Sayaka sighed under the cover of a wide-brimmed conical hat and pulled her rice-straw rain cloak tighter around her shoulders. Team Seven's latest B-rank mission was barge escort duty with two other relatively experienced chunin, the theory being that three talented genin approximated two chunin and rounded out to basically a 4-man escort team. The two on this mission, Shinji and Riyu, had done barge escort several times, to the point where Team Seven didn't actually need to do anything. The two chunin knew how everything worked and could help if something interesting happened on the barge, but of course their mission was going well and neither Shinji nor Riyu needed to do anything either.

The barge itself was a wide, long, largely rectangular thing with all of its available deck space devoted to cargo, save for a tiny pilothouse at the stern for steering. It was the kind of barge that was towed by oxen on the right bank, with other barges passing on their left. The deckhands were huddled under an awning, while the barge's ninja were arrayed along the perimeter of the vessel, theoretically to keep a lookout but mostly, especially for Sayaka, to stare out at the slowly passing scenery and be incredibly bored.

It was also, of course, raining.

Days like today made it hard to do almost anything, but ninja were not fair-weather fighters. They operated in the worst weather conditions, and torrential downpours were no exception. They had learned, mostly by repeated team dunkings, how to fight on top of water, how to fight underwater, and even how to breathe underwater for five minutes at a time. That, Kakashi had needed to teach them over a weekend, and had turned out to be a surprisingly challenging ninjutsu that had taken an irritatingly long time to master. He had also taught them how to dry themselves off—a quick pulse of chakra like you were jumping off a river, and the water in your clothes would fling itself off. It was a maneuver best done away from others, especially if you were Naruto and your pulse was more like a small explosion of water droplets.

"Coming up on Gate One," called out the barge's navigator.

Sayaka turned, looking upstream towards one of Konoha's four water gates. They were numbered so that Gate One was the furthest downstream from Konoha and Gate Four was the furthest upstream from Konoha. Gates Two and Three opened into Konoha proper and were integrated with the perimeter wall, but Gates One and Four were more like customs offices that doubled as military outposts. Gate One certainly looked more like a fortified outpost than a customs office, with two stone guard towers overlooking a reinforced wooden gate that swung out to the side. The commander's office was also the gatehouse that protected a capstan from the weather and was attached to a barn. Several oxen looked out from it with slack-jawed expressions, presumably responsible for winching the gate back shut.

Shinji heaved a sigh and pushed himself to his feet from where he had been sitting at the front of the barge. Dockworkers walked along the banks, throwing out ropes that were caught by the barge's deckhands and used to tie it off and secure it for inspection. Sayaka moved to the top of the pilothouse where she wouldn't be underfoot and attempted to find entertainment in watching the proceedings. The team was supposed to learn from this—stuff about how the village worked and basic procedures and things like that—but it was all so dull it strained her ability to stay attentive.

"Ne, Sayaka, why don't you have any clan duties?" Naruto asked. "It says here that clans are supposed to provide a service to the village and stuff."

Sayaka sighed and looked down over the side of the pilothouse. Naruto, clad in the same rain gear she was wearing, was squatting in the lee of the wind where it was slightly dry and reading from his copy of Konoha's Clan Laws. "Are you really trying to learn all of that?"

"I mean, I'm not succeeding," Naruto griped, looking up at her with a scowl, "but, like, at least I know where to look if I get confused right? Answer the question."

Sayaka rolled her eyes. "Technically, if I have kids, it counts as fulfilling my duties to Konoha. Because it strengthens the village to grow the size of the clan. Or something."

Naruto squinted at her, disbelieving. "That makes no sense. If you could do that why don't guys try it too?"

Sayaka shrugged. "Clan laws give women and girls special status because babies pop out of us as long as you get married and actually make the babies. Guys can't make the same claim because their bodies don't make the child."

"That sounds dumb."

"It's somewhere in the back, it's an addendum."

Naruto flipped the pages and squinted down at the page. "Addendum regarding clan women. Whereas—yeah yeah boring boring boring… oh here it is—women of child-bearing age shall be given an exemption from additional clan services or duties to Konoha so long as they are engaged to marry before the age of fifteen unless special exemption is provided, for they are most necessary for childbirth and rearing—wow I can't believe this is real."

