Heyo peopo!

How goes it on this fine morn!? Why, I do declare, and all that.

Without Further ado, and so it continues...


Chapter 73: Heroes of the Hour


Naruto was only slightly calmer by the time he, Tenten, and Shino made it into the Waterfall Village proper.

He still seethed below the surface as the remnants of the battle that'd taken place here, or, more correctly, the slaughter, burned their way into his retina's. The bodies of hundreds were scattered around, and he had to gather himself emotionally, lest he lose himself to the horror of his surroundings.

His teammates looked to be doing the same things. Tenten kept her eyes firmly forward, and he could tell somewhat from the way her gaze had glazed over that she was probably elsewhere mentally. Shino, though far subtler than either of them, still looked out of it, his beetles behaving much more erratically than Naruto was used to, as if bothered by something.

"Gods… this is…"

Oh, and he'd forgotten about the last member of their little quartet.

He turned to Suigetsu, who, far from smiling and joking as he'd been doing for the past hour, was now gazing emptily through the doorway of what looked to have once been a shop. The man at the desk, or, well, Naruto assumed the clump of flesh there had once been a man, was leant over it, as if he'd tried to vault it as the explosion which'd caved in his roof had gone off.

"You alright?" Naruto asked casually, not caring all that much about this new guy, but not really liking it when people were upset in general. "You can go back if you-"

"No, I'm fine." Suigetsu shook his head. "Sorry, just… this is a pretty grim reminder of the old bloody mist. Entire town's would end up like this while the clans were warring for supremacy when the Fourth Mizukage was in charge, and then again after the guy was killed. I hear the new gal who ended up with the role is nice and all, but…"

Whatever he'd been about to say, he simply shook his head and soldiered on.

They'd split off from the main group, something all of them had agreed on. Naruto himself had been the one to suggest it, saying that someone should try and help out the civilians that'd managed to survive this whole mess, and Sakura and Sasuke had agreed.

Even still, they'd gone on ahead with Kakashi. Their old sensei had been the one to suggest that they shouldn't break up entirely, nor should Team 7, three of the stronger ninja present, be sent entirely on what was, essentially, a waste of manpower. Rescuing civilians wasn't, technically, their job, after all.

He agreed, even if he wasn't necessarily all that happy about it.

And so, he'd taken three ninja who weren't all that essential to protecting, or finding, Fu. Shino had done his initial job of pinpointing her general location, which was the tree at the center of the village, high up according to him, and Hinata would guide them the rest of the way with her Byakugan. Tenten had already outfitted the remaining ninja with weapons, and even Guy had happily taken another pair of nunchaku, which Naruto was pretty sure had been entirely for the girl's benefit, to feel like she'd done a little more. Even still, she'd come along with him as well, her job here already technically finished. Suigetsu…

Well, he'd asked to come along, sighting that he'd certainly not signed up to be fighting S-ranked ninja today, and no one had really been able to argue, aside from Anko, who'd sighted that she also could kill him at any time.

Naruto had spared the boy that, even if he found it kind of funny.

And so they'd trudged through the Waterfall, doing their best to keep their spirits… well, high was long gone, but they were trying for middling.

Even that was getting difficult.

"I want to find the one responsible for this…" Tenten muttered, looking at the remains of what looked to have been an apartment complex, one that could've easily passed for the one's she and Naruto themselves lived in. "I want to find them all, and…"

He nodded, as did Shino and Suigetsu. That was something they'd all agreed on.

The Akatsuki were scum, they'd already known that from their destruction of the Sound Village. But they'd not really had a chance to survey the damage there; to see it with their own eyes. Now… smack dab in the middle of it…

He wanted to avenge these people. He wanted to make the Akatsuki pay.

He wasn't used to feeling said emotions. It was… at odds with himself, he couldn't help thinking.

…But there was another part of himself that wasn't really sure if it cared. He had a feeling that part was being influenced by the Nine Tails, but he let that part feed him, instead of trying to cage it like normal.

It felt… good.

He wasn't sure what to make of that.

They rounded another corner and got their first real sight of the skyline of the Waterfall since they'd jumped down into it. Almost every taller building along the horizon had been decimated, which Naruto supposed made a sick amount of sense, given that the Akatsuki had had around twenty-six hours to run rampant before they arrived, and aiming for obvious targets would surely take priority. Even still, he could see the culprit now, hanging above the village atop a bright white bird, which stood out against the cavern walls that surrounded the entire village.

