Foreword: Soundtrack is as follows.
Scene One: Hack Sign - Key of the Twilight
Scene Two: Samurai Champloo - Death Wish
Scene Three: Inuyasha - Kagome and Inuyasha
Scene Four: Samurai Champloo - 1st Samurai
Scene Five: Hack Sign - Broken Wings
Scene Six: Rurouni Kenshin - Departure
Scene Seven: Rurouni Kenshin - Departure(Piano and Acoustic Solo)
Part Three: Equities of Equilibrium
Bladed Bull's Eye
The excuse had been that his chakra was still messed up and he was trying to save up to do something important. In Naruto's eyes, it was just more of the toad lecher's sadism shining through. Regardless, Naruto had been forced to piggyback the man all the way up the cliff. All six feet, three inches and two hundred pounds of him -- not counting the additional weight of that thirty pound scroll or all the crap the man carried with him aside from it.
Four times, Naruto had lost his footing on the way up and fallen back down. Four times, Jiraiya had shown uncanny speed for a poisoned man, flipped them so that Naruto wound up crashing face-first into the ground and somehow, every single time, Jiraiya landed on top of him. On both feet. Complete with those geta sandals grinding into Naruto's ribcage so fiercely that he could feel his internal organs shuffling about like a swarm of eels just to try and compensate for it all.
On the fifth go round though, Jiraiya-be-damned, Naruto made it up to the top of the cliff, staggered a few steps and fell over. Jiraiya conveniently dismounted right before Naruto hit the dirt, and again, those damned geta ground across his back. This time, Jiraiya seemed to make it a point to walk on him in order to get to wherever it was he wanted to go.
After almost a minute of tasting dirt, Naruto finally looked up. His entire face was twitching spastically, and his whole body hurt -- from the falls, from the sandals, from the exertion. Jiraiya didn't even notice.
Instead, the toad hermit bit his thumb until it bled, ran through the seals, then slammed the hand into the ground.
"KUCHIYOSE: GAMA KENSEI!"
A split second later, with a huge puff of pinkish smoke, tinged green around the edges, Naruto found himself staring at one of the strangest frogs he had ever laid eyes on.
It was roughly the same size as the toad that Jiraiya had ridden on when they had first met. Its skin was an ugly mixture of bloody red, striped with grey and spotted with brown warts. It wore an open kimono and nothing else, with a dozen small scars across its face and a single great scar across its chest. At its back was sheathed a sword so large it would've given a Mist-nin penis envy.
When the smoke finished clearing, the frog shifted a bit to regard him, then heaved up onto its hind legs. Its arms crossed over its scarred chest and its expression looked set in stone.
"You called me for this?" He boomed out, utterly displeased.
"Yeah," Jiraiya replied, almost apologetic.
"Who the hell is this?" Naruto finally sputtered out while dusting himself off.
"This is Gama Kensei. The finest swordsman that the Toads have ever produced," Jiraiya answered, slapping the huge bullfrog on the back and grinning like an idiot.
"... And you want me to fight him," Naruto concluded, suddenly feeling a very strange mixture of excitement, glee, disappointment and uneasiness.
"Hell no," Kensei replied.
"And why not?" Naruto growled.
"You ain't got a sword. Jiraiya knows I only cross blades with those worthy of me," Kensei answered.
When Naruto glared at the hermit, he was grinning from ear to ear. He had obviously known this was going to happen...
"Then what's the freaking point?"
"The point, Naruto," Jiraiya chimed in, "is that you need to go get a sword if you want to learn anything."
Naruto grimaced. Then reached to his side and slipped a few fingers into his shuriken holster with an irate look on his face.
"Bite me," he finally let out, hurling a trio of shuriken at the bullfrog.
Even as the projectiles were closing in, Naruto was rushing in behind them, having drawn a kunai in one hand and another pack of shuriken in the other. As the distance closed, Kensei remained stationary, and then--
It felt like a freight train ran him over.
He didn't quite see how the frog took out the shuriken, but its tongue somehow caught him across the face with enough force to spin him around twice. Before he could even hit the ground, its foot snapped out and nailed him in the stomach so violently that he could feel the bones distancing from each other in his neck from the whiplash it caused. A few seconds later, he hit the ground with a skid on his back.
"Get a sword or don't bother, shitsqueek," Kensei bellowed at him.
Naruto was about to try and get up -- so that he could kick that big toad's ass, of course -- when Jiraiya stepped up to his side. The man towered over him even more now that he was sprawled out across the ground, and that look on his face said nothing of good intentions.
