Let's start this from the beginning

The Hideout

IV

They had decided early on that it would be best to wait for their assailants to attack them at the Uchiha Hideout rather than risk being attacked again on the road when they eventually continued their journey home, or perhaps even to seek them out themselves. That this was the safest approach. Naruto wasn't necessarily a fan of sitting idly by and twiddling his thumbs, very much preferring a more proactive approach himself, but he at least understood why they did it.

After all, only an idiot would fail to realize how advantageous it would be to defend themselves in the fortress compared to all the problems they would face on the road. Not that he thought these bandits were much of a threat unless they somehow managed to get one of them all alone by themselves, mind you, but it didn't hurt to be safe.

Besides, ever since he saw the corpse of one enemy he had killed during their first ambush, Naruto somehow didn't feel quite as motivated to go and seek a fight anyway. He didn't even feel mad about how 'boring' the mission had been anymore. No, it was much better to wait for them here and prepare for their inevitable attack.

And prepare they did.

Pretty much everything they had done since they came here was for the sake of preparing for this fight. Even Itachi's history lessons played a role as he used them to point out to them just how defensible this place was! When they weren't eating or sleeping, they were training in ever-rotating groups to improve their teamwork with either Itachi or Kakashi-sensei, guarding and scouting the area, or setting up traps – lots and lots of traps. By now, they were more than ready for the approaching fight.

Which meant none of them panicked when the warn system Shino had put into place with his bugs – and Naruto still thought it sucked the other group had come up with something so cool instead of his own – suddenly went off on the fifth day of their stay, announcing the arrival of their enemies.

Not even the fact that they apparently approached from several directions at once did anything to deter them.

They had a plan, after all.

"Alright!" he exclaimed, the anticipation and adrenalin that shot through his veins dispelling most of his unease. "Let's do this!"

Shino and Sasuke, who were currently the only ones with him, nodded determinedly at that.

Naruto crossed his fingers in a single hand seal.

"Kage Bunshin no Jutsu!" (Shadow Clone Technique)

While there were a number of ways to enter the hideout, there was only one entrance at the foot of the terraced mountain, and that was where Naruto was currently lying in wait. Or to be more precise, it was there that eight Narutos were currently lying in wait, with five of them outside the entrance on the terrace above it and the remaining three on the inside a bit further down the corridor.

And none of them was the real one.

"I really wish there would be a few more of us," his fellow clone murmured to his right. "Not that we can't beat these idiots on our own, mind you, but some additional fists would have been nice."

He nodded, absently blowing his hair out of his face and pushing away a twig from the bush they were hiding in that was dangerously close to poking his eye out. "Yeah, but you know the rules. Knowing Kakashi-sensei, he's somewhere around here watching us just in case we do anything we aren't allowed to."

"Exactly," another clone said. "And even if he isn't, he could probably tell at a glance that we did something we weren't supposed to anyway. Better not risk it."

The remaining two clones of their group nodded at that.

It's still a stupid rule, he thought a little grumpily. I mean, I get it! I shouldn't depend too much on this technique and it could have 'consequences' or whatever if I abuse it too much, but not being allowed to create more than ten clones at a time sucks big time!

He quickly dismissed these thoughts when their enemies finally came into view, though.

There were only a few at first, advancing slowly towards the wide-open entrance of the hideout with tensed muscles and alert expressions on their faces, but little by little, more and more appeared. They were smart enough to split up into small groups instead of travelling in one big one, so their total number was initially hard to guess, but as the minutes passed, Naruto's eyebrows rose higher and higher.

Shino really didn't lie when he said this is the biggest group, huh?

According to the other boy, four groups were advancing on the hideout from four different directions right now, and the one Naruto and his fellow clones were facing here was supposed to be the most numerous one. Considering he was counting over thirty bandits so far, he could easily believe that.

They were advancing slowly and cautiously, obviously wary of potential traps and ambushes, and some of them even threw narrow-eyed looks up the terrace where Naruto's group was hiding, but when the first ones managed to walk through the entrance unhindered, the rest began to collectively relax. Soon after, they all began to let their guard down and rush forward.

Just as planned.

Naruto waited until about half of the thirty-six enemies in total had entered the fortress before he drew a kunai with an attached explosion tag. Tags created by the Shadow Clone Technique didn't actually work, so this one had been specifically given to him by the original for this one purpose.