"Deidara." Shino spoke evenly. "A missing ninja from the Village hidden in the Stone. The bombardier of the Akatsuki. He specializes in raining explosives on others from above, far outside their effective combat ranges."

Naruto nodded, though the only one actually listening was Suigetsu, who likely had no real idea of what it was they were up against.

"Huh…" The white-haired boy hummed, before turning to him. "I take it he's who we're killing, then?"

He didn't nod… though he certainly wanted to.

"Wait… are we leaving him there?" Suigetsu turned to him, half-outraged. "Cause, uh, no offense to your leadership style, but that seems really damned stupid."

"Our job is to rescue civilians." Naruto turned to him; eyebrows drawn down in challenge. "The rest of our unit is tasked with defeating Akatsuki."

"So, what? We just go around finding people, hoping that Mr. blows-us-up doesn't see us?"

Well… Naruto pouted. When he puts it like that…

" I'll think about it." He put out there, turning to the other two and making sure they were following along. "We're making our way over there, anyways. Even still, our game plan is the same. We're looking for any sign of survivors. Eyes and ears peeled, and be on guard."

He spawned a few shadow clones and sent them out in different directions.

"Hopefully, they'll find some people, and we'll know where to start. For now, let's head towards bird-man over there."

Progress was slow going.

Not necessarily because of Deidara either. Sure, they were sticking to the shadows of the taller buildings, not wanting to be spotted and bombarded from above, but they were also being forced to relocate often, their paths blocked by debris or other such obstacles that they couldn't exactly clear without selling themselves out, and couldn't climb without being easily seen.

It was as they were making their way to him that Naruto caught something on the edge of his senses. It wasn't much, just the tiniest, feeblest cry, one that was quickly stifled by a barrage of shushes.

He turned toward it, towards a dilapidated building that looked to have been half destroyed by an explosion, and the noises went deathly silent.

"Uhm… is anyone there?" He called relatively quietly, making sure his voice would still crest low enough as to not be heard by Deidara flying above them. "We're ninja from the Hidden Leaf. We're here to rescue you."

No response.

He sighed, signalling to the others to halt their movement and follow along behind him, just in case he was mistaken. The three nodded, though Shino unleashed a few bugs into the air.

"I can read their chakra signatures this way." Shino explained when Naruto asked what he was doing. "We'll know if any of them are threats on a baseline. That's because those with lower chakra pools generally aren't of a high rank."

He nodded, waiting for Shino's beetles to fly into the small, half-crushed building. A good minute and a half later, they flew back out, and landed on him, crawling back into his sleeves.

"Everyone inside has a chakra level that indicates non-combatant. No sign of any ninjas, though chakra residue covers the walls, likely due to the explosive clay Deidara employs."

He nodded, before he gestured for both Suigetsu and Tenten to move in first.

"Eh… I'm going to be real with you." The formerly mist ninja spoke awkwardly, scratching his head. "I don't really remember the handsigns, it's been a while, so-"

Tenten smacked him on the back of the head, before pointing to herself and Suigetsu, placing one hand below the other to indicate the ground, and then wiggled two fingers on the top hand.

"Oh, okay. Why didn't you just say that?"

"Because we're trying to be quiet?" Naruto half-asked, half-berated.

Suigetsu's face lit up, and he nodded.

"Right. My bad."

Tenten facepalmed.

The two did, eventually, move as he'd instructed them to, taking point on the doorway, or what was left of it, as he walked up to it.

"Alright… I'm coming inside. I'd ask no one try to hit me with anything. One more time, just to make it clear, coming in peace and all that."

It wasn't his smoothest line delivery, but honestly, today had been a bit of a mess, so he felt he could be forgiven for that.

Naturally, the moment he entered into the broken-down structure; he was struck in the face with a frying pan.

He honestly wasn't sure what he should've expected.

He was quickly tackled to the floor by two older men, probably in their forties if he was being realistic. The contact did knock the wind out of him, and their attempts to attack him, with clumsily placed punches and kicks, gave him ample time to raise up his hands and use his shadow clones.

