The three chuunin stayed behind at the training field in order to talk after the older shinobi left.
"So have you figured out any new Rinne-Sharingan techniques in the last six months, Emo-chan?" Naruto asked.
"No new techniques," Sasuke responded, "but I've gotten better at using the Asura Path."
Naruto grimaced. "That path is disturbing."
Sasuke shrugged. "It was a little disconcerting at first, but who can argue with rapidly shooting powerful missiles and beams without hand signs. Have you figured out anything new?"
"I can summon Hinata with the Animal Path," she replied.
"Really?" he said. "I wonder if I could summon you guys."
"I don't know," Naruto replied. "I noticed that I could feel a small residue of my chakra in her and concentrated on it while I was doing a summoning."
"So you think you could do it with me too?" her male teammate asked.
"I think so," she replied. "Other than that, I've only figured out flying with the Deva Path thanks to Hinata-chan."
Hinata smiled. "Flying is fun. I wish I could do it more, but it's somewhat chakra intensive."
"Is Ero-sennin still convinced that there are six paths?" Sasuke asked.
"Yeah," Naruto responded. "Unless there is something extra added by combining the Sharingan with the Rinnegan."
"You still don't know why you have nine tomoe compared to my six, do you?" he asked.
She shook her head. "The Kyuubi only knows what he heard about Kaguya. She had nine like me. If there's any difference we're going to have to figure it out on our own."
Besides the two Deva Path techniques that they had both started out knowing how to use instinctively. Naruto had figured out how to use the Animal Path to summon creatures and the Preta Path to absorb chakra from the techniques of opponents. Sasuke had figured out how to use the Human Path to absorb knowledge from a foe, killing them in the process, and how to alter his body with the Asura Path, including creating regenerating missiles from his body. Presumably, there was one more path.
"So what else did you learn?" Sasuke asked.
"You know," she said teasingly, "some ninjutus, some fuuinjutsu, lots of medical techniques." She smirked. "I think I already told you I learned Baachan's strength technique."
He rolled his eyes. "As if I needed another reason to stay out of arms reach of you."
All three of them came alert as they felt the chakra for as Body Flicker materialize a short distance from them. Moments later an ANBU appeared in the spot.
"Uchiha-san, Hyuuga-san, Uzumaki-san, Hokage-sama desires to see you in her office right away," he said.
Naruto exchanged a look with her teammates and said, "We'll be right there."
"Thanks for coming promptly," said Tsunade. She glared at Kakashi.
He eye smiled back at her.
"How did you get Kakashi-sensei here so fast?" Naruto asked.
"He was already here," her master said. "We were talking about plans for your team when a priority message came in from Suna via messenger hawk."
"What does Suna want?" Sasuke asked.
"Akatsuki attacked Suna and managed to maneuver the Kazekage-dono into an unfavorable position and captured him."
"Gaara-san!" Naruto exclaimed. She fought down the impulse to demand that they leave to go rescue him right away. She had not had any contact with him since the Chuunin Exams other than a few letters, but she felt a large amount of kinship toward her fellow jinchuuriki and had been pleased to know that he had turned his life around and gained enough trust from his fellow Suna shinobi to be named Kazekage.
Tsunade paused and glanced at her. After Naruto proved capable of holding herself in check, the Hokage nodded and continued, "Suna has asked for help in recovering Kazekage-dono. Unfortunately, I don't have a lot of teams of the necessary strength free right now, so I'll only be sending you to start off with. Team Gai is currently finishing up a routine mission near the border with Kusa. I'll send a message to have them join you after they're done."
"If I know Gai-kun," Kakashi said, "It won't take him long to catch up."
Tsunade nodded. "From the description that Suna sent, the primary culprit is Deidara, a missing nin from Iwa, who used bombs made from clay that he shaped. From what we know of Akatsuki, he has a partner he works with, but Suna did not know who it was—at least when they sent the message. Kazekage-dono's brother, Kankurou-san, was trying to pursue them."
"Akasuna no Sasori," said Naruto.
The others looked at her.
"Those two were the ones that kidnapped me right after the Genin Exam," she explained. "If they haven't switched things around, he'd still be Deidara's partner."
