Hammerfall

Tsunade was bored out of her mind. The paperwork that piled upon her desk wasn't exactly helping with her position, as it was precisely what she was trying to avoid. Shizune had gone out with Tonton to buy groceries, and this time the guards outside seemed fairly intent on making sure that she didn't sneak out from work.

Bastards.

She groaned as she stared down at the pile of paper and the large stamp that she had beside her. It was true that she wanted to just stamp the whole thing and let it get out of the way, but she had to read them all anyway because she really didn't want to make any bad decisions. How did that old man take care of this? How did he manage to do it? Was it because he knew Kage Bunshin and she didn't? Was that it?

Right now there were two things that she wanted. One, for Naruto to teach her the shadow clone skill since he seemed to be so good at it, and the other was some excitement. She'd even swallow a missing-nin attack or something as long as it got her out of all this paperwork!

"Yo, baa-chan!"

Speak of the devil. Or maybe angel. Whichever one could deliver her from the personal hell that she had found herself entrapped in since her orientation as the official leader of this village of ninja.

"Come in, gaki. Good to see you after three years," said Tsunade as she stood up from her position behind the desk and opened the door. "Who's this with you?"

Naruto stepped inside, accompanied by Nathan who was once again in his hood and cloak disguise. Tsunade closed the door behind her once again and walked over to the desk, looking upon her two guests with some curiousity.

"Ano, well..." Naruto wasn't really quite sure how to explain it. Maybe this was what his alternate had felt when he had came into his house to deliver the news. Well, maybe he'd just take the same path that the other he did then. It seemed to work for him. "Drop your hood, man."

Nathan did so. Tsunade didn't blink an eye.

"Is there something about this Kage Bunshin that I'm missing?" Granted, the clothing was a little bit strange, but this was probably just another prank of the gaki's anyway. Maybe he came here for advice on a disguise? Maybe Jiraiya had told him that she used to be known as a master of disguise, of which her age-hiding Genjutsu had stemmed from...

"No, not that," Naruto said. "It's just, um. He's not a Kage Bunshin."

Tsunade yawned.

"Ah, so you finally mastered the Bunshin. Not a bad job... Much better than what your academy teachers told me, but the skin tone's slightly off. You might want to look into that."

Naruto was starting to get slightly agitated. Nathan just stared, it was strange. Both Sakura and Kakashi had been practically the same as the ones from his own world, and now this. He knew when he got here that there were going to be similarities, but even he didn't expect it to be so... so exactly similar.

"No, see," Naruto said. "He's not a Bunshin of any kind."

"A Genjutsu then?" asked Tsunade. "But Kakashi always said you had no talent whatsoever in that area..."

"NO!" Naruto cried. "He's real!"

There was a silence for a few seconds where Nathan just looked around the room, feeling slightly out of place. Then Naruto came over to Nathan's side and delivered a punch to his gut, propelling him into the wall. As Nathan got back up from his position on the floor, he was about to cry out in indignation when.

"See?" Naruto asked. "He didn't go poof, so it means he's not a Kage Bunshin! He got hit, so that mean's he's not a Bunshin! There's collateral damage on the walls and stuff so he's not Genjutsu either! It's not really that hard to figure out, baa-chan!"

Tsunade just sat, bored.

"That's going to come out of your pay, gaki," Tsunade said, looking at the wall that Nathan had been hit onto. The wallpaper was cracking slightly. "I'll have you know that the wallpaper I use here in this room isn't very cheap."

Naruto groaned. He didn't deserve this.

---

"...and so that's what's going on!"

Tsunade looked at the alternate Naruto, who grinned nervously back. Since this old lady seemed exactly the same as the one in his world he did not want to go about pissing her off. Maybe the legendary strength didn't carry over from world to world but he didn't want to go about figuring it out the hard way.

"Well, I'll be damned," Tsunade said, rubbing her forehead. "First thing you get back and you come to me with this." It seemed like one of her two wishes had come true, but now she felt as if it was going to become more trouble than it was worth.