"Now that we've established the reason, I'm gonna go ahead and give you a mission," he stated.
"Eh?"
"Your mission, if you want to learn anything from me at all, is to go into the city and take the sword of a samurai. Sheathe and all. Then come back and defeat Kensei," Jiraiya explained.
"Sounds simple enough..."
"There's a catch."
"Fuck you."
"Women only, thanks," the old man smirked, then continued. "The catch is that you have to do it without being detected by anyone."
Naruto grimaced and sat up on his elbows, glaring death at Kensei.
"Should be easy," he muttered.
"Did I mention that there's a small army of ninja from Konoha here?"
"Go. To. Hell."
"THAT'S THE SPIRIT!"
Somewhere between cursing Jiraiya's mother and wanting to strangle Kensei with his own tongue, the toad hermit punted him over the the edge of the cliff. As he was falling, Naruto had only one real thought running through his head...
"What the hell am I supposed to do now?"
He didn't have an answer.
The landing had been easier than he expected, but his ego rightfully attributed that to the surge of chakra he had pumped through his feet on impact with the ground. It hurtled him forward and allowed him to surge onward without even missing a beat.
The run to the city didn't take long, as it was built so close to the cliff. Along the way though, Naruto had just enough time to come up with something akin to a plan. It was brazen, stupid, borderline suicidal and very likely to get him spotted by his comrades...
But hey, if he was gonna do something this troublesome, he might as well do it with style.
"Henge," he said to himself, just as he reached the bottom of the hill before entering the city. When he emerged into view, his appearance had only slightly changed -- his hair had turned solid black and his whisker-like facemarks were gone. His eyes had turned black and the orange of his pants and jacket had changed to match.
Were he to look in a mirror, he would've thought he looked something like a bastard Uchiha.
He wasn't far off the mark at all.
Once he was in the city, he decided, he would set his plan into motion.
"... And that's everything," Neji finished.
Sakura and Kiba were quiet. Unusually so for people like them. Hinata didn't really know what to make of it, because even their body language was a blank slate. After a time though, Kiba finally shrugged dismissively and Sakura let out a relieved sigh.
The four of them had broken from the main pack of the Genin and Jounin a while ago, and by now, they were clustered together at a booth like they owned the place. Their only companion was a young woman with dazzlingly blue hair, pale skin and cloudy eyes with a far-away look to them. She had served them without asking a word about the Konoha protectors all four were wearing -- Kiba's on his forehead, Hinata's around her neck, Sakura's like a hairband and Neji's in the same place as Kiba. Hinata had switched back to her regular clothing by now, but Neji still insistently wore his increasingly trademarked white kimono outfit.
"Well," Sakura finally spoke up. "At least he's okay."
Kiba and Akamaru echoed the sentiment, though the former was stuffing his face with ramen. They had all agreed upon ramen for dinner. It wasn't anyone's favorite -- though Hinata had acquired a bit of a taste for it -- but everyone could agree on it. Kiba had probably skipped meals all through the time spent at sea, as he lacked the stomach of a sailor.
"Then we're all in agreement and there's nothing to worry about," Neji replied, finally taking up chopsticks and going to work on his meal.
"Y-You don't think anything bad will happen to him while we're here, do you?" Hinata felt compelled to ask, staring over her shoulder and into the street.
"I doubt it," Sakura replied, though her voice was edged with a shred of uncertainty that had probably been sitting beneath the surface.
"I doubt anyone's stupid enough to try and attack a guy whose comrades are out in force right now," Kiba pointed out between gulps.
Hinata simply nodded to them both and turned away from her food. Kiba promptly stole it, but she didn't mind too much. The streets were more interesting to her. They were alive tonight, filled with the hustle and bustle of a city that never sleeps. People flooded through like water, blending into a virtual sea of faces -- all with their own stories to tell, all unique and yet all utterly unidentifiable from the next person. Men, women, children. Animals too, though only a few horses and someone's escaped rooster.
It was an overwhelming sight to a girl like her. At once, it repelled her and lured her in. The unending drone of the crowds were more than enough to make up for the silence of her teammates and Neji, and the mingling scents in the air were almost intoxicating. While all her senses were ultimately geared towards her eyes, she couldn't help but drown in the flow of information to the others.
Some part of her almost wished she could scoop a hand into the crowd and taste it. Then the part of her that spoke with Kiba's voice informed her of how perverted that sounded and she had to fight tooth and nail to keep from blushing.