He threw it high into the air, away from the hideout.

The moment it exploded, every single bandit jumped around with drawn weapons and fell into stances ready to fight, but that wasn't the important part. No, while distracting them and making them look away from the fortress and, by association, the terraces he and the other clones were hiding on was a nice plus, the real purpose was to give the clones hiding inside the hideout the signal to let the trap snap shut.

Barely a second after the explosion, a large portion of the corridor's ceiling behind the entrance came crashing down as one of the clones on the inside triggered the hidden mechanism that allowed one to open or close the entrance as one pleased, separating the bandits into two groups and hopefully even crushing some of them before they had a chance to flee.

Naruto tried not to think too much about how the bodies would look like if they had indeed gotten crushed.

Being distracted by two surprising events instead of one now, none of the bandits noticed the five Naruto clones that had jumped to the edge of the terrace.

"Fūton: Toppa!" (Wind Release: Breakthrough)

This was currently the only elemental Ninjutsu he knew, and at first, he had been far from happy with it. After all, while it would probably knock an enemy out if they stood close to him, it wouldn't do more than knock someone off their feet if they were a bit further away. He had warmed up to it when he saw what it could do in combination with Sasuke's fire release techniques, however, and Kakashi-sensei's promise to teach him a stronger technique based on this one once they were back at Konoha did the rest.

Fortunately, it was more than enough for their current purposes.

Five gusts of wind smashed into the group of about twenty bandits, throwing several of them to the ground and unbalancing several more, which made them easy targets to the shuriken that quickly followed.

It wasn't quite as successful as Naruto would have liked, though, with more of them being able to escape than anticipated. I guess they're not too bad, eh? he thought, intentionally ignoring the bodies of those they had hit with their weapons.

This was not the time to hesitate.

With a cry, the five of them jumped down the terrace and into the fray. Their opponents should still be at least somewhat disoriented, so they had to seize this opportunity before it passed. As long as they hit hard and fast, this shouldn't be too much of a problem, and even if they couldn't beat all of them before being destroyed, everything would be all right as long as they beat enough to discourage the rest to continue forward. The three clones on the inside would do the same with those that had already entered the hideout, too.

Just as this thought crossed his mind, one of his fellow clones let out a strangled cry before dispersing in a white plume of smoke as an arrow shot from the woods hit him straight in the chest. There are more of them still hiding! he realized just as his feet touched the ground, feeling annoyance building up in his chest. Dammit, we really should have checked the area before jumping down, shouldn't we?

Four of them had successfully managed to get down, so it wasn't the end of the world, but it certainly was annoying.

At least Sasuke isn't here. He would never let me live this down.

Now as long as Kakashi-sensei wasn't hiding somewhere around here to see that either, everything would be fine.

With that final thought, the four of them jumped toward their remaining opponents.

"No! Stay away from me, don't come any closer! I-I'm warning you guys!"

Sakura's words were muffled and distorted to Kiba's ears, but considering he was currently hiding under the floor's surface, that was only to be expected. In fact, it was only because of his keen senses and because Sakura was raising her voice so much that he could hear anything at all. The only thing he usually had to orientate himself when he was underground were vibrations, so it was actually kinda nice.

He took that back a second later when she shrieked loud enough that it hurt even him. Kiba almost felt sorry for the bandits who were in the same corridor as her and for whom it must have been so much worse.

The emphasis being on almost.

If he didn't feel bad for them for being led into a trap, he certainly wouldn't feel bad for them just because their eardrums had burst.

Then he felt all the vibrations suddenly stop as if every single person in the corridor above him had come to a halt at the same time, and recognizing this as his signal, he burst out from the floor on the opposite end of the corridor with the group of thirteen bandits sprawled right between him and Sakura. Kiba allowed himself to savour the sight of more than a dozen men appearing as if they had frozen in mid-motion for a moment before snapping himself back to the present and lunging at them with an exclamation of "Tsūga!" on his lips.

With the corridor being as narrow as it was, and the bandits being in no position to even attempt to dodge, let alone actually block his attack, he was able to smash through the entire group in one go, knocking them all out in under three seconds and coming to a halt next to a panting Sakura.

"Well," he drawled without bothering to hide how satisfied he felt at their success, "that was kinda underwhelming."