He managed to grab hold of the two atop him, and Tenten and Suigetsu followed up a moment later, cowing the remaining few people in the small room into submission. Naruto couldn't help feeling a bit bad as he looked at their expressions, but, well…

He had a frying-pan-shaped mark on his face now, so he didn't feel that bad.

"P-please! Don't hurt us!" A woman at the back clutched a child close to her. "We're not ninja, or anything like that, I-I'm just a cook, and-"

"RELAX!" Naruto shouted a bit louder than he needed to, undoing his shadow clones and letting the two men he'd been holding down go. He wouldn't ever admit that he'd enjoyed the way they fell on their faces as they dropped… but he had. "We're not here to hurt you guys. Like I've been trying to say," He spoke with a small annoyance present in his tone. "We're Leaf ninja. We're here to help you all."

A few of them seemed to go from thinking they were going to die to being cautiously optimistic, which Naruto couldn't help thinking was still too much, but he'd take what he could get.

"W-Why are you here?" The same woman asked, her child burying herself in her mother's side. Naruto assumed, from the way everyone else let her speak, she must've been trusted by most of the people here, a good ten or so. "I didn't think we were allied with the Leaf… when you said you guys were Leaf ninja… we thought you were more of… of them."

Oh, right. Naruto remembered. Not every village on the planet is going to know who we are…

Hell, most likely wouldn't.

"Uh… that's my bad." He scratched the back of his neck rather awkwardly, even as his teammates shook their heads. "Let me explain."

By the time he'd finished, the room had almost entirely calmed down. The survivors were now sat haphazardly around the building, though, like Naruto, they made sure to stick to the shadows, not entering the light that was filtering in through the hole in the roof.

"I see…" The same woman, a blonde lady in her thirties, nodded as he spoke. "You're here to stop those guys, then?"

"Technically, we're here to protect you all." Naruto corrected, earning a few exchanged smiles among the survivors. "Defeating that one up there is a bonus."

"Didn't we all agree not five minutes ago that we should probably kill that guy?" Suigetsu reminded him.

"Oh… right." Naruto turned back towards the small crowd. "Okay, never mind, we are going to beat that guy after all."

A few of the adults sweat-dropped, though, notably, the blonde woman's kid looked at him with awe. He felt pretty cool, which helped with his overall mood.

"So… what exactly is the plan?" That same woman asked, apparently confirming for the rest of the group just what was going on. "I mean, I get that we're trying to get out of the Village, or… or just getting to safety, but… we don't exactly have many places to go. It's not like we can really climb the cliffs out, and the regular pathways are blocked off."

That made sense, actually. Naruto wasn't sure how he hadn't picked up on that.

Where would they go?

"Are there any sewer systems nearby?"

It was Shino who'd spoken, and Naruto turned towards him, giving the man the proverbial floor.

"Well… yes, there's one that runs underneath this entire block, but…"

"I know it might not be ideal," Shino began, pushing up on his glasses as he stepped forward. "But traveling through them might just be our safest option. If we can take them to a run-off point, we may be able to exit out of the village entirely, and into a stream or other such body of water outside the village."

It was as good a plan as any, and Naruto nodded towards the bug-boy to show his approval.

The civilians looked to one another, however, exchanging unsure expressions and overall looking horribly down.

"Oi, listen." Suigetsu stepped up, squatting down in front of them all and raising his eyebrows. "It's the sewers, or trying to hide out from that guy for a good… well, probably another day, at least. If you think you can last through that, then be my guest, but be realistic. Sewer smells, that's all. It won't blow you to smithereens with high explosives."

And once more, the civilians wouldn't meet their eyes. Naruto couldn't help growing a tad bit antsy, thinking that they might actually choose to stay here. Technically, they could survive, but…

"Okay…"

He looked up, to where the same blonde woman, her lip trembling, was clutching her daughter close to her body.

"We'll take the sewers."

Naruto felt a weight lift from his shoulders.

"Good." He spoke, standing to his full height and stretching. "We'll leave as soon as my clones get back. If we're lucky, they'll be pulling along some civilians with them."

"They'll be coming here?" A man who'd yet to speak chimed in. "Won't they lead that guy straight to us!?"

"No, no." He waved the man down. "They'll take careful routes here. They won't be spotted, trust me. We're ninja, we know what we're doing."

The man grumbled something that sounded an awful lot like "if you say so" but Naruto didn't call him on it.

