Legends of the Fox

Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto. Never will, don't want to. But it's fun to dabble!

Chapter Twenty Eight: The Legendary Three

Are you ready?

There's a voice in the back of every ninja's mind before they go on a mission. Not everyone listens to it, if they let their emotions or their inexperience speak louder.

It doesn't matter if that mission is a high level assassination or a lowly gardening job: the voice is always there. The wise listen to it; the foolhardy ignore it.

In the back of Haruno Sakura's mind the voice was speaking loud and clear.

Are you ready?

"Sakura-san, it's time."

She stood up from her desk, and slipped on her flak jacket.

Are you ready?

Uchiha Sasuke had problems with voices. They haunted him.

The voice of his father.

"As expected of my son."

The voice of his mother.

"You're all he talks about."

The voice of his brother.

"I win."

Sasuke held his head clutched in his hands and moaned. The words didn't stop.

"I win. I win. I win. I win. I win."

"SHUT UP!"

The world spun, and Sasuke felt everything distort around him. It didn't make any sense.

"Sssshhhh," a soft voice came from beside him. Yamanaka Ino put her hands around her lover's neck and soothed him with her words, with her hands, with her soul.

Are you ready?

That was one voice Sasuke couldn't afford to ignore. He had his duty, and he had his strength. He owed a debt, and those two things were the only way he had to repay it.

He stood and walked out the door. With every step away the voices muted. He knew they'd be back.

Are you ready?

Standing high above the village of the Hidden Leaf, one man in his hat and his robes overlooked it all. His village, his home, his realm. He couldn't remember a time when he hadn't dreamt of doing this, and now it had been two years since Uzumaki Naruto had taken over from Tsunade. Two years since he had become the Rokudaime Hokage.

"Naruto-kun, is it time?"

Standing behind Naruto was the woman he loved. The woman he had loved for longer than he'd been Hokage. The woman who had loved him for almost as long as he'd dreamt of wearing those same robes and that same hat.

Naruto turned, took Hinata into his arms and kissed her deeply. Then just as deeply he stared into her white eyes. She was beautiful.

"It's time."

Naruto took off those robes, and underneath he wore his orange and black battle suit, with his flak jacket over the top.

He heard the voice.

Are you ready?

And he answered.

"I'm ready."

Chakra surged to Naruto's legs and he leapt forward, soaring above the village. Far beneath him the people of Konoha looked to the sky in wonder. Their Hokage was amazing.

As Naruto passed over the boundary of the village he began to fall. Fast. But chakra swirled around his hands, and huge, powerful gusts of wind came forth. He focused them down, and his descent slowed.

He landed neatly, one knee bent to the ground, between his two team-mates.

"Did you have to do that, dobe?" Sasuke asked with a smirk. "Flashy entrances are such a Genin thing to do."

"Ohh yeah, nice idea there you bastard… But I suppose you're the expert on Genin, since you were one for… what? Six years? Hey, if you miss it I can arrange for you to be demoted with my mad Hokage powers."

Sakura punched them both lightly, and after they picked themselves up from their respective craters the two men had a more serious expression on their faces.

"How many are there?" Sasuke asked grimly.

"Reports say somewhere between two and three thousand."

"Small fries?" Sakura said hopefully.

"No such luck," Naruto replied. "Mostly Jounin, and the Chuunins backing them up are ANBU trained or equivalent. The army of the Cloud, and they've gathered every missing-nin with a grudge against the Leaf they could find. They made a pretty big mistake though…"

"…they think they can win, right?" Sakura grinned. She stretched her hand out and presented it to her two best friends. "To Team Seven."

Naruto and Sasuke's hands joined hers. "To Team Seven," they intoned together.

"How far away are they?" Sakura asked, holding out her hand to Naruto, who reached into his kunai holster and pulled out a strange kunai with seals marked on its handle. He tossed it towards the pink-haired woman, who deftly caught it.

"They should be about fifteen miles north of here."

"Just about right then," the kunoichi said with a sly smile. "Here we go!"

Sakura spun her body around and with precision perfect control of her chakra let the kunai fly loose incredibly fast up into the air. The sound of the air snapping filled the three ninja's ears, and Sakura and Sasuke grabbed hold of Naruto's shoulders. Sakura whispered a few words and a genjutsu shimmered around the team.

"Ten… nine… eight…" Naruto counted down, eyes on his watch. "three… two… UZUMAKI HIRAISHIN NO JUTSU!"