Sakura, who was still breathing hard, chuckled a bit at that. "Yeah, well, falling right into our trap is the least they could do after I put all that energy into my performance."

"Sure, anything else would have just been rude, really," he agreed jokingly. Then, his lips quirked up into a sly grin. "Although being a damsel in distress must be much more strenuous than I imagined if your wheezing is anything to go by."

"I want to see you try and convince a bunch of people whose friends you have been beaten for weeks now that you're only an innocent small girl rather than some kind of threat! I felt like a total idiot stumbling around like that and screeching like some kind of banshee..."

He raised his arms in surrender, but the smirk that was still on his face probably ruined the effect of it. "Yeah, yeah, I get it. Your job was super hard and mine was a walk in the park. Well done."

The look she shot him could have frozen hell, but he saw the way her lips tucked upwards against her will, so she clearly knew he was only joking around and played along.

"Anyway," he continued after a few seconds with a glance at their fallen enemies, "catching so many of them in a Genjutsu at once is actually really impressive. Although Hinata was the only one who took Itachi-sensei up to his offer to teach us some Genjutsu – Shino and I had neither the right talent nor interest for it – when we became his students, he still taught us some of the basics, and I'm pretty sure he mentioned that using it on several people was extraordinarily more difficult than using it on only one, even if the technique in question was comparably simple."

Sakura's face immediately brightened with what Kiba recognized as pride at his words. "It is! You didn't really think I am that exhausted just because I had to run away from them for a bit, did you?" Then, her expression turned somewhat sheepish. "I could only catch all of them because of the circumstances, though. They might have some rudimentary chakra control, yes, but they clearly lack the skill to even try and break free, so they didn't resist like a shinobi would have. It's also great that the corridor is so narrow because that means I can see all of them and they stand close together." She sighed. "I wouldn't have been able to pull this off on an open field, for example."

He shrugged, not really caring about the details. And hey, they might have lured them into this narrow corridor because that would be advantageous for his attack, but if it gave her an advantage as well, that was great, right? "It's still pretty cool. I couldn't have done that, at least."

Her bright smile in response somehow made that off-hand comment feel much more important than it was meant to be.

Before either of them had the chance to say anything else, the tell-tale sound of snapping ninja wire, flying weapons, and the screams of injured men from a nearby corridor distracted them.

"It seems some of them fell into one of Akamaru's traps," he said before turning back towards Sakura with a cocky grin. "Ready for round two?"

Her expression mirrored his. "You bet!"

Without further ado, Kiba vanished once more underground while Sakura fell back into her role as a helpless little girl.

"How much further?"

"Only two more turns," Hinata replied to Sasuke's question, her voice just as quiet as his to avoid being heard. "Remember, we-"

He dismissively waved with his hand to interrupt her. "I know. I was there when we came up with the plan, remember?"

She felt a tingle of annoyance in the back of her head but suppressed the instinctive reaction to frown in favour of a simple nod. They had been at the hideout for only a few days, but that had been enough time for her to get a rudimentary idea of Sasuke's character. Much more than their time at the Academy had ever done, at least. Therefore, she knew that he didn't mean to be rude even if it seemed that way.

Although that doesn't make it any less annoying...

She was probably just too used to the calmer and more polite atmosphere of her own team, Hinata reasoned. Between them and the mostly polite and distant interactions she had at home, she had most likely just forgotten how brash and unintentionally rude many of her classmates from the Academy could be at times.

She conveniently ignored the fact that Kiba could and regularly was exactly the same.

I still wish he would be a bit more like Itachi-sensei, though.

Regardless, she had no more time to think about any of this before they reached the corridor where the four men she had spotted earlier with her Byakugan were and subsequently were forced to fight.

They unfortunately faced in their direction as they arrived, so knocking them out before they even noticed them was out of the question. With there being only four of them, however, it wasn't as if they would pose much of a challenge, so that was more of a minor nuisance than an actual problem.

Just as planned, Sasuke threw a bunch of shuriken the moment they arrived in the corridor. The four men avoided them by dodging with impossible fluidly for a civilian, but compared to a shinobi, their movements were still clunky and rushed, meaning they were in no way prepared to face her and Sasuke as they suddenly appeared in front of them.

