Chapter 28: Of Fire and Ice
Disclaimer: Naruto is the work of Kishimoto
One Koujima Hakomi, former Chunin of the Village Hidden in the Mist and also former Hunter-nin as well to the same place watched as the young boy that he just recently killed stood up.
That was impossible.
Even if he didn't directly hit the heart, he had hit a major organ which would cause bleeding severe enough that a person, even a Ninja would die within a minute of the stab wound. Koujima while considering himself modest was a bit of a sadist.
He could've just slit the throat of the boy and be done with it in seconds but habits die hard and he took to stabbing the boy's body instead due to irritation and the fact that the boy was faster than he seemed jumping around using Chakra to boost his speeds that a common Chunin would struggle a bit.
The boy's eyes turned from its bright blue to a deep red, those whiskers marks became even more distinct and he gained a more animal feel with his hair becoming more wild, fangs coming out and nails turning to fangs.
Not to mention the amount of Chakra the boy was throwing around like it was nothing.
But right now, Koujima was not thinking of any of that but rather on what on earth was that killing intent and why it was coming from the boy he had just killed and just stood up like it was nothing. The body itself was twitching rapidly from what he could see and he could also clearly see smoke-steam (?) from the wound while closing it.
"AAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"
And then Koujima heard that roar and the killing intent, the pressure and everything that was telling his instincts to screamandrunawaywasspillingoutoftherunboyfleeallatrunonce!
Naruto felt like he was on fire.
However most of the pain was gone and what was left was a lot of energy and a lot of will to act and lash out at anything in front of him. Mainly the person that was frozen stiff on the spot that almost killed him using that Tanto to stab into him.
And that man took out several Kunais and threw them at him.
"HAAAAAAH!"
Naruto roared a second time, using the massive and thick Chakra to deflect the attacks before rushing in at the enemy-nin using this unknown Chakra to boost himself. His muscles tore from the stress but at the same time, he was healed instantly so there was no difference in movements. Furthermore there was this numbing sense that made pain feel like something non-existent.
He felt great in all from this experience but yet there was this urge to destroy coming from everywhere inside of him.
BAM!
With a single punch, Naruto smashed the enemy-nin from the ground and made him fly away with a distinct crack heard. Even though the enemy-nin blocked using both arms, one of them was immediately broken and the other was injured in a single blow!
"What the hell are you monster?!" the enemy-nin screamed cradling his broken arm with a limp before trying to escape.
However Naruto was already moving before the man regained himself from the attack and tried to escape. Moving quickly, Naruto repositioned himself in front of where the enemy-nin was running and then sent a flying kick to the man's head.
CRUNCH!
With a sickening crack, the man's head was turned backwards and Naruto even in his current state suspected he cleanly cracked the neck and severed the bone from the rest of the body in one go.
"Ha….ha…ha….ha…."
Calming down and the adrenaline from the rather short fight after his supposed death experience, Naruto's eyes and the rest of his body turned back to normal and he felt an extreme amount of exhaustion from the fight.
And then the fact that he killed someone appeared in his thoughts.
'Oh god, I killed someone. Killed someone that I didn't even know. Killedkilledkilled like it was nothing at all' Naruto started to panic at the fact that he actually killed someone.
He despite the 2 years in the Time Loop hadn't ever killed anyone. He wasn't actually sure he killed Zabuza before…that fight…fights were more of a blur to him since they overlapped so much aside from the last fight and the other ones where he failed badly. And besides that, even if he killed Zabuza in one of the previous Time Loops, the loop reset and he didn't need to deal with the fact.
Hell, watching others die before him was much easier.
Even if he sometimes got nightmares of them dying once in a while. He had other things to concentrate about and the fact that they would literally live again made it a bit easier for him to deal with. He never looked at Tazuna the same when he was split vertically in half.
But right now, here was proof he killed.
Killed an enemy for the sake of the mission, the safety of his charge and the safety of his own life. He took it over trying to merely subdue him.
And he didn't even get to the fact he probably used the Kyubi's Chakra then. That was a whole another bag of things he didn't need to deal with right now, from the sheer effects it had on both his body and mind Naruto felt like something heavy was pressing on his heart after he used it.
"Hey…you alright? Is…the man…" a soft and low voice coming from Tsunami was heard by Naruto who turned to look at the woman.
Other than the fact that she was taken hostage and seemingly almost killed and her clothes reflected that fact with some dirt and blood on it, she looked perfectly fine to Naruto. Inari on the other hand was much more shaken up, especially looking at the corpse next to Naruto that the latter was staring at.