Sayaka shrugged again. "It's convenient."

"It is?"

"I can focus on training," Sayaka said. She pulled out a kunai to twirl it around her finger. "If it weren't for that law, I'd have other stuff I had to do. As long as I'm dating Kiba I can say that I'm just waiting for the best time to announce our engagement."

Naruto blinked at her. "I thought you didn't want to get married."

"I don't," Sayaka said. She glanced down at Naruto with a flat expression. "It's called lying, dumbass."

"Oh. Right, I get it then," Naruto said. He turned back to the clan law booklet. "These laws are super annoying to read."

Sayaka snorted. There was a reason she hadn't actually studied them that exhaustively.

"I guess you gotta write 'em that way though, so that nobody can wiggle their way out," Naruto continued. He flipped through the pages idly. "I guess they didn't really trust anyone else back then."

"Clan comes first," Sayaka said.

"Really? What's with Hinata-chan's cousin then?"

Sayaka blinked and turned too quickly to look down at Naruto. "What about Hinata's cousin?"

Naruto's eyebrows went up and he shifted his weight from one foot to the other. "Well I mean, his dad died, right? Whatever happened probably had something to do with Hinata-chan's dad, but I dunno what. So I thought I'd ask."

"…have you read up on any of the clans yet?"

"I was going to after the laws."

Sayaka licked her lips. Why did Naruto have to keep stumbling into this topic at awkward times? "We need to have a team meeting about it. After this mission."

Naruto's eyes narrowed but he didn't comment. "Alright. We can head to my place," he said, voice tinged with concern. "It'll be more private, even if the walls are kind of thin."

"Right," Sayaka said. She licked her lips again. "I'll tell Hinata."


Naruto watched Sayaka disappear off the top of the pilothouse and slowly put away the book of clan laws. Sayaka never freaked out like that. Actually, now that he thought about it, she'd gone really quiet and still when they had talked about this topic back in Senfuku.

What could possibly be up? Naruto had just remembered Neji randomly when Sayaka had said "clan comes first". Besides, he wasn't actually a complete idiot. He knew that clans had their own internal politics, it wasn't like they all behaved like one giant ant colony.

Well, actually, Naruto wasn't sure about Shino's clan. The bug users might actually have wired their heads to be like that. He wasn't sure.

Anyway, it wasn't that crazy to figure some weird stuff had gone down, but really it couldn't be that bad could it? Naruto wasn't sure what clan politics looked like, but they were still family. They still loved each other and wouldn't go too far, right?

A voice in the back of Naruto's head that sounded suspiciously like Danzo commented that clans could get very large and you didn't necessarily even know your extended family. When that happened, it was easy to forget that they were family members you were related to, and start seeing them as competitors, even enemies. That was just human nature.

…which, wasn't wrong, exactly, but Naruto really didn't want it to be right.

With a groan, Naruto stood back up and leaned backwards, cracking the joints in his back. Across the way, Hinata glanced at him from where she was talking to Sayaka in low voices, inaudible over the din of the falling rain, the workmen shouting, and the clanking of equipment being moved around. They looked… worried.

Naruto plastered on a smile and waved before turning away, walking off around the corner to face the righthand pier. This was definitely something to totally ignore until it became a problem. Which, it was going to be a problem very soon, but they had already scheduled a special time to deal with that problem, so it was fine. Definitely fine.

He took a deep breath and put his hands in his pockets under his rain cloak. He balled them into fists, squeezing tighter and tighter until he could feel his nails start to dig into his palms and the pressure had squeezed his worries into a compact ball. Then, slowly, he let his breath out and relaxed his muscles, blowing out and out until there was no more air left inside him.

The ball in his mind rolled away.

Naruto blinked and looked up at the men on the pier. They seemed to be shouting about something.

"What do you mean the crank isn't moving?" asked one of the dockworkers. "The ninja repaired it two weeks ago!"

"I mean it's not moving!" the ox-driver at the gatehouse shouted back. "I got the oxen on it and everything! I don't know what the problem is, but it's definitely jammed!"

Naruto turned towards Shinji as the shouting began to intensify. The older ninja made an extremely tired noise and rubbed at his face.

"This is going to take a while," he said. "Fall out, team, we may as well get out of the rain."