"Umm... sorry about this," said Nathan cautiously.

"Don't worry about it," said Tsunade. "From what I heard you seemed to have come to our world to help us. Anyway, it's not impossible. A few researchers in Konoha have thought of this theory quite a while ago now, just none of us figured out a way to prove it."

"This is about my world too," said Nathan, boldening. "Though we say we're here to help it's also partly our fault. It was through our incompetence that this problem happened, and it's only right that we're here to help solve it."

Tsunade was slightly surprised at this display.

"You really weren't fooling!" said the Godaime. "There's no way the Naruto of our world could come up with a speech like that. It seems like that you really are an alternate."

Both of them ignored Naruto's cries of indignation.

"Tell me about this problem that we have."

"Basically..." Nathan said with a deep breath. "An Abandoner from our village has just crossed worlds into yours to prepare for a body transfer technique. He's trying to join up with his alternate from this world to try and dominate this world first before taking the army that he's going to be training up here back to our world to try and conquer ours. That's the gist of it."

Tsunade sighed as she stared down at the young man in front of her with those familiar blue eyes and blonde hair. Check that, she'd prefer paperwork over what the guy in front of her was spouting. This was going to be a hell of a lot more trouble than what she really wanted.

"This... Abandoner of yours. He wouldn't happen to have a fetish for snakes, would he? And the body he's trying to transfer into... Is it the sole remaining heir of one of your village's most powerful clans?" asked the Godaime, scowling.

Nathan nodded, guessing that the old woman in front of him probably had already pinpointed their world's versions of the ones he had been talking about. That Sasuke person that Naruto had been talking about seemed to be their version of Zack...

A pang of pain crossed his heart as he thought of his cellmate. But he knew it wouldn't last. He'll soon find him, and bring him back. He had promised Sherry, and he intended to keep his word. After all, what had that three year training he went on with the Craftsman of Ruby been for?

Naruto looked at him. He had already realized who was to be involved in that body switching thing of Nathan's, and knew that his version of Sasuke must've meant the way to his alternate that Sasuke had meant to himself. Without even thinking about it, he put his hand on the shoulder of his double.

Nathan looked back in surprise as Naruto grinned boldly.

"Don't worry about it, man," said the foxy shinobi. "We'll get him back, and you can help me get Sasuke back too. If you're like me, then you're gonna be one of those stubborn guys to keep to their word. Otherwise I'm gonna disown you."

"Y-Yeah!" Nathan said. "But do you even know what disown means?"

"Of course!" Naruto said. "It's got something to do with... uh..."

As Tsunade watched the two Narutos in front of her converse, she couldn't help but feel slightly relieved. It wasn't a lie to say that she had unshakeable faith in the boy, and so even after the bad news that his alternate had brought to them it felt somewhat safe seeing another person that she could depend on. If he was anything like his counterpart under pressure, that was.

She couldn't help but feel that one Naruto against one Orochimaru was an even, possibly even bad match, but two Naruto against two Orochimaru? It kind of didn't make sense, but for some reason she'd feel a lot safer placing her money down on that match.

But damn... now she wanted to meet her own alternate. Hopefully she'd be coming in that wave of reinforcements that the alternate gaki was talking about, though if she had her own village to run... maybe that'd just be a far off dream.

"Wait," mumbled Tsunade. "How are we going to explain this to the rest of the village?"

Both Naruto and Nathan stopped. They hadn't thought of that.

---

"Alright then, you got all of that?" asked Tsunade. Naruto and Nathan looked at each other hesitantly before turning back to the Godaime, nodding. "Until the reinforcements from your world arrive, we're not going to tell the village about any of this. It'll just send them into panic, and I'm sure that there will be those who won't believe. Not to mention there's nothing we could do even if we did inform them."

Nathan looked at the old lady in front of him with concern.