It was a good fifteen minutes before the first clone dispersed itself, and it carried back to him the information that it'd found no one. That… it hurt if he was being honest. The second came back with the same, as did the third.

The fourth however hadn't yet responded. He waited another twenty minutes after that, and just as he was about ready to call it, unsummon the thing, he heard footsteps on the edge of his senses.

He turned towards it and saw just what he'd been hoping to see.

His clone looked mightily exhausted, which unfortunately meant he'd soon be feeling that same tiredness. Fortunately, however, the clone was exhausted because he was carrying a man in his arms, who looked to be in his mid-twenties.

"Here we are." His clone breathed out, setting the man down. "Alright, I'll leave you to it."

It puffed into smoke a moment later, and he was hit with an extreme ache in his arms that didn't seem it'd be dissipating any time soon. He wondered, briefly, why the man his clone had brought here hadn't just walked behind him, but, well…

It didn't take him that long to remember now that he had the clones thoughts.

He looked down at the stump that'd presumably once been the man's left foot, and grimaced.

From the way the guy was breathing heavily, and groaning every so often, Naruto imagined the wound wasn't entirely old either. Likely, he'd lost it within the last few hours.

"Right." Naruto sighed, trying not to focus on the wanton destruction all around him that just got worse and worse every second, or the way the blonde's child wouldn't stop staring, wide-eyed, at the new arrival's missing limb. "Well as I told the others, we're going to be taking the sewers out of here. I suppose I'll be carrying him along again, so-"

"Nah, I got him." Suigetsu shoved him ever so slightly as he walked by and slung the injured man onto his shoulder. "I've got strength training to wield one of Seven Swords of the Mist in combat. I can handle a measly two hundred pounds." The shark-boy jostled the man slightly. "Actually, more like one hundred and seventy-five pounds."

Naruto couldn't quite hide his awe at that, and instead just nodded to show the man his thanks. He turned back towards the crowd a moment later and gestured for them to stand.

"Alright, folks. This is it." He smiled to try and reassure them. "We're getting you out of here."

By the time they'd actually managed to get ready to leave the small building, it'd been another twenty minutes. Naruto wasn't actually that surprised about that, since he and Team 7 had done some D-ranked missions helping people move when they were younger, and he'd learned that when people said they'd probably be done in an hour, they actually meant they'd be done by the end of the day…

If one was lucky.

Even still, they filed out of the building in an orderly fashion. Naruto himself went first, followed by one of the civilians who actually knew where an entrance to the sewer system was.

He was unsurprised to find it was the same blonde woman from earlier, who let him know her name was Emi.

The rest filed out fairly evenly, and Suigetsu and the man in his arms made up the rear.

They stalked along the stone floors and jumped over the length of one of the rivers that bordered the street to avoid some debris. It was slow-going, but they were gradually making progress towards their goal.

When they finally did stumble across it, Naruto couldn't help noticing a problem pretty much immediately.

"That's smack dab in the middle of the street." Naruto clicked his tongue on the roof of his mouth as he looked at the manhole cover in the center of the road. "If we go out there…"

Then Deidara would see them. Almost certainly.

"He wouldn't see us, at least, not necessarily." Shino cut in. "Not if he had reason to be looking elsewhere."

He turned to Shino warily.

"You have something in mind?"

"Well, you can create clones, can you not? And Tenten," He faced the girl. "You could arm them with enough weapons to make them a significant threat."

Tenten seemed to consider that for a moment, before nodding, looking over at Naruto himself.

"I could, if you want to try it."

Well…

"The problem is that he's a member of the Akatsuki. He's not just going to sit around and shoot at an obvious distraction." Suigetsu shrugged. "I mean, I wouldn't fall for it, and I'm not a member of the world's most elite terrorist organization, so…"

A thought occurred to him in that moment that might, might have just given them a window.

"Wait, have any of you heard explosions?"

The group looked confused.

"Well, I mean, there are marks everywhere," Tenten began. "And buildings that've been devastated-"

"No, no, I mean recently." Naruto tried to clarify. "Have any of you felt the ground shake, or heard an explosion go off since we got here?"

They thought back, and when all three of them shook their heads no, he came to an idea.