"Yeah" Naruto sighed not wanting to deal with this right now after having a small crisis of his own but he had to at least look strong to reassure them, "This place unfortunately isn't safe anymore."
Feeling his Chakra and finding it a bit easier to control compared to before, Naruto made a cross hand-seal and said, "Shadow Clone Jutsu" summoning a squad of three Shadow Clones before turning to the two civilians and ordering them, "Go somewhere safe from here on. These Shadow Clones will help you out if you get into more trouble."
And with that, without wanting to get a response, Naruto used the Body Flicker Jutsu to rush himself to the bridge where the battle was ongoing.
There was already mist there and Sasuke would be in trouble encased in Haku's Ice Style: Demonic Ice Mirrors.
Several minutes later where Naruto rushed to aid his team-mate, the bridge was long since covered in mist and there were sounds of grinding of metal rubbing each other.
Despite part of him wanting to just rush in and help out Sasuke, Naruto knew in his heart that it was much better to hold back a bit and see the whole situation so he could effectively help out. If there was any chance that he could take out Zabuza…Kakashi would be free to deal with Haku.
'I don't really like Zabuza but Haku…Haku is my friend' Naruto paused with a frown.
He doubt that Kakashi would spare Haku without a good idea and he didn't know how Haku would react if Zabuza died. Would she kill Sasuke out of spite? No, Haku was a kind person from what Naruto could tell with his brief meetings with her.
However he didn't want to cause her pain by killing her precious person.
But at the same time, said precious person was currently trying to cut down his precious person. In all, Naruto was generally more selfless than most but he wasn't that selfless to the point where he was willingly allow one of his precious people to die for another's happiness.
That was just stupid and Naruto went back to thinking how to deal with the current situation. Now that Tsunami and Inari were safe, he could deal with what was happening on the bridge. Like the previous loops, he had placed Traps around the bridge but they seemed to be a waste of time, space and resources. He would not place them next time if he failed this loop as well.
'Looks like Sakura and Tazuna are both safe at least on the side of both battles' Naruto while he couldn't see through the mist Zabuza created could hear and smell where everyone was, at least roughly.
Both battles seemed to go on the same as before when he was there at the start. Kakashi was fighting against Zabuza while Sasuke was facing against Haku and was currently trapped in the dome of Ice.
Naruto had no idea where the battle between Kakashi and Zabuza would go. If the battle went to Kakashi, he wouldn't interfere since there was really no point in changing something that was fine to Naruto but if it went to Zabuza instead…Naruto would tip the battle into Kakashi's favour usually with lots of Shadow Clones an explosions.
But back to Sasuke and Haku.
From what he could tell from Sasuke's screams, he was going to lose sooner or later but Naruto could somewhat tell that Haku's Jutsu whatever it was took a good deal of Chakra from her. Naruto estimated her to be around Chunin rank in all but he doubt her reserves were higher than that as well.
Plus she seemed to favour speed indirect combat where she outstripped the enemy in pure speed alone and lacked more detailed Taijutsu skills as a result.
He could work with this.
"Shadow Clone Jutsu" Naruto made the cross hand-seal and summoned a dozen Shadow Clones at once.
They would be split into teams of four. One team would go to observe the battle between Kakashi and Zabuza since he needed to know how that battle would end up even if the mist didn't allow him to know the exact details of the battle.
Another team would protect Tazuna and Sakura frankly because they're a liability and he didn't want the loop to end like that due to the former dying out randomly like his family did the previous loop when Naruto faced the bridge battle for the first time.
The third and fourth team was with him dealing with the Haku situation. Saving Sasuke was the job of one team since he didn't work the emo out of Sasuke for nothing while the other team was in charge of capturing Haku since he didn't want to kill her.
The less said about his first kill being made minutes ago the better.
"You know your jobs, get to it!" Naruto commanded of his clones. All of them save six Shadow Clones that were following him used the Body Flicker Jutsu to disappear in the eyes of a normal person.
As the creator of those Shadow Clones, Naruto could somewhat tell where they were based off the chakra they gave off and only when they used it near him.
Frowning at the strange feeling he got ever since he first used what he suspected to be the Kyubi's chakra, Naruto and his remaining Shadow Clones went towards the ice dome mirrors on one side of the bridge.
Getting closer, Naruto could clearly feel how cold Haku's Jutsu made the surrounding area to be to the point ice mirrors were constructed at the coldest spots.
'Okay, to win this battle there are two options I have. Option 1) Break or melt said Ice Mirrors lowering Haku's battle power enough to defeat her. Option 2) Defeat Haku while she's using said Ice Mirrors' Naruto thought though deciding the first option was clearly the better choice.