Shinji and Riyu jumped up onto the pier, landing between the milling dockworkers without bothering to mask their landing. Water splashed as Team Seven followed, landing with a little more grace out of an effort to practice. The chunin checked to make sure the genin were following, then crossed the pier's paving stones to head into the gatehouse.

"Shinji, Riyu, welcome back," said the gate commander. He was a Hyuuga, dressed in the austere whites and greys typical of his clan. As Team Seven entered, he rose and bowed deeply. "Hinata-sama."

Hinata flinched, surprised, but rallied quickly and returned the bow, bending halfway as deep as the gate commander. "Honored clansman. I apologize, I do not know your name?"

"I am Hyuuga Juunichiro," the gate commander said before coming back upright.

"It is a pleasure to meet you, Juunichiro-ojisan," Hinata said, bowing again. "As a genin, I will be in your care today. I hope to be of some use."

"I am confident in your abilities," Juunichiro replied and made his second bow. "With your permission."

Hinata nodded, and Juunichiro turned back to Shinji and Riyu. "I apologize for the delay, but it appears the crank has become jammed."

"It's no trouble," Shinji said. He had been acting as team lead for the mission, though really there wasn't much leading to do. Mostly just waving paperwork at people. "Any idea what the problem is?"

Juunichiro nodded very minutely. "Some. In truth, the whole mechanism needs an overhaul. Last week…"

Naruto lost interest in the conversation and began to look around the room. The gatehouse was designed to give a good view of the proceedings at the gate while being easy to convert into a defensible location. There was only the one door—easy to defend if also likely to trap you inside. The windows had shutters on both the outside and inside. The exterior shutter looked flimsy and was being used to keep rain off the sill, while the inner shutter was made out of heavy wood and metal fittings and hooked onto the ceiling. If needed, it looked like it could be unlatched to fall heavily over the window and lock out any attackers.

Naruto wondered what having gate duty out here was like. There couldn't be that much traffic, and even if there was what could possibly suck up any real amount of time? He bet it was incredibly boring, even if it was essential. On the other hand, also pretty easy. Was a chunin lucky or unlucky to be assigned here? It probably wasn't for him, either way. He'd have to train harder and learn some more techniques. There was that one thing—

Naruto blinked out of his daydreaming when a dockworker knocked on the door and let himself in. "Commander, we're sorry, but the men've ruled out all the obvious answers."

"The capstan itself is alright?" Juunichiro asked.

"Yes sir, we think it's the gate itself."

Juunichiro let out a very small sigh before stepping over to his coat rack, where he picked up his own rain cloak and hat. "Very well, thank you. Let us see what manner of debris has jammed our gate today."

The assembled ninja trooped back out into the rain, led by Juunichiro. The gate garrison, the various dockworkers, and the deckhands had collected into small bunches to watch the proceedings. Which was to say, they had taken the moment as a grand opportunity to take an unscheduled break.

Naruto could sympathize. If he'd had any ramen with him, he'd definitely had heated up some water for a quick snack.

"Byakugan," Juunichiro muttered to himself and activated his bloodline. "Ah, there appears to be a large amount of mud caked around the bottom of the gate. Hide-san, if you could?"

"Roger, Commander," a nearby ninja said. He flipped through a series of handseals, then pressed his hands against the ground.

There was a gentle rumble that caused the surface of the river to ripple. Droplets bounced off the top of the water, then fell back down. For a moment, it seemed that nothing had happened.

"COVER!" Juunichiro yelled, jumping back as a tidal wave blasted up out of the river. The barge Team Seven had ridden in on was torn from its moorings instantly, the rope ripping through the cleats while the barge itself was thrown back upstream. The civilians on the pier were thrown back, the water sending the lucky backwards onto dry land, where they had a reasonable chance of finding something to grab onto. The unlucky ones were swept instantly into the water or, even worse, slammed into the stone of the gatehouse or the towers.

The ninja fared better, leaping clear immediately or throwing up an earthen barrier to shield themselves from the worst of the wave. Naruto found himself ducked behind an earth wall summoned by Riyu.

"What the hell?" Shinji yelled.

"It's a namazu!" Juunichiro called. "Retrieve the civilians! We need them clear in order to fight it! And someone go keep the barge from drifting back!"