The three ninjas flickered out of view in a spiral of at the outskirts of the Leaf village, and at that exact moment fifteen miles away they flickered back into sight, with Naruto's hand around the kunai Sakura had thrown.

They appeared a few metres above the ground, and landed gently on the grass plain. Naruto nodded to Sasuke, "You take the rear. I'll go straight in," Naruto turned to face Sakura "And we'll do the Stomp routine from here."

The army was dead ahead of them, thousands of highly trained and deadly warriors, with jutsus and powers and abilities from all over the world. Some of the most infamous missing-nins ever made up its numbers, and every last one of them dedicated to destroying the Leaf and the things Uzumaki Naruto, Haruno Sakura and Uchiha Sasuke held dear.

Sasuke's chakra surged and activated, and in a blur of motion faster than the eye could see he was gone, circling at super-speed behind the Cloud's forces. And with that, the genjutsu hiding them was now useless. Sakura and Naruto were fully visible to the whole army, making them targets.

But that was all part of the plan.

Naruto took a step forward, and deep within his mind he flipped a hidden switch. Red, raw power roared into his veins, and to the rapidly approaching army the battle aura of the Demon Fox burned into their sense. It was as if their minds were on fire as the sheer enormity of the chakra pushed back at them. It felt evil, bestial, demonic. The pressure broke the minds of many of the army's shinobi, and they in turn broke their ranks. Just contact with Naruto's blood-red eyes, with that gaze angrier than anything humanly possible, sent the army into disarray.

As the weaker-willed ninjas scattered, as soon as they left the safety of the amassed crowd something cut them down. Something moving faster than they had thought possible sliced straight through them, leaving only the crackling of lightning and the sound of flocks upon flocks of birds chirping.

From the front the army faced the monstrous power of a demon. From the rear something was slaughtering them the moment they moved.

They were trapped. There was nowhere for them to go; nowhere was safe.

The man with the eyes of a demon stepped towards the scared and shocked army and jumped into the air. He performed a set of seals calmly, and from behind a huge cloud of smoke a gigantic frog appeared in mid-air above the Cloud-nin army, casting a shadow over them.

The Hokage opened his mouth and shouted out the word "FROG…" The beautiful pink-haired woman accompanying him, who up until then had done nothing to make the army fear her, leapt into the air and with one hand on the enormous frog forced it down. Her incredible strength was enough to make the frog's slow fall accelerate dramatically, and as the amphibian crashed into the ground with the force of an earthquake, the kunoichi finished the attack name her companion had started "…STOMP!"

Again, those who scattered to avoid being crushed by the Frog Stomp combination attack found themselves sliced in half by a blade of lightning. Dozens of ninjas died in such quick succession that it was as if there were a thousand deadly swords blocking their path, and not just one man with the sword of the Thousand Birds.

The giant frog disappeared, and Uzumaki Naruto and Haruno Sakura landed back on the ground next to each other. The air blurred and bent, and beside them was Uchiha Sasuke.

"All the babies dealt with?" Sakura asked.

"The ones you didn't crush I killed." Sasuke replied.

"Good then, now the adults can get down to business." Naruto concluded.

The three Leaf-nins stood in a line facing the remains of the army. The army of two thousand had been cut down to just a few hundred, but these survivors were the truly powerful of their original numbers. Only the weak had been removed.

Each of the three extended their right hands in a fist, their thumbs pointed down, and then with a practised precision brought those thumbs up to their teeth as one, and bit down. Blood coming from the small tears in their skin, the three performed their seals and pushed their right palms down to the ground, saying three words: "Summoning no Jutsu!"

When the smoke cleared, Naruto stood on the head of the Boss Frog, Gamabunta, with his scarred eye and giant sword. Sasuke stood on the head of the Boss Snake, Manda, with his purple scales and evil yellow eyes. Sakura stood on the head of the Boss Slug, Katsuyu, with her blue skin and white antennae.

"Let's do this!" Yelled Naruto. "Gamabunta, let's go!"

Manda hissed, "HOW DARE YOU ASK ME TO FIGHT ALONGSIDE THAT IDIOT FROG?"

Sasuke pointed at the army. "You can eat as many of them as you want. Unless of course you let the dobe and Gamabunta beat you to it."

"YOU'LL TAKE THOSE WORDS BACK!" Manda sped towards the enemy, lunging his enormous head at them and snapping his jaws that could devour dozens of men and women whole.

Sakura sighed. "Boys will be boys."

