Chapter 34
Battle of the sea: part 1
Haku and Yoroi stared each other down. Haku's focused eyes met themselves in the reflection of Yoroi's sunglasses. He smirked. "you only beat me last time because you caught me off guard. Now that I know about your ability, beating you will be a piece of cake."
The fighter's muscles tensed. Yoroi dashed forward, intending on entering another taijutsu battle. Predicting this, Haku quickly jumped back. While in mid-air he was unable to move and Yoroi took advantage of this. In a quick burst of speed, the chakra sucking ninja appeared behind him and held him in an iron bear hug. "it's over"
Haku simply smirked "yes it is"
Before Yoroi could process what he meant, the Haku he was holding suddenly lost all its color and ice began creeping up Yoroi's arms. Yoroi attempted to release his hold but the ice had already frozen his arms together. He could only watch in horror as the ice travelled up the rest of his body and started to turn him into an ice statue.
Within moments both Yoroi and the ice clone crashed into the ground of the cave. Haku stepped out from behind a large rock. "now to find the others"
Xxx
The rest of the Rebel group cautiously travelled through the dimly lit pathway. After a few minutes of walking, they came across a single door. Inside it were more test tubes like the ones with the lion monster earlier. "Welcome. Or should I say nice to finally meet you? Naruto."
Naruto quickly span on around to find a dust brown haired man wearing a faded purple shirt, brown trousers and a lab coat. Next to him was Isaribi. "Amachi." He guessed. "what do you mean finally meet me?"
Amachi smirked "oh I've heard many things about you. One of Orochimaru's most interesting test subjects. He had high expectations of you from what I had heard. When I heard you escaped I was quite surprised, it seemed unlike Orochimaru to let such a fine specimen go. So I came to the conclusion that either someone even stronger than Orochimaru kidnapped you, he lost interest because you were a failure like many others or you somehow were skilled enough to escape. Judging from the rumours, you were travelling with Zabuza Momochi, who, while is a formidable foe, is still not in Orochimaru's league. Even if he was, he isn't the kind of person to go out his way to help some unknown kid. In a Sanin's base no less. So that leaves either you escaped or Orochimaru let you go. Judging by your… lack of tact and well… everything, the most likely answer is that you were allowed to escape."
Externally Naruto was calm, but internally he was shocked that someone knew that much about him. And thinking about some of the things Amachi mentioned, he noticed that he had gotten away too easily. "you seem to know a lot about me" Naruto stated "why are you so interested? I'm sure you don't go around collecting every piece of information on every single escaped lacky or experiment of the snake do you?"
"Oh no. Just you Naruto. Well you and one other. You two interested me, especially you. Possibly the only person alive with both Uzumaki and Hozuki genes that still run strong. Did you know that the Uzumaki were the only clan that existed on an island surrounded by whirlpools and somehow harnessed its destructive power and could use it as a defense? Now imagine if all of those monsters had the Hozuki bloodline. Just imagine. An army of seal masters, master swordsmen, and beasts with insane amounts of stamina and chakra that dwarfs most Jonin. Now imagine if you are fighting against them with the Hozuki bloodline. You would be unable to hit them, your attacks would go right through them and you can't run away because they would easily be able to outmatch your stamina. The Uzumaki could've ruled both the land and sea. They could've become the kings of the world! Now Naruto. What do you say? This could be yours! Pledge your allegiance to me and I can make you king! Anything you want would be at your beck and call. Power, information, wealth, women!"
Hearing that Naruto slowly closed his eyes. Thinking he had Naruto caught, Amachi continued. "That's right. You wouldn't have to travel with these… underdeveloped children. You can have the best women of the Elemental nations. All loyal and willing to fulfil your every desire!"
At this, our blond hero's eyes snapped open and slowly took a step.
Seeing this Mei saw red. "so that's the kind of guy you are? Willing to betray your friends for the slightest chance of power? For some flesh? I thought you were different, Naruto. But I guess all men are the same! You should just go back to Orochimaru and die!''
Naruto stopped about a meter away from Amachi. "shut up" he whispered. It was soft, but at that moment it seemed as if even nature stayed silent to hear his words. In a fast, fluid movement, Naruto grabbed a hidden kunai from inside his sleeve and threw it as hard as he could at Amachi who, despite being caught off guard, wasn't a Jonin level shinobi for nothing. He quickly brought his arm up to protect his face. Ignoring the unusual 'clink' as opposed to the kunai sinking in his flesh, the kunai simply bounced off, Naruto appeared inside Amachi's guard and sent him flying into Isaribi a few feet behind him with a kick. Both of them tumbled into the wall of the cave and ended up in a heap of flesh. "it seems you have an answer"
Naruto glared at Amachi who walked out from behind a large boulder while the one he just fought turned into water and drenched Isaribi. "your first mistake was tainting father's name. an honourable man like him… you don't even deserve to speak of him!" Naruto said, dashing towards Amachi. "your second mistake was tarnishing the Uzumaki name! They Uzumaki had no intention of war or to rule the world." Naruto took out a kunai and clashed with Amachi's scalpel. "your third mistake was insulting my friends!" Naruto shouted as he locked his kunai against the scalpel and pushed downwards, disarming Amachi then slashing his kunai, aiming to cut Amachi's jugular. To his surprised, instead of penetrating the soft flesh like he expected, the kunai simply bounced off as if it was steel.