Naruto grit his teeth against the torrent of water that was now flowing back into the river. His Shadow Clones exploded into place around the pier, letting themselves be washed into the river as the flash of a massive white belly rolled past under the surface. The ninja on the pier seemed to collectively do a double-take and Naruto took a small moment to bask in their surprise. Didn't expect a genin to have something like that up their sleeves did they? But they had work to do, and Naruto turned his focus back to the situation.

Riyu wasn't next to him anymore, presumably off retrieving the barge with Shinji, who had also disappeared. The remaining chunin totaled six—one kunoichi, four shinobi, and Juunichiro, the gate commander. The civilians were already evacuating, most making a run for the hills while a small team made for the barn and its oxen to try and save the draft animals.

"I can get the civilians!" Naruto shouted over the din to Juunichiro. "What's a namazu and how do we fight it?!"

"A namazu is a kind of river spirit," Juunichiro yelled back. "As soon as you have them clear, we'll use lightning techniques to make it run. The faster this is dealt with the safer we'll all be!"

"Roger!" Naruto yelled, and then sent a mental command to his clones to hurry it up. The responses he got were muddled, mostly annoyed emotions and thoughts along the lines of "we know to hurry dumbass shut up and let us work".

Naruto would have laughed if the situation wasn't so serious. His Shadow Clones really made him think about his own behavior sometimes.

But whatever. They got the job done fast. Naruto pulsed his chakra to dry himself and yelled at Juunichiro: "We're clear!"

"Kanehisa, Yuujiro!"

Two ninja stepped out of cover and wove their chakra before sending two bolts of lightning cracking through the air into the water. For a moment the surface glowed.

Then the namazu surfaced. Its form was that of a huge catfish, easily five meters long and a head wide enough that Naruto could lie across its tongue, from one side to the other, and be swallowed as if he was just a little snack. The skin across its top was the color of river silt and the bottom gleamed white. The namazu's eyes were small relative to its body but huge relative to Naruto. Easily big enough to fill an entire ramen bowl, each eye was the color of the namazu's skin, save for a band of gold that ringed the black pupil in the middle.

"Leave me alone!" the namazu roared, and Naruto clapped his hands to his ears along with the rest of the ninja. Holy fuck that was loud.

"I guess it's angry!" Yuujiro said from where he stood atop the gatehouse, before readying another lightning jutsu. "Just get out of here, fish!"

The lightning bolt slammed into the namazu's left eye, and it reeled backwards with another pained roar.

"I said LEAVE ME ALONE!" it screamed, before hurling a stream of water through Yuujiro's head.

Naruto gaped as the chunin collapsed, his corpse tumbling off of the roof.

The usual thing for a genin to do in this situation would have been to scatter with the rest of the chunin, and in fact most genin weren't equipped with the skills to actually do anything about a rampaging river spirit who had just killed a trained chunin so quickly that nobody had been able to react. But Team Seven was, for better or worse, not made from those sorts of genin.

The namazu thrashed its tail and leaped for the pier, but was met by a wall of Shadow Clones. Most it cut through, some managed to make it pause, and the time was enough for the remainder to blast the area with explosive seals. The namazu reeled backwards to the edge of the pier, skin steaming but undamaged from the explosions. Sayaka darted in next, eyes glittering red to try and stab the namazu in the eye. She was thrown aside by one of the namazu's barbels, landing awkwardly but safely to the side. Hinata tried to use the chance to paralyze the barbels with the Gentle Fist, and it… seemed to do something? It wasn't clear how well it was working, but Naruto backed her up with a rush of clones that pulled the namazu's attention left and right and up and even down.

Then the namazu turned into mud and Hinata replaced herself just in time to avoid being sucked into the ground. A Shadow Clone took the hit instead, and Naruto shivered as he got a first-hand account of what dying by having your insides flooded with mud felt like.

"Stay out of the mud!" Naruto yelled up at the chunin around him and narrowed his eyes, thinking very quickly. The problem was that the namazu was fighting in its element. What they really needed was to try and get it away from the water, where it could summon those horrifying water blasts that cut through a dozen clones at once. But it could fight with the earth as well, and that meant the only way to limit its advantages was to toss it up into the air.