Thankfully, none of the others noticed it. Except for Neji, but then, he noticed everything...
Or maybe he didn't?
As Kiba started speaking up about how Naruto was too much of an idiot for his own good, Hinata noticed a streak of movement in the crowds.
Someone was running through them, dodging between people so quickly as to remain unnoticed by virtually everyone in his path. Relatively short compared to those around him, he ducked and ran against the flow of people, and for a split second -- a single all-encompassing moment that seemed to stretch on for an eternity -- Hinata was able to see him in perfect detail.
His hair was black, his clothes were black and his eyes were black. He was missing the tell-tale stripes, but it was him.
When the moment ended, Hinata was left breathless and stunned. She didn't quite know how she had recognized him so easily, but...
"I think... I just saw him," she mumbled out. If anyone heard her, they didn't reply.
When he finally came to a stop, he was just outside the walls of the governor's palace. It was a large estate, colored a gleaming mix of white and gold with red symbols painted on each gate.
It would've been easy to stop here, mug one of the gate guards and take his sword...
But Uzumaki Naruto was not a shortcutter. He wanted the best sword that he could get his hands on, and logically, that meant taking it from one of the Ontai's personal guard.
With that in mind, Naruto took a deep breath and leapt over the wall, clearing it in a single hurdle. He landed with a pair of small splashes on the mote, chakra pooling at his feet to keep himself from sinking on impact as he rushed forward in another low run. He could feel his heart racing, and more than anything else, he felt excited by all of this. This was what it must feel like to be a real ninja -- a master of the shadows, using stealth, guile and speed to achieve one's mission, unstoppable and undetectable by--
"Shit," he thought, jumping up off the water and barely making it onto another perfectly smooth wall as a nearby guard shined a light down into the mote.
For a harrowing ten seconds, Naruto had to literally cling to the wall to keep himself out of the path of the guard's light. Pressing himself up against it, he could almost feel the light piercing the air just a few inches away from him, licking at his blackened hair as if it were the hottest and heaviest of flames. He didn't breathe because the air had been sucked out of his lungs. He didn't open his eyes for fear that he might see the light shimmering just a precious hair's width from his body. He didn't even move because he feared that if he put anymore chakra into the wall, he might blow himself off of it.
At last though, the guard turned the light away and went back to work. With only a moment to gasp for the air he hadn't been breathing, Naruto abruptly surged forward.
In a run, he made his way up the wall, passing between windows and finally jumping up onto the edge of the palace's pagoda roof. With only one hand holding it, he gave a pull and swung himself up and out of sight, rolling to a stop before taking a few seconds to rest.
Then he sat up again, stood and got a running start up the roof. With one jump, he made it up to another level, only to crash quite loudly into a window and break it open.
This time, he landed with a roll on his shoulders, one arm and finally both feet. He was just outside the governor's bedroom, met by the two people he wanted to see more than anything else in this world right now...
The Ontai's personal guards. One was orange-haired and blue-eyed, the other looked like a scruffier, older Kiba with an eyepatch. Both wore orange, both were already drawing their swords out, and Naruto--
Naruto smiled.
"Greetingssss from Otagakure," he said, intentionally dragging out the 's' sound. It was a pathetic imitation of a snake's lisping sound, but having them hate Orochimaru's village for what he was about to do was perfectly acceptable in Naruto's eyes.
Neither samurai responded to him. Instead, the eye-patch wearer barked an order to his apparent subordinate--
"Kenji, to the left!"
And lunged in from the right. Naruto dodged to the side, leaving the razor-sharp edge of Patch's katana to slit the air in his wake. As he was sidestepping though, he managed to catch the orange-haired samurai -- Kenji, his name was -- ducking around to Patch's left.
With a swiftness that would've escaped him just a year ago, Naruto swept a leg up and crashed his shin into Patch's chin, throat and underarms, his other leg sweeping into the back of the man's knees and bowling him over in one fluid motion. His hand found the floor before his legs had even untangled themselves from Patch's body. Kenji was incoming with his sword held wide in a slicing position.
The action to follow was quick and almost choreographed like a dance. Naruto pulled himself out of the air and Kenji lashed out. His katana whipped right through the space that Naruto had previously occupied, passing within inches of cleaving Patch's face and arms off. As the black-haired ninja pushed himself back up into a handspring, Kenji recovered and made for a quick stabbing motion, only to again hit air.