"One team try to get Sasuke out of the Ice Dome if you can, the other with me in melting the Ice Mirrors" Naruto whispered only loud enough that his Shadow Clones could hear.
And so four Naruto's made the hand-seals and all breathed in at the same time while mixing and storing the converted fire chakra in his stomach before breathing out at the same time mixing it with the air in his lungs while declaring, "Fire Style: Grand Fireball Jutsu!"
Unfortunately Naruto didn't have a natural affinity to fire or was trained enough in fire affinity that he could make a highly densified ball of fire that would explode on impact like an Uchiha.
However what Naruto did have was a lot of Chakra and three Shadow Clones aiding him in the same attack causing a great wave of fire to hit the outside of the Ice Mirrors.
Burn~
The attack lasted for full five seconds before all of them stopped their attacks. His other team of Shadow Clones disappeared at the same moment he used the Grand Fireball Jutsu, probably to try and get Sasuke but Naruto noticed his plan went wrong when it did.
The first clue was that his three Shadow Clones all died and gave Naruto the memories of trying to snatch Sasuke away and failing before a sharp pain hitting him and dispelling them that way.
The second clue was that said Ice Mirrors were perfectly intact even if it was slightly melted at the ends.
'Crap. Looks like all that effort on learning Fire Jutsus was a bit wasted' Naruto thought. He would need to increase the intensity of the flames without spreading it too much else Sasuke would burn to death.
He would use Chakra Folding for this but his control over Fire in general wasn't the best and losing control would kill him quite badly.
"So you've come here as well" an image of the masked Haku appeared facing him on the ice mirror, "Have you come to save your friend? Too bad he's taken down already. If not then you might've had a chance."
Hearing that monotone voice, Naruto couldn't help but to growl even if it was Haku. She was pretty much provoking him, acting like he wasn't a big deal and it was working…partly. To his left and right, his Shadow Clones were making the hand-seals for another Jutsu but the instant they started to, the image of Haku on the ice mirror flashed.
Poof! Poof! Poof!
In an instant, his Shadow Clones were dispel like that!
'What damn frightening speeds…I was right in thinking getting rid of the Ice Mirror was the best choice consider Haku who was pretty fast to begin with is even faster than before inside them' Naruto thought grimly.
"So what if I am!" Naruto shouted at Haku, "I won't abandon my comrades!"
Using an incomplete concept from that Fire Scroll he got from Sasuke before, Naruto took out several Kunai and started to imbue them with his Chakra. Normally one would imbue weapons with her elemental chakra to get a certain effect.
Fire would burn and corrode what it touches.
Wind would cut anything that got near it.
Lightning would paralyse what it touches.
Earth would harden the blade and make it heavier.
And Water would make the blade flow smoother.
Using any one of these techniques was a skill that mostly only those at least Special Jonin use and was called Chakra Streaming. Unfortunately Naruto was not able to use the full technique at all due to three reasons.
The first was that he had never practised this technique before and as such wouldn't magically use it perfectly even if it killed him. The second was that his chakra control was not fine tune enough to use it on a weapon without damaging it. And the third was that his affinity wasn't currently good enough to steam elemental chakra.
Therefore Naruto bastardised the technique on the moment to steam his own raw chakra into the Kunais which would undoubtedly damage them in one go but at the same time would be stronger than normal.
"Taaaake this!" Naruto leaned back and swung all six chakra imbued Kunai at the singe ice mirror hoping that it would at least break or at worse leave him a distraction where he could send out more Shadow Clones.
If Naruto didn't know better and literally had no other Jutsu to use, he would've just spammed hundreds of Shadow Clones at a time to charge at Haku. At that point she would've run out of weapons to throw and would be forced into a Taijutsu battle.
Else Naruto could've made the battle into one of attrition placing all hope on his extremely high stamina and endurance.
But Naruto wasn't a damn idiot or a samurai that would gladly face the enemy and endure like that! He was a Ninja and as such he would use plan after plan and then trick after trick and finally cheap shot after cheap shot if it meant him winning!
And because Naruto was making himself bait with over exaggerated movements when he attacked, Haku didn't notice the Shadow Clones that didn't get killed by Haku left their stations and moved to take her down.
Three on the left.
Three on the right.
And all of them were making hand-seals for the Grand Fireball Jutsu at the same time after making more Shadow Clones to get the most effective amount of fire with the chakra levels that each Shadow Clone had.