"Sasori is Suna's most infamous missing nin," Kakashi commented. "He was their premiere puppeteer before he left and has presumably only gotten stronger."
"Be prepared to take care of some nasty poisons, Apprentice," Tsunade commanded Naruto. "His grandmother, Chiyo-san, was exceptionally skilled at making them and she was the one that taught him puppetry."
"Will do, Baa-shishou!" Naruto said. She made a Shadow Clone to head to the hospital to pick up a poison antidote kit. The kit contained more antidote-making ingredients that she typically needed to carry on herself. She would still be limited in how much antidote she could make for really exotic poisons, but forewarned is forearmed.
"One last thing," the Hokage said. "Temari-san left to return to Suna earlier today. If you encounter her on the way, let her know what's going on."
Naruto felt her clone arrive outside the door with a Flicker. She had trained her chakra sensing, with help from her cousin Karin, and left it active at a low level all the time. With a group of S-ranked criminals after her, she thought it advisable—especially considering how porous Konoha's walls seemed to be. She did not have close to the range with it that Karin did, or even that she had with her Byakugan, but in most public circumstances it was considered inappropriate to have the Byakugan active.
The clone handed her a scroll which she sealed into one of her vest pocket seals. The storage seals in her vest pockets and thigh holsters were specially made in order to be able to accommodate other storage seals.
"I've got the medical supplies that I'll need," Naruto said. "I just need to pick up my mission kit from home."
"I've already got mine," Sasuke said smugly.
Naruto pouted. "Some of us haven't had the chance to travel or take missions regularly."
"I'd like all three of you to be ready to go at a moment's notice from now on," Kakashi said.
All three chuunin acknowledged the order.
"Meet at the gates in ten minutes," he said before disappearing in a Flicker.
Naruto also used the Body Flicker to go to her apartment as they dispersed. Once there, she made Shadow Clones to grab her mission supplies and secure her home. She sent one to grab some sustenance from Ramen Ichiraku and sent one to inform those who needed to know that she would be gone—Sakura, Shizune, Haku, Karin, and Ranmaru. While her reputation had improved, especially since she had started managing the hospital with Shizune, the only real close friend she had made while Sasuke was gone had been Sakura and maybe Ino.
She made it to the gates within 5 minutes. Sasuke was already there and Hinata arrived moments after she did. Three minutes later her clone appeared with her special delivery. Right at the ten minute mark, Kakashi appeared with a Flicker.
"While I'm gratified and a little surprised that you made it on time, Sensei," Hinata said. "Why did you need ten minutes?"
"I had to check the bookstore, Hinata-chan," he replied with an eye smile.
Hinata and Naruto both growled at him while Sasuke palmed his face.
"If we're five minutes too late to rescue Gaara-san, I'm burning your pervy books," Naruto snarled.
"I noticed that you had a clone make a detour too, Bunny-chan," Sasuke said with a smirk. "Ichiraku?"
Naruto huffed. "I would have left without her and had her catch up."
"You would waste that much chakra on ramen?" Sasuke said.
"It's not like I'm going to run out and Gaara-san and Temari-san both said that Suna doesn't have any good ramen," Naruto responded.
"The same rule applies to you, Naruto-chan," Kakashi said with an eye smile. "If you run out of chakra and it prevents you from saving Kazekage-dono, you're banned from Ichiraku for a month."
Naruto paled.
You'll help me out here won't you, Kyuubi? she asked the Bijuu.
I'm not going to give you my chakra to save your ramen privileges, Stepmother, the Kyuubi growled at her.
But Akatsuki—the Bijuu, Naruto spluttered.
Fine, the Fox said, but only to keep the Bijuu out of their hands. Collecting all nine of us can only mean trouble.
Do you think they mean to reform the Juubi? she asked.
They would have to be fools to do so, it growled, but you humans often are.
She noticed that her teammates were all staring at her.
"The Kyuubi saying it won't give you chakra to protect your ramen privileges?" Sasuke asked with a smirk.
She pouted. "Everyone is so mean to me."
It was true that she could probably rip chakra from the Kyuubi without permission if she needed to, but she wanted to avoid that if at all possible. She would do it to save her precious people, but not her ramen, as much as it would pain her.
"Enough goofing around," Hinata said seriously. "Let's go."