"Umeko, we need a storm!" Juunichiro yelled, having the same thought. The kunoichi didn't reply, and instead leaped up to the top of the guard tower before pulling out a very large leaf and waving it at the namazu with a cry. A huge gust of wind kicked up, trying to pick up the namazu with winds that would have launched Naruto over the top of the Hokage's tower.

It should have done something to the namazu, and for a second the massive catfish even lifted off the ground. But then the namazu opened its mouth and spat. Its glob of spit cut through the wind as if it wasn't there, flying swiftly towards Umeko and growing besides, until it was a massive water bullet. The chunin cursed, diving off her vantage point just in time to escape. The water bullet crashed into the top of the tower and shattered it.

"Kanehisa, Umeko, try to keep it contained!" Juunichiro instructed while Sayaka blasted the namazu with a gout of fire. It roared again and fired back with a jet of water that shattered apart a log. "Naruto, how long can you keep your shadow clones in the field?"

"Maybe five minutes?" Naruto yelled back

"Honda, send the beacon," Juunichiro yelled. "Get us reinforcements! This namazu is going to get us all killed and wreck the gate besides!"

Naruto grit his teeth and made another set of clones. This fight was turning into nothing more than a waste of chakra. He didn't know any special techniques that could help here, nothing except his shadow clones, and they weren't all that helpful. They had their uses—he watched as three clones set up a screening action for Kanehisa, who used them to blast the namazu in the eye again—but they needed someone with way more firepower to take on an angry, aggressive river spirit.

He slid into cover in the lee of the gatehouse. Sayaka and Hinata were already there, wrapping up something on Hinata's arm.

"What happened?" Naruto asked. "Hinata-chan, are you okay?"

"I am fine," Hinata answered, lips grimly set. "I just slipped."

"Did it hit you?"

"No, it just—" Hinata began, but she stopped and had to take a breath. "The mucous might be poisonous. I already t-took a general anti-toxin, but…"

Naruto bit his lip but nodded. Poison did bad things to your balance, but they were ninja and more importantly they had been trained by Kakashi-sensei. They could compensate, as long as they stayed focused. "Did your taijutsu do anything, Hinata-chan?"

"It did not," Hinata said. "The namazu's skin is r-resistant to my chakra."

Naruto grit his teeth. That explained why their attacks didn't seem to be doing anything. He peeked out around cover to see what was happening, then ducked back as a blast of water collided with the gatehouse. Chunks out of the stone went spraying into the air.

"Ninjutsu isn't working," Sayaka said.

"Yeah no shit."

Sayaka took a breath. "Can your bloodline ability do anything?"

Naruto licked his lips. There hadn't been a chance to do a spar with it after the failed team-training with Team Ten all those weeks ago. He could do manipulation pretty good now, but…

"I think I gotta try," Naruto replied. He knew he could catapult himself with the Kyuubi's chakra, if nothing else. It would have to do. He sucked in a breath and reached out for the Kyuubi's chakra inside him.

It reacted sluggishly, then stopped.

"…it's not working?" Naruto said.

"What do you mean it's not working?" Sayaka asked.

"I mean that it's not working!" Naruto said, pulling desperately at the chakra while another blast of wind rattled against the side of the gatehouse. This was the worst possible time for a dramatic plot twist. "It's never done this before!"

"What do you need to f-fix it?" Hinata asked.

Fuck. He had no idea. "Uhhh meditation?" Naruto guessed.

Hinata and Sayaka looked at each other.

"Okay, we'll buy you time," Sayaka said. "That training you've been doing better be worth something."

Then they left, headed back into the fight. Naruto sent in another wave of Shadow Clones to accompany them, then sat down with a grimace. He pressed his palms together just like he did in Grumpy Geezer's training and tried to find his center. He really didn't know what was going on with the Kyuubi, but it better not be something stupid. Naruto breathed in and—

—yelped as he crashed into a very large metal pipe, bounced, slid down, and smacked into the floor.

"…graceful," the Kyuubi rumbled from behind its cage.

Naruto groaned and pushed himself upright. Back in his mindscape again, but this time without actually using that one seal. Was that normal?

"I suspect not," the Kyuubi offered from the shadows. "I would tell you to get it checked, but the weaker the seal the better for me, so that would be counterproductive."