Now Naruto was flipping over him, and Patch finally hit the floor. Kenji took two steps forward and whipped around again, slashing upward and almost chopping through Naruto's groin in the process. He missed though, because Naruto reversed his flip just before the blade could make impact.
His feet knifed up into the ceiling and found purchase on it, chakra molding into the soles of his feet and sandals to hold him in place as he crouched, moving just out of the reach of Kenji's second slice.
The samurai backpedaled, and Naruto held his position long enough to take stock of the situation.
Patch was starting to get up, Kenji had assumed a stance and looked so calm that it was almost terrifying.
"That Kenji guy's tougher... His sword'll do."
With that though, Naruto leapt into action. Almost blindly, he lunged straight at the orange-haired samurai, who replied with an uppercut of the sword, so swift that it was little more than a blur of silver and--
Naruto executed a Kawarimi with a Kage Bunshin. While Kenji annihilated the clone, he swept around back, wound up and then...
BAM!
The orange-haired samurai collapsed with a distinct thud, bleeding from the back of the head. Naruto wasted no time in stripping him of his sword and sheathe, having to pry the former from his unconscious fingers. By then, Patch was on his feet and coming in with a loud shout.
Naruto fell back to avoid having his head and right arm taken off. Then he rolled to the side in order to keep from being stabbed into the ground.
Sweeping himself up to a kneeling position with movement similar to a breakdancer, Naruto lashed out with Kenji's sheathe, cracking it across Patch's arm. The man let out a muffled scream, yet still clung to his sword with both hands.
He pulled it from the floor and Naruto's course of action was clear...
He stabbed with the sword.
Its blade hit the floor and his entire body swung up, using it for leverage in a kick to the jaw that would've done Rock Lee proud. An instant later, Patch became the second man in this city whose head Naruto had planted into a ceiling.
With that, he stood up straight, sheathed Kenji's sword and took a look around.
"Sorry 'bout the mess," he mumbled out, though he didn't mean a word of it.
Naruto turned and leapt back towards the broken window he had come in through, and that was when...
"If you're going to come for an assassination, do it all the way!"
"Oh shit!"
Everything went to Hell.
"Why'd you summon me, anyway?"
"I already told you," Jiraiya answered, pausing to erase a small mistake on his latest sketch. It was one of the new characters for the Icha Icha books -- an arch-villian, you see. A militant lesbian ninja from--
"No, you didn't. I asked you the same question as before and you just said 'yeah'."
Jiraiya frowned.
"The kid's up against a swordsman of Kumogakure," he replied.
"An' you want me to train him on how to use a sword? So it's a fair playing field?" Kensei asked, somewhere between amused and annoyed.
"Hell no. He's got even less talent for that than the last kid I put against you," Jiraiya shot back, getting the lines on the cleavage right this time.
"... Ahhhh... You just want the kid to learn to stop being an idiot then."
"More or less."
"Won't work."
"Worth a try."
The two were quiet upon hearing an explosion coming from somewhere in the city. It sounded like a crack of thunder, and there was an accompanying flash of blue to go along with it.
"Good reason."
"Exactly," Jiraiya replied, utterly unconcerned.
"We have got to stop meeting like this, don't you agree?"
It had been simple. Quick. Agonizing.
The doors to the governor's bedroom had blown right off the hinges. From there, the Cloud ninja had appeared like a lightning bolt, leaving Naruto to turn and face him only a quarter of a second before the tip of the man's sword found the right side of his stomach. The actual blade itself hadn't hurt so badly -- or maybe he just hadn't had the time to properly register the pain -- but the feeling of the shock going off right inside of his body had been enough to mute every other sensation he could've had. It was like going blind, deaf and mute amidst a background cascade of numbness and pain, all of it mingling together so viciously that he couldn't even hear if he was screaming or not.
Ultimately, the stab had been shallow. They were both going in the same direction, and when they had passed the edge of the window out over the roof, Tensho had swung his entire body up while pulling his still-sparkling sword from Naruto's body. His foot connected with the wound, chakra pooled into it, and a second later, the man had used it to hurl Naruto into the pagoda.
He landed on his face with a hard skid, and somewhere along the way, the Henge broke completely.
And now, he was getting up. He could barely feel his entire torso, and the insides of his arms and legs felt as if they were on fire. How he had kept a hold on Kenji's sword and sheathe was a complete mystery, but his stomach and face were both bleeding now and he could vaguely register the warmth of each wound trickling down the rest of him.