Hinata ducked beneath the punch of the first man and, while making sure to keep him between her and the second one as some kind of meat shield, jabbed her fingers in quick succession into his chest to close half a dozen Tenketsu. The impact of it was enough to throw him back, and hadn't the man behind him managed to jump to the side in time, he would have been knocked off his feet as well. However, while he managed to avoid that fate, the brief distraction was more than enough for Hinata to close the distance between them and seal his fate the same way she did with her previous opponent.

She took a moment to give the two fallen men a closer look to check if any of her attacks had been inaccurate enough to accidentally damage any internal organs, and upon confirming that they hadn't, felt a surge of satisfaction and pride swell up within her.

There was no time for this, though, so she instead turned towards Sasuke.

Due to her Byakugan, she had been able to observe his 'fight' while taking care of her own opponents, so it didn't come as a surprise when she turned around to the sight of one man with two broken arms lying unconsciously on the floor. She was also just in time to witness him smashing his second opponent's head against the wall with a gruesome crunching sound.

Judging from the grimace on his face, he most likely hadn't meant to push so hard. At the very least, he seemed to regret it.

However, Hinata didn't point out the discomfort either of them felt at the sight – for both their sakes. Instead, she said, "There are three more just a few corridors from here. We should hurry before they join forces with another group."

He gave her a curt nod, expression somewhat more open than before as he realized what she was doing, and then gestured for her to lead the way.

Then, they were off again.

While all of their teammates had been given specific areas of the hideout to protect, Hinata and Sasuke were a bit different. Instead of some allocated area, they were tasked with hunting down whatever smaller teams split off the main forces in an attempt to be more sneaky. Due to her eyes, that wasn't too hard, especially because they could ignore large parts of the building. After all, she knew for a fact that their enemies had entered from only four points. The three larger groups were taken care of by their teammates, so all they had to worry about was the smallest group that had entered from an entrance on one of the eastern terraces.

It was somewhat tiresome to run around for what usually were only three of four opponents at a time, of course, especially because a good number of them got themselves beaten by some traps they had set up in advance before they could even reach them and thus made much of their running unnecessary, but Hinata was fine with that. Her skillset – speak, her Dōjutsu – was best suited for this task, so it was only natural she would be responsible for it.

It would have been nice to work with someone I got along with better, though...

Shino had always thought that Kiba and Naruto were quite similar. After all, he knew from their years of friendship that both were loudmouths who couldn't sit still for more than a minute and were always out for a fight – albeit admittedly only in a playful manner.

Most of the time, at least.

Being on a team with Kiba for a while now, he could see that this assessment might have been… incomplete. Yes, they were certainly both hyperactive loudmouths and no day went by without both of them getting into some kind of heated argument, but at the end of the day, that wasn't all they were. Kiba, for example, could sit still for longer periods of time. He had proven that during many of their training sessions when he kept hiding motionlessly in some bush or tree for hours. He had a lot more brainpower than Shino would have given him credit for in the past, too, and regularly caught him by surprise with some clever trick or insightful comment.

And as Shino had noticed during the last few days, Naruto was similar. None of his prior opinions about the other boy were necessarily wrong, but they lacked the nuance to completely assess him.

Shino had only known the two boys when they were all in the Academy or went out to play, though, so it made sense. There were characteristics he had never witnessed because they had never been in a situation in which they would have had to demonstrate them. It was only now that he had been on a team with one and saw the other during a mission that he could truly begin to understand them.

Regardless, no matter what else he might find out about them going forward, one thing would probably always hold true:

They were both far too loud!

"Come on, guys! Don't tell me you can't keep up with me? Maybe you'd be better off just giving up already and going home!"

Naruto's voice echoed through the corridors and into the chamber Shino was currently hiding in, shortly followed by the angry shouts of several men. It was quite telling that Naruto was many times louder than even the group of grown-up men, too. His screaming did its job, though, and contrary to what Shino might have expected, the baits seemed to motivate the pursuers even further instead of discouraging them.

How foolish, he thought. Shouldn't they grow suspicious that the target they're pursuing doesn't seem afraid at all and even has the time and energy to ridicule them?

Not that he was complaining, of course, but he still found their carelessness embarrassing to witness.

