmed.
He felt something warm trickle down his chin, and when he raised a hand to wipe it off, it came away red.
Calmly, Kakuzu lowered his leg and looked straight at him. Panting, and with his teeth gritted, Naruto regarded the ninja.
The way Kakuzu seemed to always be one step ahead of him and the way Naruto's attacks seemed to be a mere hindrance, rather than an actual threat...it was almost like fighting Kakashi. But in this case, a Kakashi who did not care at all for his well-being.
One thing was for sure – Kakuzu was too strong for him.
Naruto wiped away another trickle of blood from his mouth.
What should I do?
Clearly, fighting Kakuzu one-on-one the way he was now would only get both him and Mayu killed. Even fighting two-on-one was also out of the question; Mayu was a long-range support ninja, and one of her most offensive weapons – the flock of blue birds – seemed to have no real effect on Kakuzu. Their escape strategy had failed them, and their attempts at reasoning or bargaining with the man had gone nowhere. Worst of all, Kakuzu had talked about jinchūriki as if he'd fought with one personally before – and as if he knew about what Naruto was.
However, that didn't matter, at the moment. What mattered was that Naruto was going to be dead very soon if he couldn't figure out how to take on Kakuzu.
But how? Kakuzu was stronger and faster than him. Naruto couldn't keep using his lightning chakra forever to dodge him, and he'd yet to even show his hand at jutsu. Kakuzu was completely out of his league...so how could Naruto defeat him? What did he have, that Kakuzu didn't have? That Kakashi didn't have?
Naruto felt a cold bead of sweat drip down his temple. He recalled in his mind the words of a year ago – the words of a monster – "You've got guts, if anything. Very well then. Here is a gift for coming this far!"
His hands balled into fists by his side.
He'd told himself that he was merely putting off talking to the beast because he was so busy, but the truth was...he'd never wanted to use its power. But now – what other choice did he have left?
Letting out a deep breath, Naruto forced himself to relax. Closing his eyes and clearing his mind of everything else, he prepared to set foot once more in the long watery corridors of –
"What?" he heard Kakuzu suddenly spoke up, and his eyes flew back open.
Kakuzu had been silently regarding him – occasionally batting aside the birds that still continued to peck at him – but now, his head was tilted upward, as if talking to someone in the sky. After another long silence, Kakuzu bowed his head.
"Very well, then...as you wish." Kakuzu lowered his eyes to meet Naruto's shocked ones. "I'll be back eventually. Prepare yourself."
And then without another word, he disappeared.
A/N: Thanks for your reviews.