Chimi Tensho allowed him to stand. Even allowed him to turn around and face his would-be executioner.
"The irony of all of this is absurd," the man stated, sweeping his sword up until its edge was aimed at Naruto and its point oriented straight up to the skies. One hand pressed along the back of it, and the width of it seemed to rest perfectly between his eyes. The whole thing gleamed a bitter red in the moonlight.
"What the fug're you talkin' about?" Naruto slurred out, only just now starting to get feeling back into his tongue.
"I come to assassinate Jiraiya, you come to assassinate Ontai Asshuku and our paths inevitably cross because of it."
"Got the wrong idea, asshole," Naruto replied, wiping blood onto his sleeve before rushing the same hand to his stomach.
"... Then why else would you come here?" Tensho asked, his expression -- what little Naruto could see of it through the mask, at least -- faltering a bit.
"To get what I need to kick your ass," Naruto answered, wincing as a fresh surge of blood pulsed from his stomach wound. With that, he held up Kenji's sword and grinned.
"... You think you'll beat me just because you have a sword?" Chimi uttered out incredulously.
"Yeah," Naruto shot back, again wincing. The Kyuubi wasn't doing its job...
"... I'm at once flattered and disgusted by that," the Cloud-nin replied, finally whipping his sword down and splattering the blood from it onto the roof. Naruto had almost jumped at the sight of such jerky movements.
"Whaddaya mean?"
"Flattered that you hold me in such high regards. Disgusted that you think you can win just because you've got a weapon," Tensho answered, sounding almost... Civil about all of this.
There wasn't another sound for a few seconds. Then, Chimi spoke.
"Uzumaki Naruto," he began, dropping into what Naruto was starting to identify as the stance for Raiheijin's thrusting variation.
"I hereby swear to kill you."
This time, when Tensho thrust at him, Naruto was ready. With a sideways jump, he cleared the attack without getting hit by it. Unfortunately, he landed awkwardly and lost his balance, slipping and rolling down the pagoda roof before catching himself in a crouch just short of the ledge. Chimi continued on for several dozen yards before he finally slammed a foot down and skidded to a halt, almost ripping his sword out of its previous path and jumping at him.
"Shunseito Kazuma," he shouted back, just before jumping away and leaving the man to slice a chunk of the roof's edge off.
"I hereby vow to beat you," he finished, just before turning away and tucking the sword -- sheathe and all -- into his belt.
It was a long drop, but he was going to be able to make it to the wall and--
"DO YOU REALLY THINK YOU CAN GET AWAY THAT EASILY!"
When the thrust hit this time, Naruto didn't even feel it.
Instead, the world blinked from black to white a hundred times in a single instant, and when it was over, he looked down to see the katana piercing out of the right side of his chest, surrounded by a mixture of blood, vapor and sparks of blue.
The next thing he knew, Tensho had driven him through the wall of a three story building.
Almost instantly after the impact, the first thing Naruto noticed was that the katana had been pulled from his body. Before he had even hit the floor, Chimi had jumped off of his back, leaving Naruto to land with a skid thud and a skid. He could hear women screaming, then became distantly aware that they were in the top floor of a casino.
Without paying it any more attention though, Naruto heaved himself up. He was fated to become the Hokage, damnit, he would not die here.
"I'm amazed you can still breathe. Nevermind actually moving."
Tensho was speaking to him. The man was standing not too far away, near the hole that had been made with their entrance. Naruto paid him little mind, trying instead to pull himself to his feet. When that failed, he rolled onto his back and glared at the Cloud-nin, who seemed to be smiling viciously through his mask.
"You've been pierced twice with Raiheijin. I don't think anyone else has ever survived even one."
"I'm not gonna die here, you bastard," Naruto sputtered out. It was suddenly becoming almost impossible to breathe...
And the Kyuubi still wasn't helping him!
"I'll pass that off as juvenile stupidity," Kazuma replied, slowly sheathing his sword after flicking the blood off. People were stampeding downstairs by now.
Naruto had been about to reply when a foot of coughing took over. His vision was starting to tint red, and it was becoming even more difficult to breathe in the process.
"How does it feel to know you're going to drown to death in your own blood?"
He didn't answer. Not with words, anyway.
When Kazuma posed his question, Naruto answered it with action.
His hands whipped into a familiar seal, and an instant later, one Uzumaki Naruto became three.