They started off at a distance-eating, but steady pace. When they were two kilometers outside of Konoha, Naruto called a halt.
"Now that we're a safe distance from the village, I'm going to summon our transportation," she said.
"You mean to fly us to Suna? Do you have the chakra for that?" Kakashi asked.
"I do," she replied. "And even if I didn't, the Kyuubi is in full support of preventing Akatsuki from gaining the Bijuu."
Naruto sent chakra to her eyes and opened the eye on her forehead. She now had enough control over the Rinne-Sharingan that she could open it without manifesting her chakra externally and becoming a chakra torch. She formed a ram seal and sent chakra and focused on summoning her giant bird.
She had discovered the Animal Path when she had tried to summon a slug without providing blood as an experiment. The technique had failed, but she had felt a "pulling" on her third eye. She had tried again with her Rinne-Sharingan open and ended up summoning a dog-sized carnivorous bunny complete with sharp, pointy teeth and claws. When she had shown Sasuke how to do it during one of his visits back to Konoha, he had ended up summoning a large cat with a tail that split in two. Some experimentation had shown that they could each summon a variety of creatures based on an image that they formed in their minds while doing the technique, but that they summoned different creatures, even if they pictured the same thing in their minds. Originally, they had needed to form the hand seals for the normal Summoning Technique, but now she only needed to use the ram seal, unless she summoned Hinata. Summoning Hinata, and presumably Sasuke, was more unstable and required all of the hand seals. Something about the original technique still required her to use all the hand seals when she summoned slugs.
A very large albino crow appeared in a puff of smoke. For some reason her Rinne-Sharingan summons were all white. The only spots of color on the crow were the copies of Naruto's Rinne-Sharingan in each eye and some black rods that pierced the back of its neck and each foot. Even its beak was a bleached white. The creature was semi-autonomous. She could direct it and share its senses, but did not need to micro-manage it. Besides the crow and the bunny, Naruto had also summoned a relatively small owl, a large two-headed fox.
She pulled a large harness out of one of her vest seals. She created a few Shadow Clones and they fastened the harness to the birds head. She pushed chakra into her legs in order to be able to jump up to the crow's head. "Come on up," she called.
They aranged themselves side-by-side with Sasuke and Kakashi in front and Naruto and Hinata behind them. Each of them grabbed onto the harness straps.
"What do you do when there's no time for the harness?" Kakashi asked.
"Use chakra to hold on," she replied, "but I don't think we want to do that the whole way there."
"How long do you think it will take?" Kakashi asked.
"The bird flies at three times the normal shinobi running speed," she replied.
"Five hours then," he said.
Two hours into the trip, the bird's basic mind flagged something for her attention below. A kunoichi was jogging at a steady pace in the same direction they were going. Using the bird's superb eyesight, she could tell that it was Temari.
"Temari-san's down below us," she shouted over the wind. "I'm bringing us down."
She mentally directed the bird to land near the Suna kunoichi, but far enough away that she would not do anything rash.
"Temari-san!" she shouted.
"Naruto-san?" Temari returned, eying the bird summon warily. "Is there a problem?"
Naruto nodded gravely and gestured for Kakashi to speak.
Kakashi cleared his throat. "Konoha recently received a priority message from Suna, requesting help. Evidently, Suna came under attack from Akatsuki earlier today. They were able to overpower Kazekage-dono while he was distracted defending the city."
"Gaara-kun!" Temari said, distraught. "Do you know where they took him?"
"No," Kakashi said, "but evidently your other brother was tracking him. We do know that the main Akatsuki member he faced was Deidara the Mad Bomber of Iwa. We have reason to believe that his partner is Akasuna no Sasori."
"We would like to offer you a ride, Temari-san," Naruto said. "It's not the most comfortable, but it is quick. We expect to be to Suna in about three hours."
"Thank you, Naruto-san," she said.
Kakashi's estimate was fairly accurate—not quite five hours after they left, Naruto had the crow land them two kilometers from Suna's walls.
Temari led them to the front gate.
When they were still a ways away, one of the guards called out, "Halt! Access to Suna is currently limited. Unless you have important, official business, you will have to return from where you came."
"Any news on my brother?" Temari demanded.