The Grand Fire Jutsu while a C-rank Jutsu had a pretty good to pretty bad chakra consumption depending on the amount of flames you made and the intensity of it. Right now each of the Shadow Clones to the sides were using as much chakra to convert in the hottest flames that they could make.
"Fire Style: Grand Fireball Jutsu!"
And due to that, the flames instead of being a minor red was a bright orange that was moving onto a slightly yellow colour here and there in the mix.
"What?!" Haku was startled seeing her ice mirrors being attacked and not to mention the rate they were melting weren't that slow compared to before.
However Haku wasn't someone who lived most of her life was one of the Seven Swordsmen of the Mist and was good enough to pretend to be a Hunter-nin for nothing. Since the flames were focused on a certain side of her Ice Dome, all she needed to do was either leave for the other side of the Ice Dome else focus Chakra to reinforce the areas being melted first.
Haku considered her Chakra levels first and decided it was just easier to recreate the Ice Mirrors after Naruto expended his Chakra inside her Ice Dome.
And with that, Haku disappeared from her current mirror into another using her ability to travel through the ice mirrors though Naruto didn't see that happening due to all the flames.
'I have a feeling something's wrong…' Naruto frowned even though Haku theoretically be still inside that one she was trapped in.
And Naruto was once more right since he widened his eyes seeing a perfectly unharmed Haku on the other side of the Ice Dome looking as neutral as she could with a mask on which was a lot. How on Earth Haku managed to escape, Naruto did not know but he knew that this battle would be a lot more troublesome than he thought it would be.
Her Bloodline Limit gave her a severely large advantage over him and there was Sasuke there on the ground unconscious as well. They were Ninjas and she knew he would protect his comrades no matter what.
Furthermore he couldn't support Sasuke immediately on the bridge due to the issue of the Mizu-nin from before who would capture and possibly kill either Tsunami or Inari if he did go with the rest of the team.
Kakashi was needed against Zabuza.
Sakura couldn't beat the Mizu-nin.
And Sasuke would never protect the two in exchange of a battle against Haku…probably. He could possibly spin the story that he would fight a Chunin if he guarded them so he deal with Haku without him.
That may work in all though he wasn't sure Sasuke was strong enough to beat a Chunin like the one he took down, well he could just try one Loop and…shit Senbons!
Being distracted in a battle was a horrible thing that seemed to be happening more often now and he needed to stomp down on that habit. The battle was right now and he could consider whatever later on!
Rapidly making hand-seals while dodging more attacks from Haku using Chakra Enhancement for the speed needed he cried out, "Fire Style: Phoenix Fire Jutsu!" while splitting out several small fireballs at several Ice Mirrors at once.
And then Naruto noticed something vital.
Haku wasn't recovering the Ice Mirrors as fast as she did before, he almost laughed at that. The battle was going to be one of attrition after all.
"Looks like you're slowing down" Naruto dodging every more attacks.
Haku paused for a second before saying, "If that's the case then I believe I have little use for your comrade here. I spared him out of mercy before but now he may just die if it means you won't have your victory."
Naruto paled at that.
Why did he taunt the girl with weapons that could take down a Jonin with a single hit easily and has his comrade as a hostage? Right, he was being full of himself again and just had to taunt her and made her notice she was slowing down.
As Haku motioned to throw the finishing blows to Sasuke, Naruto leaped to protect him remembering he words of one mysterious stranger. Except for himself and Tazuna's family, every else was free game for the time loop.
If…Kakashi won and Sasuke died in the same loop and a checkpoint appeared…
No, he wouldn't allow that. Forcing and pumping more Chakra into his legs, Naruto burst forth to protect Sasuke the only way he could using even the high speed Body Flicker Jutsu for extra speed. He leaped into the Sebons that were for Sasuke.
"Ahhhhhh!" Naruto screamed at the pain before deciding he had another plan in mind to savage this situation as best as he could.
Right now, Shadow Clones were mostly useless chakra waste because Haku could rapidly take down a dozen or two at once before he could do anything meaningful with them. However while as painful as it was, his body could take more hits.
And if he could drag the unconscious Sasuke out…and maybe give him to Sakura and hope she doesn't molest and rape him…
Well the latter would be more humorous and sad if they would reflect on it but first he needed to get Sasuke out. With a flick of his hand, he grabbed a handful of Shuriken and threw them at the Ice Mirrors knowing they wouldn't do anything at all to Haku.
Naruto grabbed onto Sasuke and picked him up roughly with little regard to his injuries since right now he was a liability and he was wasting time if he considered anything but escaping from the ice dome.