The first one grabbed him under the arms and jumped up through the ceiling. The second rushed at Tensho and met its end from a sweeping kick into the groin. The third, however...
The third Kage Bunshin became a giant Blast Note. The very instant Naruto and his remaining doppleganger were clear of the building, the entire third floor ceased to exist as anything but a giant fireball. The shockwave alone was enough to send the two flying several hundred feet up into the air, casting them away from Tensho and towards the cliff.
They fell short, landing atop another building almost a block from where they had started out.
The impact jarred him so badly that he almost threw up, and that's when it finally happened.
Kyuubi woke up.
The first thing Naruto did was bite back a scream as he felt his teeth started to sharpen and elongate. His eyes shifted between red and blue, and his wounds started to heal. The blood cleared from his lungs and evaporated from his face, stomach and chest, but before it could heal all the way, the demon fox stopped short. Nine-Tails' chakra left him as quickly as it had come, leaving the wounds only just healed enough that he wasn't in danger of bleeding to death.
All in all, the process took a full three minutes. By then, the streets were in a panic, and his remaining doppleganger had set itself up next to him as a look-out. They were safe from the eyes of someone on the street, but...
"He'll be coming soon," the clone said.
"I know," Naruto replied, jerking himself upright and almost falling over because of it. Even with the blood out of his lungs, it hurt just to breathe right now.
"I see him," the clone said again, stepping back and reaching for its holster.
"Henge," Naruto ordered, though the command had already been given before he spoke it.
With a puff of smoke, the doppleganger became a giant four-bladed shuriken, resembling blackened katana blades on an oversized key ring. When he grabbed it and looked back, Naruto could see the shadowed image of his pursuer, leaping from rooftop to rooftop at blinding speeds. He was only barely visible against the backdrop of the night sky and the still-burning fires from the Blast Note Kage Bunshin, but it was enough...
"EAT SHIT!" He screamed out, just before hurling the shuriken and turning away.
He felt the star getting annihilated by a sword swipe before he had even gotten off the roof. Paying it no mind though, Naruto jumped up and made a break for it with everything he had left. He didn't bother disguising himself again, nor did he bother with any real attempts at stealth anymore.
It was like a dream, really.
One moment, they had all been filing out of the booth. The next, Kiba was shouting to get back out of the way, and then Sakura had found reason to backhand someone. Neji grabbed her and pulled her from the other two, and together, they melted into the crowds. Kiba and Akamaru followed suit with a leap, and Sakura somehow appeared next to them barely a second later. There was screaming, shouting and mayhem all around...
But somehow, at the right moment, when no-one else even knew what was going on, Hinata found the urge to look up.
When she did, she saw him again. The real Naruto.
He was running from rooftop to rooftop, obviously trying to get away from something, but the look on his face took her breath away. It was like fire had been liquified into his eyes and turned blue, and even though there were bloodstains on his clothes, he looked sharper now than he ever had before. His forehead protector was missing, but a sword was sheathed at his side, and when he finally jumped again, Hinata honestly felt she was looking at some sort of slow-motion scene from a movie.
The moon framed him, and somewhere along the line, she thought she saw him looking into the crowd and noticing her but then...
Sakura grabbed her by the shoulders and jumped. A few seconds later, they were all standing atop an awning, clustered together. Neji's Byakugan was active, Akamaru was howling and Kiba's hood was up. Sakura looked frenzied and Hinata...
Hinata just looked in the direction Naruto had been headed in. The last she saw of him was a black-and-orange speck with blonde hair, diving through the skylight of a bath house and vanishing inside.
"What the hell caused all this!" Sakura shouted out, her voice a little throatier than normal.
"Naruto," Hinata answered, so quickly that Neji wasn't even able to start speaking. The Jounin had obviously caught sight of their missing comrade, even if only a fleeting glimpse.
"... Why am I not surprised?" The pink-haired Genin replied after a few seconds.
It was obvious that she was speaking for all of them.
Author's Note: Oh, how I'm going to have fun with this one...
Naruto's disguise was basically Obito. If Kakashi had seen him, he probably would've gone into conniptions over seeing a ghost.
I tried to display Naruto's resourcefulness in this Part, but I ain't done yet.
I also tried to downplay Hinata's stutter a small bit since I overwrote it in the last Part.
I had originally intended to bring in a few of the frogs that actually appear in the Naruto manga, but Kensei was the only one who fit. I created him, and if you can point out any otherone-ton bullfrog sword-saints, I'll be prying my jaw out of China for a month.