"TELL ME ABOUT IT," Katsuyu said with a rumbling laugh that came out far too bubbly and slimy for anything close to a human throat to have made.

The three massive summoned beasts and the shinobi they carried advanced on the remaining forces. Gamabunta drew his kodachi, swinging it down at the Cloud-nins and their allies. Manda snapped and bit at them, greedily swallowing the weakest of the opposing force. Katsuyu spat out balls of acid that burned the shinobi whole, not even leaving their bones intact.

While most of the Cloud army were overwhelmed by this surprising show of power, some few simply moved on with their counter measures, fighting back. One man bit his own thumb and performed his own seals, and into the battle arrived a giant wolf the same size as the Leaf summons. Atop Fenri's head the summoner panted in exhaustion but directed the Boss Wolf at his enemies.

Other ninjas summoned their own creatures to fight, but no others could manage to call upon enough chakra to bring the boss creature of their animal contract. Hawks, tigers, lions and other animals littered the battlefield, throwing themselves valiantly at the superior power of the three Leaf-nins.

Fenri matched his fangs and claws against Gamabunta's blade, catching the kodachi in his mouth and slashing into the frog's skin, drawing huge spurts of blood. The Frog Boss let the hilt go and jumped into the air, shooting out three huge balls of compressed water. The first impacted with Fenri's back, forcing his mouth open and the blade out as the second and third balls hit the giant wolf's head in quick succession.

The Wolf Boss groaned with a voice loud and deep enough to shake the ground and collapsed. Before his head could hit the ground he disappeared, back to his own world.

"You go back too," Naruto murmured to Gamabunta.

"WHAT?! I CAN STILL FIGHT!"

"Do it Boss, you're injured. I can take it from here."

Still grumbling, the giant frog disappeared into smoke as well, and Uzumaki Naruto, Sixth Hokage of the Hidden Leaf adroitly somersaulted down to solid ground. At the precise moment that his sandaled feet touched down on the grass he split from one body into a hundred, each wearing the bright orange and black clothes he was famous for. The Leaf's Orange Shadow prepared to fight, and beneath his head protector the Leaf Seal burned darkly.

With supreme skill the Kage Bunshins of the Rokudaime spread out and claimed their targets, weaving between the spouts of acid spewed out by Katsuyu and Manda's sharp, snapping jaws. Sakura and Sasuke laughed and jumped down from the heads of their summons as well, joining their comrade in the fray.

Haruno Sakura had learned from her master well. Thanks to the ultimate skill of chakra control that she possessed her strength was the greatest on the planet. With one punch she could send an enemy flying for miles, and with her surgical precision she could kill or revive a man with the slightest touch. She fought with just as much precision, using her gifted mind to quickly and carefully calculate her best option at any time.

Uchiha Sasuke was no slouch either. He was one of the world's supreme taijutsu masters, with the moves and styles of hundreds of fighters perfectly crystallised within his Sharingan eyes. He could flow in combat like no one else, switching from one style to another and matching whatever his opponents could muster. His red eyes saw all and recorded every single movement and jutsu for his own use. He was untouchable.

Although Uzumaki Naruto was capable of just as much skill, control and precision as his two teammates, just as often on battle he would fight like a beast, unleashing a power greater than any in the world. Even without the ultimate chakra of the demon Kyuubi Naruto possessed more chakra and stamina than any other ninja alive. The only ones who could come close to challenging him in that regard were his teammates and the Kazekage of the Sand.

The battle raged on, but for every moment that passed another of the Cloud's army fell, and no one stood to replace the fallen. In contrast, there was not even a scratch on any of the three Leaf-nins. Every wound that was inflicted on Uzumaki Naruto - and there were few at that – simply healed within seconds. Sasuke was too fast and too skilled for anyone to touch him, as his Sharingan told him their every move before they even knew it. And Sakura, though she was dealt some few injuries, possessed the skill to simply close them with a gesture and a flow of healing chakra.

It did not take long for the enemy numbers to fall down into single digits. And that voice was still in the minds of Team Seven, still asking its silent question.

Naruto smiled.

Are you ready?

"You better believe I am," he said, his kunai slashing through the air, and into history.

Author's Note: Finally another chapter. All I can say to apologize is that I had a killer case of writer's block. And, of course, I'm sorry.

You all should check out "The Flower and the Butterfly", written by a good friend of mine. It's short but good, and Chouji fics are too rare for this one to go by without getting any recognition.

Thanks, and please review my story as well!