"Let's go Teme" Naruto cursed Sasuke at that moment as when he turned around to escape from the gap in the Ice Mirror, there were Ice Mirrors blocking the way.
To be precise they were most likely the Ice Mirrors that Haku made replacing the ones that he melted down before with his Fire Jutsu using several Shadow Clones to just do that. Haku made them in the precise moments that Naruto went through the gap and into the centre of the Ice Dome and when he was distracted with saving Sasuke and before he even turned around.
All of that was less than 3 seconds in total.
Haku was playing him for a fool all this time.
'Slowing down my ass! All of it was probably a trap to lure me into the Ice Dome so she could have her way with me while slowly making me an example of modern art!' Naruto thought angrily, 'Hell she apparently can teleport between Ice Mirrors as well considering there was no way she could've gotten out of one without being burnt.'
"So this was your plan? Fake your Ice Mirrors breaking, taunting me by threatening the life of my comrade before luring me with said threat and trapping me into this Ice Dome with you" Naruto said slowly with an even gaze at Haku.
The best he could do right now was to stall.
Stall for time as much as he could! There was a small change that something unexpected could happen and he could get out of this situation without him dying or falling unconscious…either one seems to lead to him failing the Loop and restarting either way.
"That is right" Haku stated in a monotone voice.
And at the same moment, Haku's image was split between each and every Ice Mirror and Naruto knew what was going to come He gulped as he saw Haku's images all taking the same stance as him with three Sebon in between his knuckles and all of them making a throwing stance.
"As a means of pride, your flames were at least hotter than the Uchiha's even if he managed to awaken his Sharingan, even he could not dodge attacks from every direction at once."
And with those words, Naruto went into a world of pain as Sebon pierced his body and he gradually fell into unconscious…or death.
Checkpoint 4: Loop 5 End (Total Loops 63)
A/N:
Yo, its been and while and I've been procrastinating quite a bit. Chapter 29 isn't even finished yet. Reading new novels, playing GW2 with friends and writing another fic I'm still working on does that to you.
Oh and XCOM 2 came out...going to play that.
Anyway I'm going to address something right now.
Sasuke.
The Emo-Uchiha and the fact that people are complaining that I'm apparently making him too strong or something. Seriously, there can't be that much hate for the guy...right?
*Looks at everything said Emo-Uchiha did in Part 2 of the series...*
Riggggggggggght, I see...yeah he literally die to me when he went all Yandere for Itachi.
Sasuke was actually one of my better liked characters in Part 1. He was a good rival to Naruto and had this 'cool' feeling to him added to the fact that he did stuff in a much cooler looking way than Naruto did.
Hey, I was like...12...I think when that opinion popped up.
So yeah, I liked Part 1 Sasuke where he was actually growing as a person even when he left for Orchimaru that fight at the Valley of the End made it awesome. Then Part 2 Sasuke appeared and -Ohgodwhyaopenshirtheissogay!- pretty much ruined his character with his 6 year old self mentality.
Seriously, 6 year old post-massacre Sasuke. He literally reverted back age wise in mentality there with his obsession.
Then there's the part where I made Naruto call Sasuke a Genius and people bitching about it. Frankly, look at it in Naruto's perspective. Sasuke was always ahead of him in the Academy.
He was always first in tests (Presuming since he's rookie of the year), always first in those throwing tests, always first in spars and anything that Naruto finds to be important for a Ninja. And to Naruto, Sasuke does it all effortlessly.
Naruto has never seen what Itachi did and could never have compared Sasuke to him. To Naruto, Sasuke was the genius and always better. To Sasuke, Itachi was the genius and always better.
To someone who never seen a true Genius, a Prodigy like Sasuke would seem like a Genius.
Not to mention that fact that it took Itachi being near blind due to his Mangekyo Sharingan and nearly dead due to a disease to his lungs (Cancer) and also taking pills to postpone his life for Sasuke to almost beat Itachi...well...more like Itachi finally died due to the strain of Susanno.
Seriously imagine a perfectly healthy EMS Itachi without a disease killing him and his stamina. God of Shinobi material there.
So yeah, Naruto will eventually realise that Sasuke isn't catching up to him and that puts things into perspective of how things could really screw up with the plot.
Also, about Sasuke losing to Haku.
Serious Haku has freaking Ice Mirrors and can apparently throw from all range. Sharingan cannot beat that with Sasuke's abilities at the time. How does (s)he not take down Sasuke immediately in Canon?
Haku was literally playing with them the entire time and was holding back in Canon. Here...Naruto was missing and Haku had no reason on at least taking out Sasuke quickly without killing him before Naruto came.