"But... are you sure we should do nothing?" asked the alternate blonde. "Gunther from my world has already crossed over into this one, and he's probably met up already with himself from this world... If they start working together then---"

"Think about it," said Tsunade, rubbing her forehead. "Naruto accepted you easily because you were in familiar territory to him, and he knew that you weren't Akatsuki somehow. He's also a dumbass... Which is why he even chose to believe you without kicking you out of his home immediately. Orochimaru, our world's version of your Gunther, is on the run, and he'll be suspicious of everything and anything. This Abandoner of your's is going to have to work some magic to make him believe. That's going to buy us some time."

Nathan's eyes widened in realization as Naruto snorted derisively at being called a dumbass for the second time today. What had he ever done to warrant the title? It wasn't like he couldn't be smart when the situation callled for it... The baachan must really hate him or something. (Ironically, he didn't realize it was the furthest thing from the truth.)

"But... people will be suspicious, won't they?" asked Naruto in a moment of clarity. "I mean, I'm an orphan. I don't have a family of any kind and everybody knows about it, so if anybody sees us walking down the streets together they might be freaked out..."

"That's true," Tsunade said, snapping her fingers. "You'll need a disguise then... You can't keep that hood on all the time, after all. But we've already got enough materials to work with here. Your alternate's skin tone is darker than yours, as you've already noticed. If we just take away his headband and maybe alter his face a little bit, the most anybody would see would be a passing similarity."

She turned towards the alternate blonde.

"You wouldn't have any technique to hide yourself, would you?" asked Tsunade. "Most of the shinobi in the village can detect Genjutsu, so I don't want to use something like that on you. It'd be best for you to use your own techniques, as we can't seem to be able to detect that... Speaking of which, you'll have to explain this Anima of yours to me a little better."

Nathan thought about this for a few seconds.

"Well... I do have one technique that can hold for a long time," admitted Nathan. "Though it's kind of embarassing since I don't usually use it in public..."

Naruto searched through his memory banks quickly. From what he had seen so far Nathan had a version of his Kage Bunshin, so it couldn't really be that far-fetched to believe that he probable had different versions of all of his jutsu. Was there one he knew that could fit the criteria on this? Henge was usually a temporary thing, and it was detrimental to one's health to use it for a long time. There was only one other way...

"Holy crap," gasped Naruto. "You're going to use the Oiroke no Jutsu?"

Tsunade's eyes widened in realization. She had heard about this exceedingly dangerous technique and the way that it had defeated her precedent. Hopefully the alternate blonde was going to wear clothes, because the idea of a naked Naruto clone walking through the streets was something that she didn't want to have to deal with.

"Huh? What's that?" asked the alternate blonde.

"You don't know? Don't you have a jutsu, you know... Where you turn into a girl?"

Nathan tilted his head to the side.

"Why would I have a jutsu like that?" asked the other Naruto. Both the blonde-haired shinobi and the Godaime looked at him in slight shock. They had not expected this turn of events. Was it possible that... "What's the point in a technique like that? Isn't being a guy not good enough for you?"

"No, it's not like that!" cried Naruto. "It's just, well... Don't you want an edge in battle? Against perverted old men?"

Nathan just looked at his counterpart, confused.

"What are you talking about?" asked the alternate blonde. This whole situation really was confusing him. "Why would turning into a girl give you an edge in battle? Unless you're planning to use the natural flexibility of the female body or something... But then wouldn't it be hard to switch in battle?"

Tsunade slapped herself on the head. It seemed like beyond the increased intelligence and overall calmer personality of the alternate blonde, there was another, crucial difference in their personalities.

Whereas their Naruto was a average shinobi, perhaps a little more exposed to the more intimate sides of life through being tutored by four perverted yet respectable shinobi (Iruka, Kakashi, Ebisu for a short while, and Jiraiya over the course of three years), Nathan seemed to be completely unaware of such things.

Suddenly, Tsunade was confronted with the image of a non-perverted Jiraiya, and she shivered. There were things in the world that just weren't meant to be, and even though she thought it was nasty and that perverts deserved to die she knew that Jiraiya without his perverseness just wasn't Jiraiya.