"I think Deidara just might be out of clay." He pointed to where the man was positioned, circling around just in front of the great tree. "At the very least, after all this time, he's got to be running low. That might just be our ticket to defeating him. He won't want to waste his clay on anything nonessential, which means he might let up on those trying to peacefully pass by beneath him…"

"And instead focus on the clones actively attacking him with weaponry." Shino nodded along, seemingly keying into Naruto's plan. "It's a sound theory."

"Uhm…"

They all turned towards the group of civilians. Emi was the one who'd spoken, her hand raised weakly.

"What are we doing, though?"

"You'll be running towards the sewers as fast as you can and getting into them. From there, theoretically, we shouldn't have too many problems." Suigetsu explained. "I highly doubt bird-man up there knows their layout enough to cave them in on us."

Naruto elbowed the man in the side as the citizens cowered ever so slightly.

"Probably don't mention the possibility of a cave-in."

"Er… right, yeah… my bad."

He stepped forward, trying to reassure the crowd. Luckily, it seemed he needn't have bothered, for they looked… not determined, but prepared enough on their own.

"It's fine… it's the truth, after all." One man spoke. "We don't have any other options anyways."

"Oh god…" Another muttered. "Oh god!"

Naruto felt guilty, but he couldn't exactly do anything about that. Instead, he glanced at Tenten, and they went to work. A few minutes later, and fifteen armed-to-the-teeth shadow clones richer, Naruto still didn't feel all that prepared.

With this move, they'd distract Deidara, surely, but they'd also be letting him know they were here, which was a strategy he didn't entirely agree with. He saw the necessity of it, certainly but…

He sighed. He'd yet to find any other ideas running around in his own thick skull. He'd simply have to trust Shino and Tenten here.

"Tenten, Shino, cover Suigetsu while he gets them into the sewers." He turned to the boy who'd rapidly gone from 'the guy they were responsible for watching' to the fourth member of their team. "I'll be helping provide you cover fire alongside my clones, since there's no real difference if I'm there or not. Can you handle loading them in on your own?"

Suigetsu gave him an easy smile.

"Can do, boss."

He nodded.

"Then let's do it."

He and fifteen clones leaped onto the roof just in front of him, and, as he'd suspected, Deidara spotted them all within three seconds. His bird turned on a dime, going from passively circling to aggressively diving towards him. It wasn't quite an angle to ram him, but more to be within twenty or so feet to drop a bomb at point blank range.

Luckily, the man's first pass was on a grouping of his clones, and so aside from the building they'd been stood upon, there was no real damage.

Less luckily was the fact that he'd come so fast, that none of his clones had gotten the chance to fire off their weapons. The multiple demon wind shuriken they'd been wielding were flung across the way, one even impacting against a wall only a couple of feet from their group.

He heard a child scream at that, and cursed as Deidara's head turned towards the noise like an owl hearing a mouse. He realized he had seconds to act before the man would realize what was going on, and so, banking on instinct honed within him over years of training, he drew his own windmill shuriken from off of his back, and chucked it at the man above him.

It collided with the tail feathers of Deidara's owl-like creation, cutting a good three of them off. His flying became more erratic for a moment, and he was forced to fly straight to steady that. In the meantime, Naruto called over all of the remaining eleven clones, and had them each take their best shots as well.

The next few hits were minor at best, and most missed straight up, Deidara now aware of his strategy and actively looking to avoid being hit. He swerved atop his explosive owl, and fired out a few white objects, which puffed out into much larger explosive ants a moment later.

Naruto cursed as he flung himself backwards, only narrowly evading the first ants explosion. One of his clones was caught in the blast, however, which brought him down to ten.

As the rest of his force of clones dodged out of the way of the latter two ants explosions, he caught sight of Suigetsu and the rest of the team as they made for the sewer. The shark-like boy had just managed to pry the cover off of the entrance to the sewer, and was helping the first few people in.

Good. Naruto breathed. Just need to hold Mr. explodey-man for another few minutes.

He decided to go on the offensive, not even give Deidara the time to react to his allies retreat. He got a running start and leapt from the building, right towards the man's owl.

He cursed Naruto out as he evaded him mid-air, and the knuckle-headed ninja actually found himself half-amused when he had to bat a kunai out of the air.

Doesn't seem much like an explosion of art. Naruto snickered as he hit the ground running, immediately climbing the wall of another dilapidated building. Guess my theory's right. He's running out of clay.

Knowing that, he got even more aggressive, running directly towards Deidara, and forming in his right hand the beginnings of a Rasengan. He summoned two more clones to his side and had them grab him by the waist.