Not one minute later, Naruto stormed into the chamber, twelve men hot on his heels. Once they had all entered and he could be sure that no more enemies were coming, Shino, standing upside down on the ceiling, instructed some of his Kikaichū to activate the mechanism that sealed the chamber's only entrance and exit shut.

Naruto joined him at the celling a moment later, just when the men began to realize what had happened.

"What the-"

"Oh no, you won't-"

"Shit! This is a trap!"

Shino paid their exclamations no mind as he directed all the Kikaichū that had been silently hiding in the chamber's many long shadows to attack. One moment, the men were screaming profanities at them, and one moment later, these screams changed into ones of fear and terror as swarms of insects closed in on them from all directions.

It was over in less than a minute, and while Shino continued to pay close attention in case one of the bandits decided to throw a weapon at them, he needn't have bothered. No one did. In the end, they were all helpless in face of an adversary they couldn't hope to beat or even just fight.

"Yeah," Naruto said with a long look at the unconscious bodies on the floor after the two of them let themselves fall down from the ceiling, "this never stops being suuuper creepy." He nudged one of the men with his foot. "Remember me to never get on your bad side, would ya?"

"You're a shinobi. If you had been in their position, you could probably have avoided the first wave and then come up with some plan to defend yourself."

"Really not the point, man…"

Shino knew that, of course, and he was very glad that his high collar concealed his smirk. As much as he hated that most people's first reaction to his clan's techniques was usual disgust and unease, he did occasionally enjoy creeping people out with them – not that he would ever admit that out loud, mind you.

The good thing with doing so with Naruto was that the other boy always got over it within seconds and never held a grudge, so Shino didn't even have to feel bad about it later. Case in point…

"Anyway," Naruto exclaimed, already back to normal, "this went great! I can't believe they were really that stupid and followed me without a second's hesitation!"

Shino nodded, having thought the same just a bit earlier himself. "I heard that civilians regularly underestimate Genin because of their young age, but the extent to which they do so appears to be more extreme than I imagined."

Naruto snorted. "What? They think we can't beat 'em up just because we're children? C'mon, guys, we're shinobi! Of course we're stronger than you!"

"People that don't live in hidden villages and don't regularly interact with shinobi seem to struggle to reconcile their expectations with reality as-"

"Hey, do you think our clones finished their fights already as well?"

Shino couldn't even bring himself to be annoyed at Naruto's careless interruption, knowing the other boy genuinely didn't mean anything malicious by it. It wasn't his fault that he was an idiot.

"I suspect one of your clones would have been destroyed if they had any problems, so I suppose they did."

Apparently, Naruto's shadow clones could actually transfer their memories when they got destroyed, and while most details seemed to get lost in that transfer, they would at least alert them that something had gone wrong. As that didn't happen, things should be fine. Naruto had told him that the memory transfer got more complicated the more clones he used, but there were currently only two other clones working together with two of Shino's insect clones, so that shouldn't be a problem.

Although he does have several other clones fighting elsewhere, too, he mused before dismissing that thought. According to Naruto, he was used enough to that number to notice if one was destroyed, so worrying about this was a waste of time.

"Good, good," Naruto said, and Shino grew immediately suspicious at the faux innocent voice he was using. That proved to be smart when the other boy grinned at him and asked, "So are there any more enemies left? We didn't finish them all off already, did we?"

He suppressed a sigh at the hopeful tone, but dutifully, he raised a finger for some of his Kikaichū to land on. Then, a few seconds later... "There seem to be two more small groups in our section. Our clones are closer to the southern one, but the other one is not far from here, so-"

"Alright, let's go!"

Naruto didn't give him any chance to reply before starting to run, making Shino not only regret that he had ordered his Kikaichū to open the exit a bit earlier but also make him lose his composure for the first time.

"Naruto!" he exclaimed while falling into a run himself, pointedly ignoring the way his voice cracked as he did so. "Stop! You don't even know where they are!"

Infuriatingly, the other boy just laughed with no intention of slowing down any time soon.

Akira Kurosawa impatiently tapped one finger on his knee as he waited for his men to return – preferably with the damn scroll he had told them to bring with them, too. Seriously, how hard could it be to beat a bunch of children? Sure, there were six of them now instead of the initial three, but still! Shouldn't they have been overwhelmed by now?