"Yeah yeah," Naruto muttered, rubbing at his nose and looking around. The sewer had apparently changed, so that he wasn't sloshing through water up to his thighs anymore. Instead, Naruto appeared to be standing on a large wooden platform with water running around the edge. The walls were wood now too, save for the pipes projecting out of them. Several large cabinets appeared scattered throughout the room, for some reason, and a large arch led off into the rest of Naruto's mind.

"This is new," Naruto remarked.

"The boiler room of a bathhouse is, at least, clean," the Kyuubi said. Naruto rather suspected it remained displeased with its lodgings. "Let us not get distracted, however. You wish to kill something, yes?"

Naruto coughed and turned back to face the Kyuubi. "Yes. There's a namazu that's being violent and I need your chakra to try and get it to go away."

"Oh, I see," said the Kyuubi. It sounded very concerned, which was to say it clearly didn't actually care except in the most superficial way. "Well, in that case, I must ask about the state of my tribute. It has been rather lacking, you see."

Naruto blinked, then scowled.

"I've been getting you sake, haven't I?" Naruto asked, folding his arms and trying to project confidence. "And your, uh, apartment's way better now. I've done a lot for you already!"

The Kyuubi snorted. "I'll admit, the sake isn't terrible, but it's hardly good. I would give it to minions, but it's not fit for my table. Particularly when you keep drinking it first."

Naruto gamely pretended he had done nothing wrong. "You're acting pretty high and mighty for someone who doesn't get much choice in the matter."

"Is that so? Well, in that case, I suppose we'll just have to wait for your friends to die."

Fuck. Fuck. "You didn't have any problems with it before," Naruto said reasonably, "during all that training to use the chakra and manipulate teacups."

"That was mostly for the remodeling," the Kyuubi replied, "which, to be clear, remains inadequate, but I won't deny that the sake was more than adequate for those purposes. Still, that was then and this is now, and slaying a namazu is a far cry from stacking rocks."

Naruto grit his teeth. "Well okay, so, I mean, look, I got a few pretty good bonuses, so I can definitely get a big tribute later. A cask of that newmake sake you talked about would be good right? But I need help right now so…"

"Should have thought of such exigencies before going on this mission," the Kyuubi said blandly. Naruto got the distinct sensation that the demon was examining its fingernails. "Tsk, tsk, Naruto-kun, how will you ever be Hokage without having the foresight to plan for unexpected circumstances?"

This asshole. "Who expects to fight a river spirit on a boat escort mission?!"

The Kyuubi projected a distinct sense of looking at him as if Naruto was a moron. "You are escorting a boat on a river. River spirits live in rivers. I refuse to acquiesce to your stupidity about such obvious connections. You are on your own."

There was a pause.

"Unless, that is, you happen to have a tribute with you right now?"

"What sort of tribute do you want?" Naruto asked. He sensed he had made another mistake immediately. Damn it.

"Nothing much," the Kyuubi said far too casually. "I want the namazu."

"What do you mean?" Naruto asked, wary.

"You know the ways I receive offerings," the Kyuubi said. "Subdue the namazu with my power, and then I will take it with those ways. Very simple."

Naruto shifted his weight between his feet. Gods damn everything, he'd screwed up big-time again. There was no way out of the deal without risking everyone's lives. He would just have to hope it was worth it.

"Alright," Naruto said finally. "Let's do it."

The Kyuubi's teeth gleamed. "Excellent."

Naruto braced as chakra bubbled out from the cage. It swept into him, pressing in on his face and throwing him back until he—

—gasped and jerked upright, toppling over once before getting back up again. The familiar tingling cloak of the Kyuubi's chakra made Naruto shiver and grin in anticipation. Whatever the machinations of the fox, in the end Naruto had to admit using the chakra was fun. It made him feel filled to the brim with boundless power—like he could take on the world.

He leaped, jumping high up into the air over the gatehouse. Ninja froze, eyes snapping away from the namazu to stare. The namazu itself roared, ducking defensively as Naruto descended before firing off another stream of water. It punched into Naruto's chest, slamming straight through and going out the other side in a gout of blood.

The wound closed with a flare of red as Naruto slammed his fist into the namazu's head.