A second later, they'd thrown him, dissipated, and he was airborne, gunning straight for Deidara's retreating back.

He wasn't at all shocked when the man dodged his attack, though his intent had never really been to hit the man. Sure, it'd have been nice to take Deidara out completely… but it would've been unrealistic. He simply didn't have the mobility to catch Deidara on his own, with no real assistance.

When he landed, he turned back around, and saw that Suigetsu had finished. Tenten stood at the top of the sewer, and was waving him over.

He looked up, caught that Deidara was still in the middle of a turn, and broke away, towards the hole in the ground and away from their fight. He sicked all ten of his remaining clones on the man as he did as well.

He heard them begin to dissipate behind them as he followed behind Tenten, descending into the sewers below.

He landed in what he could only describe as the single worst smelling place he'd ever been in his entire life a good second later, the fall having been a bit higher than he'd expected. Upon his feet touching down, they kicked up a small amount of brownish-green water, and he really, really had to force himself to not think about that as he turned to the rest of the group, who were all standing around for some reason.

"What's going on?" Naruto asked, walking forward and pushing through the small crowd. "Suigetsu, is there a prob-"

His voice died.

"Heh…" Suigetsu glanced at him out of the corner of his eye. "Yeah, there's a small problem all right."

He could see now why the crowd had looked so terrified as he'd made his way over, and why the level of the dirty water had been up to the walkway's alongside the river of sludge. Before them, in what should've been a way out, a tunnel that would lead to their freedom…

Was instead a collapsed cavern, covered from head to toe in rocks too large for them to move.

"Oh…" He muttered quietly. "That's… not good."

If they wanted to get these civilians out of the Waterfall…

They were going to have to head back to the surface.

And Deidara already knew where they were.

/-/

Sasuke watched with no small degree of fear as an explosion echoed out from the depths of the Waterfall, far, far below them.

Suspended a good five-hundred feet above the ground, climbing up the side of the massive tree that hung in the center of the village, Sasuke could just barely make out what was happening with his Sharingan.

Naruto was fighting Deidara, and from the looks of things, handling himself decently well.

Someone tapped him on the back, and he realized it was Sakura, who was perched upon the wall a bit funnily, a lot like she was walking normally on the ground.

Except for… well, she was walking up the side of a organic growth a way's away from terra-firma

"You going to move?" She asked with a snort. "I can't exactly walk through you."

"R-right." He shook his head, realizing he'd just have to trust in Naruto. "Sorry."

He looked up instead and saw that they had very little left to go, another fifty or so feet before they hit what looked to be an entrance into the tree.

Well, Sasuke said entrance… he meant more… 'hole'.

There was a hole in the tree.

Twenty-five minutes later, and they'd pulled the last of their group, Guy, up and into the makeshift entry-point. The man kept worriedly staring down at the same battle Sasuke had been looking at, and he wondered, idly, if the gymnast's eyesight was good enough to follow what was happening down there.

Surely not… right?

If the man told him he could… Sasuke wouldn't be all that shocked.

Guy was weird, and that was putting it lightly.

As they entered into the tree, and pushed further into the ancient bark, he found himself questioning just how deep this place could go. Would they find a bunker at the very top? Or perhaps one stashed away inside the things' branches.

That was, until they stumbled upon a metal door, one which seemed to melt out of the wood itself.

"It's sealed." Kakashi spoke as he ran his hand along it and hissed as the skin on said hand began to melt. "Sealed and protected, too. No getting in there. Well, not easily."

"Depends." Anko spoke, even as Sasuke himself walked up to Kakashi and began healing his hand. "On who it was made to keep out."

The woman stepped forward and, making sure to wrap her hand in cloth first, quite literally knocked on the door.

"Yo, Waterfall guys, we're the Akatsuki Assault Force. We're here to assist you guys in helping to protect your Jinchuuriki. Can you let us in?"

There was no response.

Sakura snorted.

"Nice one."

Anko punched the girl in the shoulder, which Sasuke's girlfriend merely laughed off.

A second later, however, a click sounded out from behind the door, and the laughter abruptly ceased. Another second, and the first seal on the door seemed to almost peel off, moving onto the wood beside it. Once more, and the other few seals did the same, and over the course of the next minute, gradually, the door became just a regular old piece of metal.