Taking advantage of his surprise, Amachi jumped back and pressed a button that the author just put there for the sake of the plot sometime during the fight.
"well, it's been fun talking to you, and it's a shame you didn't accept my proposal. But I guess that studying the remains of your bodies will still be plenty research." Amachi said as he turned into a puddle of water.
"substitution!" the group realized as they turned to where Isaribi was to find that she was missing as well. Just then Haku barged into the room "This whole place is coming down! The entrance is already blocked!"
Mei stepped forward. "then we'll just have to make out own exit. Lava style: lava monster jutsu" she said before spitting out a huge amount of molten lava.
The rest of the group watched in amazement as she focused her chakra and the large puddle of lava shaped itself into a vaguely humanoid golem with glowing rocks for eyes with some lava dripping off and hissing as it hit the ground. The golem charged towards one of the walls and barged right through it, the rocks of the cave melting from the hot temperature. The group of shinobi quickly followed through the golem and passed the still steaming hole.
"how do you know that we're not going deeper into the cave?" Fu shouted over the noise. "I've received training in sensing chakra. I can sense Amachi heading in this direction" Mei shouted back.
"I can smell the sea!" Haku shouted. (How he could smell anything but burning rocks and lava will forever remain a mystery.)
True to Haku's words, within moments they burst out the side of the cave and onto the beach. Mei immediately undid the jutsu and allowed the golem to collapse back into a rapidly cooling puddle of lava. "We're… out" she wheezed with her hands on her knees.
Naruto softly placed his hand on her back "you ok?"
Mei stood up and brushed his hand away "just fine. I don't need the pity from the likes of you" she snarked. Then she spotted Amachi and Isaribi walking towards the sea "There they are! Don't let them reach the sea!" she shouted.
Fu looked at Haku and Naruto. "Go. We'll be right behind you."
The boys looked at each other and nodded. Haku focused his chakra and formed a mirror in front of them. Naruto winced "I really don't like this form of transportation" he said before running headfirst into the ice mirror hovering about a foot off the ground.
Mei opened her mouth to call him out on being an idiot for running into a block of ice but her words died in her throat when instead of running into it and crashing, Naruto disappeared.
Haku started walking towards the mirror when Fu called out "Haku, make sure he doesn't do anything stupid ok?"
Haku looked back "I will. Someone has to make sure he doesn't lose his head right?" he smirked before walking and melting into the mirror.
Mei stared at the mirror for a few seconds in shock with her mouth still open. Soon she was broken out of her trance by the sound of the ice mirror crashing down and breaking into millions of quickly melting ice shards.
Fu watched with a small amount of amusement as Mei's brain rebooted itself. "we live in a world where we walk on water, spit fire, mud, hell you even spit lava yourself, not to mention things like having things larger than a house be able to come out of some ink. Is it really that hard to believe that it is possible to run through a mirror of ice?" she asked with a chuckle. "now close your mouth, you'll attract flies"
The lava user snapped her mouth shut. "you're right. I forgot one of the first thing I was taught. Don't question logic. Logic does not exist in this world"
-somewhere in Konoha-
A young boy with a dark sunglasses and a sea-green jacket with a high upturned collar looked up from was he was standing. "someone has insulted logic and denied its existence" he muttered.
-back to the story-
Mei shivered as for some reason she suddenly grew a fear of logical insects crawling all over her but brushed it off. She took a step forward and instantly felt dizzy and leaned against a tree. "are you ok?" Fu asked.
"that lava monster jutsu takes a lot of chakra to maintain, this was the longest I've held it up before" Mei groaned before reaching into her pouch and took out a chakra pill and swallowed it. "lets go"
-with the boys-
Travelling at high speeds may be fun for most. In fact, Naruto was one of the ones who did. Travelling at high speeds in a dark and cold passage where he could not control any direction or see anything at all on the other hand, was not. So it was no surprise that he was a little disorientated when he exited the mirror in a less than graceful fashion.
"uhh" Naruto groaned. "I really don't like that mirror thing Haku does. How does he even stand not being able to see and travelling uncontrollably anyways? Also, how does he always land on his feet when he lands?" he complained. "Speaking of landing… why does this ground keep moving?" he wondered and looked down… to see that he had landed on top of Isaribi. He quickly jumped off and started apologising so quickly the words all mended together.