The namazu's skin was not at all the rubbery, slimy texture that Naruto had been expecting. It felt strangely human—wet and a little slippery but otherwise familiar. The namazu thrashed to try and shake him off, nearly succeeding before Naruto sent out the Kyuubi's chakra to wrap around the barbels. It roared again, making Naruto's ears ring, but he gathered the Kyuubi's chakra around his hand and flicked out a kunai to stab it into the top of the namazu's head.

Instead of blood, there was mud. Naruto pushed himself back as the torrent washed over him, flash drying into a dome of earth with a hiss of steam as the Kyuubi's chakra pulsed outwards. Naruto crouched, then jumped, powering out of the shell and into the sky.

The namazu was glowing, a bright shimmering yellow. Rule one of shinobi combat was to never, ever let your opponent prepare any kind of charged-up attack. Naruto whipped the Kyuubi's chakra out to grab the pier underneath him, using it to launch himself at the namazu, kunai clutched in one hand.

The glow faded just as Naruto collided with the namazu, kunai already extended. Naruto had a second to realize that the namazu had transformed, turning itself into a small girl, clad in a simple kimono of blue and black with a brown sash. She was bleeding from the head, where a gash split open the skin from her left eyebrow back across the skull. Her kimono was frayed along the edges, and her eyes were the same as the namazu's: brown, with a gold ring around the pupil. She looked surprised, horrified that Naruto had already escaped.

Was it a trick? A way to try and garner sympathy before killing the humans who had disturbed it? Or was it just trying to run away and it was faster as a human than as a giant fish?

It didn't matter. They collided, Naruto's momentum sending them both tumbling into the river. The knife had slammed straight through the bone and muscle around the namazu's chest, had in fact cracked it open so wide that Naruto's hand was inside the cavity. He had expected it to be cold, seeing as fish insides were cold when you pulled them out. Instead, it was exactly like killing a real human, including the way the namazu's face contorted in pain and her hands pressed against his face and chest.

But instead of just dying, Naruto could feel the namazu's wound healing around his hand. He jerked back in shock, and the spirit took the opening to blast him with a gout of mud. Naruto couldn't see, but he could feel the namazu in the water, sparking with electricity. Which way was up? He had to—

The shock hurt. Naruto had never been electrocuted before, and the pain made him scream. He gasped and choked on the water, felt the mud try to drown him, could tell he was starting to panic.

Raking. Remember the feeling of raking.

Scorching flame rolled out of him, pushing water and mud away from Naruto in a bubble of scalding steam so that he fell, the top of the bubble—no, he was falling, that was the bottom—rushing towards him. Instinctively he turned, flipping to land on his feet even as the bubble began to collapse, and then rocketed upwards on a pillar of chakra.

Naruto burst out of the water, gasped for breath, and felt small hands wrap around his ankle. Naruto saw gold-rimmed pupils before he was slammed into the water, crashing through with ears ringing and dragged towards the bottom, mud swirling around him to bind his legs and arms. He pushed away with another burst of the Kyuubi's power and reached out with his own tendrils, searching for the ball of power that buzzed and sparked in the depths.

The namazu was far better than Naruto was in the water. She dodged and wove, squirting out from between Naruto's tendrils just like a slimy river catfish, each twist bringing her closer to Naruto with terrifying speed, and the water was clearing now so Naruto could see the shadow that rocketed into him.

Naruto felt his back hit the stone of the dock and tried to plant a foot in the namazu's stomach, trying to shove her off. It didn't work, and Naruto was caught in mud again even as he tried to push her away. Tendrils started to go up his nose—

A spear of red fire punched into the namazu's throat. She jerked back, wound already closing, and there was absolutely no time for Naruto to be staring. His kunai was still clutched in one hand and he stabbed it into the namazu's gut, tearing upwards and drawing out a gurgle of pain but not, apparently, doing any lasting damage as the namazu glared at him and pulled back a fist.

The Kyuubi interfered. Perhaps Naruto had needed to weaken the namazu enough, or perhaps the fox wanted him to suffer a little before stepping in. Whatever the reason, red fire suddenly engulfed the river spirit. The namazu screamed, eyes wide and terrified, before her body dissolved into a shimmering golden ball that hung in the water while time seemed frozen.

Then the fire brought the ball rushing back into Naruto and the world went black.