It wasn't as if he thought any of his men were close to being even just equal to any of them. Children or not, they were still shinobi. However, with their numerical superiority, they should be more than capable of beating them. Compensating for the losses they would most certainly suffer was somewhat annoying, yes, but at the end of the day, that wasn't a major concern for him. People willing to first study under and then serve him were as numerous as the stars in the sky. Just give them some food, convince them of all the opportunities they would have under his command, and maybe show off a little; that's all it took for people to do whatever he told them to.

Oh, the poor were always so delightfully easy to manipulate!

Akira had grown up on the streets himself. He had been just one street urchin among many. However, he had been fortunate enough to catch the eye of a passing missing-nin who was willing to teach him how to mould and control chakra as long as he worked for him. Naturally, he had immediately agreed.

The missing-nin died not too long after, but by then, Akira had the basics down well enough to improve on his own. He would never be as strong as a shinobi, of course, and he didn't know any Ninjutsu or Genjutsu, but he could use chakra to strengthen his body. Against any civilian, that was more than enough to guarantee his victory in a fight.

After a while, he began teaching others how to use chakra as well. He remembered his teacher telling him that one had to start studying young if one wanted to have any chance of ever becoming truly powerful in life and that those who only started as adults would never be able to master even the most basic techniques, so Akira naturally only took adults as students. Even the little they could learn was enough to put them above regular people, meaning they were still useful to him, but at the same time, they would never become a true threat to him. Even if all of them worked together, Akira would be able to beat them or at the very least be capable of outrunning them if he had to.

It was because he had studied under an actual shinobi that Akira understood that even these Genin, who were only beginners themselves, would be able to win every fair one versus one against any of his men and even himself. Against wave after wave of them for several days and even weeks, on the other hand? That should theoretically be enough to beat them.

So why aren't they back yet? he wondered with a frown. Did I underestimate these kids? It is the first time I actually dare to attack ninja, after all, even if they're just a bunch of children. I even made sure that they were alone without an adult supervisor! All scouts agreed on that, and none of those that fought against them and survived has seen one either!

As if to mock him, it was then that a voice spoke up from directly behind his back:

"Oh my, staying back with only three guards? Maybe you're a bit braver than I thought."

Akira was proud to say that his first reaction was to jump to his feet and lash out with a knife he had drawn in the blink of an eye. Unfortunately, things didn't work out as planned, and a second later, he found himself lying on the ground with his face pressed down and his arms twisted behind his back.

"What the-" he gasped, but before he could finish the question, his face was pressed deeper into the dirt to stop him.

"Please, don't overexert yourself," the same voice said uncomfortably close to his ear. "We're going to have a nice long talk later, so there's no reason to be impatient. We have all the time in the whole world."

He couldn't see the other person, only spotting some strands of silver hair out of the corner of his eye, but that wasn't his main priority right now. With a burst of strength that stemmed from pure desperation, he pushed his face to the side and yelled "Guards!" while ignoring the dirt in his mouth. "Guards, what are you doing? Help me!"

However, no one came to his aid.

"Oh, you're not talking about those three over there, I hope?" Akira's face was forcefully moved to look to his left. "They're already dead, I'm afraid. My condolences."

Just as the voice said, his three guards were lying in a pile of limbs with their throats cut, all of them sharing the same confused expression on their faces as if they hadn't even realized what had happened to them before they died.

Akira had no way to confirm who it was that had sneaked up on him, and he doubted the other man would tell him even if he asked, but deep down, he knew that he must somehow be associated with the children his remaining men were currently fighting.

Deep down, he now realized that messing with ninja, no matter how young, had been a grave mistake. Likely his last mistake, too.

I wish I had just stayed in bed this morning…

Chapter 69, huh…

Nice!

This chapter concludes this short arc. As I mentioned before, this was only ever meant to be a little breather before we get back to the more exciting stuff, and while I'm glad you enjoyed it anyway, I think you'll love the Chūnin Exams arc that comes next just as much as I do.

Without giving too much away, I can already say that a lot will happen in it. And when I say "a lot", I mean a lot! The exams themselves will only be one part of it. There will be lots of characters, some of whom we have already met and others we haven't, political intrigue, mysteries, and – of course – a sinister conspiracy brewing in the background that has nothing to do with what we have seen in canon.

Please leave a review and tell me what you think of this arc as well as what you expect to happen in the next one! :)