Isaribi slowly got up, Naruto's words going completely unheard. "PERVERT!" she shouted and slapped him as hard as she could.
Our poor blond hero was send flying in a comical fashion, doing a couple barrel rolls in mid-air before landing back onto the beach with a large angry red handprint on his face.
This was the scene Haku arrived to see. "I leave you alone for 2 minutes and this happens? Really Naruto?" Haku looked at him in disappointment.
"Shut up Haku. It was your mirror portal thing that did this to me." He grumbled and walked back to Haku. "So you going to come out yet? Amachi?"
"it seems you saw through me this time" Amachi, (who had been staying silent not far behind Isaribi) mused and collapsed into a puddle of water while the real Amachi appeared from under the sand. "it appears that you won't stop chasing us until you're dead"
"that's right, you monster. So why don't you just give up and let yourself be killed. I'll even make your death quick and painless" Naruto offered.
"Hahahahaha! So what? At least I'm not a half assed monster like Isaribi" Amachi sneered. "I am…" Amachi's muscles tensed before his lab coat and pants ripped open to reveal his green scaly skin and webbed feet, his eyes turned into pure red ruby orbs and his face started to morph and grow green scales and fin-like protrusions "… a complete, modified battle version!"
AN: what? Two weeks have passed? I'm due to update the story? Gotta type fast!
Those were literally my thoughts when I looked at the date. It seems that with all the studying I have for the upcoming exams (Monday to be exact) I lost track of time. And speaking of that, I will be unable to post for possibly the most (if not whole) of july.
Now besides my sad school life, I have also thought up with a few things I would be addressing.
First, is that since ZV is busy (and AWOL) and I'm not good with portraying Mei, I would like to ask you loyal readers if you would still like for Mei to be paired up with Naruto or someone else.
Second, many of you have asked about how the Chunin exams will be different because of Naruto not being there.
My answer: it will be a normal chunin exams (preliminaries and third round and all going like normal chunin exams). Meaning that no Orochimaru giving little boys hickys. My reasoning is that he went there for an Uchiha to have a sharingan. But since he already knows Naruto has a sharingan, this means that he doesn't need to risk himself to get the Uchiha bloodline. After all, he has one of an Uchiha, Uzumaki and Hozuki.
And yes, Gaara will take part in the exams, but will not go Shukaku because of reasons I will reveal much later.
Before you ask, I will not show the chunin exams (mainly because it doesn't really involve the Mist rebels) and they will not be entering into it (because… rebels). But I might make a passing mention about what happened during the exams on a mission or something(who made chunin, how great/bad it was. Stuff like that)
And finally the last issue I would like to address. Reviewer Wyrtha brought up some nice points so another possible change will be the removal of the snow/spring arc. I will add a Raiga encounter/recovery mission (I really need better naming skills) in its place. This will take place (likely) as the arc after this one and followed by whichever gets voted in.
So all in all, there are polls going now.
1) Should Mei still end up with Naruto(yes/no)
2) Continue snow/spring arc?(yes/no)
3) What arc should be next (after Raiga)
Current standings are:
Snow/spring(if it is voted in):2
Star: 2
Shion: 1
blood prison (still under debation for later stage) 2
ps: I didn't have the leaf nin here (and consequently Anko) because they weren't given a mission here (this is around a week or so before the chunin exams as opposed to like a month after. So the mission differs from cargo protection by the leaf nin and is an assassination mission for the rebels instead)
Reviews:
BlackDragonShinigami: if blood prison goes through, it'll be sometime much later (probably after the five kage summit like canon)
Zeus501: Yes he was originally in the demon island arc. And I can't find a good place to show the stuff in Leaf, basically just canon minus Naruto chaos…. so normal life without every other mission going wrong.
AndiDuel: your vote has been reocorded
Thor94: just a small one here. The next one will be the main battle.
Noahendless: well that would impact the story a bit too much xD though it's a nice idea that can be expanded on.
Jacklvmage12: its 3 pm as I'm typing this so most of my creative juices have been used up already. So in order of your paragraphs… counted your vote, yup, lol, yup having a universe destroyed will do that, yes a huge upgrade (still wanting for that uncapped…) and finally extremely late good night xD
Wyrtha: I admit, you raised some good points, but if I don't use these arcs, I would be jumping straight to fighting Yagura, and I don't want Naruto to suddenly jump from low-jonin to kage level. And your idea with Raiga is a nice one! Finally, I chose not to have Anko because she isn't needed here. Last I checked she only went because she was the only Jonin (special or not) on hand and the Leaf needed the mission to rebuild after the CE attack. (she is preparing for CE now… well that or eating dango)