"Temari-sama!" the guard exclaimed. "Kankurou-sama is currently in the hospital."
Temari paled. "And my other brother?"
"Kazekage-sama has been missing all day," the guard answered. "Who are these people with you, Temari-sama?"
"These are shinobi that Konoha has sent in response to a request for aid," she explained. "I vouch for them."
"Very well," the guard gestured to his comrades, who let them through the gates.
"The hospital first," Temari said. She turned to Naruto. "You'll help if he needs it, won't you, Naruto-san?"
"Of course," Naruto answered.
At the hospital, Temari demanded Kankurou's location and then led them to him. Naruto picked up Kankurou's charts and scanned through them.
"Shiroi Kiba!" an old woman's voice yelled. "Die!"
She turned to see Hinata holding off the old woman's attack.
"Chiyo," an old man snapped. "This is not the White Fang, but his son."
"You can excuse an old woman for getting caught up in the past, Ebizou," Chiyo said before relaxing.
The Konoha delegation relaxed as well. None of them wanted to get into a fight in the hospital.
"Chiyo-baasama, Ebizou-jiisama, this is the Konaha team that was sent for," Temari said.
Chiyo huffed and said, "You, girl, what are you doing with the boy's charts? I'm personally looking after him by his sensei's request."
"Temari-san asked me to look at him," Naruto said.
"Naruto-san has been trained by Tsunade-dono herself," Temari explained.
"The Slug Girl?" Chiyo said with a huff, folding her arms.
"You'll have to excuse my sister," Ebizou said. "She's been grumpy for the last two decades."
"You have a much higher tolerance for incompetence than I do, Brother Dear," the old woman retorted.
Naruto ignored the byplay. The charts said that the puppeteer had been affected by an unknown poison. She used a poison extraction technique to obtain a small sample of the poison and analyzed the effects. By this time, a nurse had entered the room. Naruto requested ingredients to make an antidote. Unfortunately, some of the ones she needed were rare and Suna did not have much of two of the key ingredients. She had brought some with her, but even then, she probably only had enough ingredients for six doses. She prepared the antidote and administered it to Kankurou. She waited a minute for the antagonist to neutralize the poison and then set about healing the effects. Not long after she had finished, Kankurou awoke with a groan.
"Kankuro-kun!" Temari exclaimed.
Chiyo looked at Naruto with grudging respect. "I knew that that Slug Girl was good, but I didn't expect that she had passed on so much of her skill."
Naruto bowed in acknowledgement.
"I still think no good will come of calling for help from Konoha," the old woman muttered. "Suna must stand on its own strength."
"Behave, Sister," Ebizou told her quietly.
"What happened, Kankurou-kun?" Temari asked.
"It was Sasori," he replied. "He was waiting for me when I tried to follow the crazy bomber."
Chiyo gasped. Her brother placed a hand on her shoulder in support.
"Can you describe the location?" Kakashi asked. "We should be able to follow their trail if we have a starting spot."
Kankurou described a spot in the desert outside Suna.
"I know the spot," said Temari. "I can take you there."
"How will you be able to track them through the desert?" asked Chiyo. "The winds will have disturbed any tracks."
"If we get there soon enough, one of my hounds should be able to pick up their scent," Kakashi said.
"Would this help?" Kankurou asked. He took out a scrap of black cloth. "I pulled this off of Sasori in our brief scuffle."
"Yes, it would help a lot," Kakashi said, taking the scrap.
"I'm going with you," Temari said.
"I'm afraid that won't be possible," a voice said from the doorway. Naruto identified the man as the one who had been the Sand Siblings' sensei at the Chuunin Exams."
"Why not, Baki-sensei?" Temari asked.
"With Kazekage-sama taken and Kankuro-san incapacitated, we need you here, Temari-san," he replied. "The people will be comforted to know you're here representing your brother."
"He's right, you know," said Ebizou.
"Someone must represent Suna's interest," Chiyo said.
"We have no one to send," Baki admitted. "That is the primary reason I sent to Konoha. Between repairs and guard duty, we have no one."
Chiyo scowled and said, "I'll go."
"Are you sure, Chiyo?" her brother asked.
"I am," she said firmly. "And if it is Sasori. . ."
Ebizou nodded in understanding.
