Like all borders, the border of the Land of Stones was heavily patrolled. Iruka had been expecting to run into another enemy, but expecting it didn't make it any easier. His muscles already ached from fatigue, and from the look of the Iwa ninja, this fight would not be an easy one.
"What do you think you're doing on our land, Konoha shinobi?" the bearded Iwanin demanded to know.
"Just passing through," Iruka answered steadily. "I'm trying to get back to Konoha, so please let me pass."
"Not gonna happen," the Iwa shinobi flatly informed him. With a resigned grimace, Iruka let Tenten down off his back. He shunted the three children back behind him with one hand as he pulled out a handful of shuriken.
"I don't want to start a fight, but I will if that's what I have to do to get past you."
"Let's see what you've got, Konoha ninja," the Iwa ninja sneered. He leaped forward, battle-hungry. Iruka rushed to meet him and threw a triad of shuriken, which came so close to the opposing ninja's beard that they took off a couple of hairs. Unintimidated, the shinobi continued in his charge until he was brought up short by invisible threads.
"These shuriken have strings attached," Iruka informed him, yanking them taut to fasten the ninja to the trunk of a tree. "That should keep you preoccupied for a while." For the finishing touch, he tied several knots in the line. "Come on, Naruto, Tenten, Lee," Iruka called them over wearily.
"Do we have to run again, Sensei?" moaned Naruto. "My feet hurt. . ."
"That may be, Naruto, but we have to keep going," Iruka told him for what seemed like the hundredth time.
From behind them, the Iwanin spoke. "You're not going anywhere, Konoha ninja. This is child's play!" The twang of snapping wires made Iruka whirl around. The Iwa ninja flexed his arms and broke the strings like spider webs. "My turn now!" He began pulling out kunai knives and throwing them at Iruka without letting up. Iruka barely had time to wrap his arms around all three children and jump out of the way.
The attack was a furious one. The place where Iruka had been standing was showered with a ruthless stream of kunai knives. There must have been fifty of them in all. "Iruka-sensei!" Tenten yelped when she saw the knives embedded in her teacher's forearms. "He got you!"
"I'm fine, Tenten," Iruka reassured her. "Now, listen to me, all of you. I want you to wait until he's completely focused on me, and then run."
"Run where, Sensei?" asked Lee.
"See the sun? It's starting to go down in the west now. Head away from it, to the east. Do you understand me?"
"Yes, Sensei!" Tenten and Lee shouted out. Naruto didn't look happy.
"I want to stay with you, Iruka-sensei," he begged.
"I'm your leader, and you do as I say, Naruto," Iruka said firmly. "Do you hear me?" Naruto let out a groan of reluctance. Iruka held their gazes for a moment before going to confront his opponent. "You want to fight me so badly?" He pulled out the kunai from his forearms and tossed them onto the grass. The gauntlet had been thrown. "Come and get me."
Tenten, Lee, and Naruto watched from behind the tree where Iruka had left them. Their teacher held his own at first. He battled the Iwa ninja blow for blow, and they seemed evenly matched. But Iruka was fatigued from the long journey. The other shinobi began to gain the upper hand. More and more of his attacks scored hits on Iruka.
"Well," Lee whispered hesitantly as his master's body was thrown to the ground, "the enemy is focused on Iruka-sensei now."
"Yeah. W-we'd better run, like he said," Tenten agreed without much conviction. They frowned at one another, and each of them grabbed one of Naruto's arms before he could protest. The three of them ran in the opposite direction of the fighting, in the opposite direction of the sun, obedient to their master. But little Naruto had no intention of being obedient. He wrenched his arms free of their grasp and yelled at them angrily.
"If you guys wanna run when Iruka-sensei is in trouble, then do it!" He pointed back the way they'd come. "I'm going back to help him!" Turning on his heel, he raced back toward the battle scene. Lee and Tenten shared a look of relief.
"Naruto is right," declared Lee.
"Yeah—let's go," Tenten agreed. They caught up to Naruto and overtook him without much trouble.
"Don't try to stop me!" the Uzumaki boy bellowed.
"We are here to help, Naruto!" Lee cried. He reached the clearing first, where the Iwa shinobi was beating Iruka around like a training dummy. Lee charged straight in and attacked with a combo of five different kicks, yelling, "Feel the power of the Hidden Leaf Village!" For his age, the attack was marvelous; but for the Iwanin, it was hardly threatening. He blocked Lee's feet with one arm, still holding on to Iruka with the other.
"Really? I don't feel a thing," he remarked dryly. Striking out with the butt of a kunai, he hit Lee in the head and sent him flying.
"Lee!" Tenten cried. She went on the offensive next. "First my master, now my teammate?" she shouted at her enemy. "You'll pay for this!" She was holding four kunai knives, two in each hand, the blades pointing out from either side of her clenched fist. It made her look as if she were holding two double-bladed knives instead of four. Light and quick on her feet, she lashed out at the man with her blades, darting in and out to keep attacking and dodging.
"Who's gonna make me? You, kid?" the Iwa shinobi asked, his voice skeptical. When Tenten launched herself at him again, he suddenly kicked her in the stomach and sent her sprawling. "This fight isn't for brats like you," he snorted, turning back to Iruka. He hoisted the Konoha ninja off his feet by his ponytail. Iruka yelled in pain, yet he was still coherent when he moaned,
"Lee . . . Tenten . . . didn't I tell you to get out of here? C-cross the border! It's not far . . ."
"No one's crossing over today," the Iwa ninja growled. "I'll kill you all where you stand." He bashed Iruka's head against a tree trunk.
"No, you won't," Iruka contradicted him between gasps for breath. "Because I have to protect them, and I will—even if one of us has to die."
"Oh, one of us will die, all right," the enemy ninja concurred. Again, he slammed Iruka's head against the unyielding wood. Blood ran down into the Konohanin's eyes.
Naruto was sitting on the branch of that very same tree. He stared at the one-sided fight with anguish before remembering what he was supposed to be doing. Pulling off his T-shirt, he leaped off the branch without hesitation. He landed smack-dab on the Iwa shinobi's shoulders and shoved his shirt over the man's head.
"Don't hurt my sensei!" he howled. The earth ninja grabbed Naruto's light hair, pulled him off, and drop-kicked him to the ground. Meantime, Master Iruka took advantage of the Iwanin's temporary blindness and punched him right in the nose. The ninja let out a howl of pain, which Iruka cut off when he used a kunai to slit his enemy's throat.
"Don't hurt my student," Iruka growled. Both of the men fell at the same time. Lee, Tenten, and Naruto rushed over to them.
"Iruka-sensei? Sensei? Sensei!" Naruto repeated over and over, pushing against Iruka's shoulder. "Why won't he get up?" he asked his teammates. Tenten bent down and pressed her ear against her master's chest.
"I think he's okay," she decided. "He's just tired, maybe."
"But we still have to get across the border," Lee pointed out. "If he won't wake up, then . . . what do we do?" Naruto answered his question.
"Easy," he said with a grin. "He carries us all the time, right? So we'll carry him."
It was much easier said than done. Lee and Tenten, groaning from the effort, got Iruka propped up and slung his arms over their shoulders. Naruto stood in the middle, bearing the weight of Iruka's torso, trying to hold his master's drooping head up. Shuffling through the woods, making agonizingly slow progress, the three little children bore their immense burden bravely. They supported his weight for more than a kilometer. It was the most grueling thing any of them had ever had to do.
But they made it across the border.