One which quickly slung open.

"Hurry!" A ninja inside beckoned them forward. "We don't have a lot of time. Get in, c'mon!"

They did so, rushing forward and into the door. He was one of the first, and, like before, Guy headed up the rear of their formation.

Though he didn't miss Anko and Sakura's exchanged words.

"Ooo, Nice one." The girl's teacher smarmed.

"Oh, shut up."

They were brought into a small room, which looked to be for the purpose of… well, sealing. Masters of the art were working on all manner of things at their workstations, from paper bombs to articulate masterworks, which seemed to serve many different kinds of purposes.

The door locked behind them, and from what Sasuke imagined, it likely resealed itself automatically as well.

"Thank you all for answering Fu's call for aid." One of them addressed Kakashi. "I know our plea was a desperate and sudden one, but-"

"No worries there." Kakashi waved away their concerns. "If you don't mind, would you allow a few of us to go on ahead to see the Jinchuuriki for the time being? Not all of us," Kakashi stressed as more than a few heads in the room turned. "Just a few Chuunin. Nothing your guards couldn't handle. The rest of us need to head back out immediately to start tracking down the Akatsuki themselves."

The leading man seemed to consider that for a second, before he sighed and nodded.

"Whom amongst you is going?"

Kakashi waved forward Hinata, Haku, Sakura, and himself. He almost began to protest, siting both he and Haku were technically Jonin, but from the way no one batted an eye around them, and from the look in his old teachers' eye, he got the idea.

They could pass for Chuunin in front of these people, and they'd be added protection for Fu in case something did go wrong.

He nodded, stepping forward.

The Sealmaster took them a way's back in the room, to another locked door at the back, and performed a fairly complicated ritual to open it. When he did, and they'd all passed through, he shut it immediately behind him.

They traveled a good ten minutes before they ended up in another room, and when they emptied out into it, Sasuke noted rather immediately that someone was running towards them at high speed.

The girl practically bowled Hinata over with her hug, and it was only the fact that he'd known the girl's face that hadn't led to him stopping her.

"Ah… Fu…" Hinata groaned, holding the girl up seemingly against her will. "That… kind of hurts…"

"You came…" She spoke just loud enough that Sasuke could hear her, squeezing down even more on Hinata's poor back. "You guys actually came… oh, thank you…"

Hinata's expression almost instantly softened.

"Of course, we came."

Haku stepped forward. "It's been a while, Fu."

"Yeah, it has." She finally dismounted Hinata, leaving the girl to massage her lower back. "Sorry we couldn't be reuniting under better circumstances. But, uhm, glad to see you all, and everything!"

A voice approached them from around a nearby corner.

"Fu, where the hell did you-" One of Fu's two guards rounded the bend. "Oh, you all are…"

"Kegon, they came!" Fu turned to the man, apparently Kegon, with a beaming smile. "They actually came!"

Kegon, to his credit, smiled easily.

"You said they would, didn't you?"

"Yeah, but…" Fu didn't say anymore, but Sasuke could understand what she meant.

She'd held onto hope that they'd come save them, but she hadn't believed they'd actually make it in time.

To be proven wrong there… he imagined it was quite a nice feeling.

"Alright, well, as much as I'd like to let you all catch up," Kegon stepped forward. "I'm afraid we've got some pretty serious shit to deal with. I'll be needing you all to help out."

"Sure. Sounds good." Sakura addressed the man. "What are we doing?"

Kegon gestured for them to follow.

"Come with me…"

"I'll explain on the way."

End Chapter 73


Yo!

Welp, it is Wednesday my dudes (Horrid Screeching), which means it's Trip Down a Hill day! Hope you guys liked the chapter and all!

This arc won't be too long, probably only five or six chapters in total? Like I said a few chapters back, I'm trying to draw this story to a conclusion like... reasonably soon? Basically, I'd like it to be done by this time next year, if that makes sense.

Uh... Bjergsen retired, and PowerofEvil is scheduled to be his replacement, and that's pretty fucking massive. Anyone who follows LoL probably knows why that's important (and anyone who doesn't shouldn't care) but I thought it was big enough to mention here.

In other news, I will be taking a break this next week, so you'll receive no chapter next week. My apologies!

Anyways... that's all from me this week, I'll see you all in (2) week(s)!