27. 39

Story Start: Ocean, Twenty Miles Out From Land Of Mist

Ten shinobi appeared out of seemingly nowhere on top of the waves. Naruto's clones were kind enough to keep their 'passengers' steady until they were standing on the water with their own chakra before dispelling themselves. Mei looked around before looking at the original and asked, more in the name of professionalism than doubt "We are at the location I gave you?"

"At the exact minute." Naruto stated with a nod.

"Good." Mei stated with a nod before she ran through a quick set of hand seals. A moment later, the water underneath their feet solidified in a square shape and sunk beneath the rest of the still moving waves. Reaching the ocean floor, Mei quickly slit the palm of her thumb and placed the now bloody digit on a specific rock. An identification seal briefly flared into existence and a moment later the ground parted revealing a tunnel entrance.

"Nice seal work." Naruto complimented as the group entered the tunnel.

Mei smiled and said "While they can't handle any truly great works, the person who passes for our own seal expert does tidy work."

Naruto made a mental note that Mei had said 'expert' rather than 'Master' but didn't say anything else. A hundred feet down the tunnel, the group was stopped by a pair of guards. A quick check later, they were allowed past and they continued on into the hidden base proper.

Mei lead the way into a room full of maps sending clones to summon specific people as she went. When everyone she had selected arrived, she stated "Alright people, the Hidden Leaf Village has graciously decided to aid us. With their help, we'll finally be able to deal with Yagura once and for all."

"They only sent one person, and a kid at that?!" One of the more grizzled looking shinobi asked incredulously. Apparently, he thought Haku was one of theirs given the way he dressed and how his mask hid the Konoha headband he wore, plus how he was standing near Zabuza. (Old habits died hard)

"That 'kid' happens to be a Jounin level Uzumaki." Said former Seven Swordsman of the Mist member grunted.

The older shinobi blinked once and examined Naruto closer. Spotting the whirlpool symbol sewed onto the sleeves of his shinobi uniform, he said "Withdrawn."

Oh yeah, the Older Generations definitely remembered THAT clan. It didn't matter if they had been wiped out (at extremely heavy cost to the THREE Villages it took to do the deed) and the remnants scattered. If you heard there was a genuine Jounin Uzumaki going against you and the rest of your now hilariously small four man team, you started praying to your preferred deity for your soul because your odds of getting out of that fight intact were now only slightly higher than going one on one against the Yellow Flash.

Mei's lips twitched upwards at the interaction before she went back to serious as she stated "As I was saying, our guest shall deal with Yagura while we deal with the more conventional shinobi. He will also be leaving a shadow clone with each team who's sole purpose is to create and dispel more clones to serve as instant communication."

"Damn, kid's got enough chakra to waste on multiple shadow clones just to serve radio duty?" Another (younger) shinobi asked incredulously.

Naruto glanced over at the man and nodded as he said "I've got enough juice for about five hundred clones if I need to go army vs army." That was actually lowballing it quite a bit but that was what records said some of the higher ranked Uzumaki Jounin could churn out.

"Damn, Uzumaki are scary." The shinobi said with a shake of his head.

"Damn straight." The grizzly shinobi muttered.

"Quite." Mei stated before she continued "But yes, with our guest pulling radio duty we will not have to worry about our communications being intercepted. Our teams will-"

Time Skip: Mission Start, Location: Hidden Mist Village

One of the perks of having Jiraiya as your godfather? You got taught the best ways to sneak into a ninja village without being noticed. Hidden from sensors with a seal that gave the appearance of nothing but the local nature chakra where his chakra should be, Naruto snuck along the wall of the kage building wearing a full body covering suit who's color matched the stone of the building, using Shuko climbing hand claws in place of chakra. Reaching where the Kage's office should be, Naruto pushed his senses out past the bubble and checked for chakra sources.

When he felt a rather large chakra source right on top of a second, relatively smaller one, Naruto nodded to himself and held up his right hand and began vibrating it before placing the tips against the wall. This technique was how he got inside buildings without worrying about if there was an open or closed doorway. With himself (and his passengers) vibrating just right they phased right through solid matter. Normally, he'd vibrate his chakra first to get the right frequency before he reached the obstruction. But since a foreign chakra appearing right outside the room would have thrown up red flags, he was having to do the frequency test by hand.

Thankfully, Mei had told Naruto what building materials the kage building had been made with so he had a starting place to work with. a few seconds of looking for the right frequency and his finger tips sunk in an eighth of an inch before he stopped pushing. Frequency found, Naruto took in a deep breath then started vibrating his entire body. The exact moment he was at the right speed, he phased through the wall then shot forwards, going full speed now that he was inside out of the mist and slapping a tag on the person who both matched the image Mei had shown him as well as the spot where he had sensed the twin chakras. Yagura had been just beginning to turn around, having somehow sensed Naruto's entrance, when the tag activated and Naruto and Yagura were taken away from the office in a cloud of smoke.

The few shinobi (and one kunoichi) that had been in the office at the time of the kidnapping didn't even have time to register what had happened before the shadow clone Naruto had popped off in between coming through the wall and snatching their leader applied seal tags to them as well, this time knock out tags. As the (still alive) bodies dropped like puppets with their strings cut, the clone popped off a few more clones to secure the room (and one to immediately dispel to tell the Rebels to start their attack) then made for the desk and said "Now then, let's see what goodies we can find."

Hey, he might be working to aid the Mist Rebels, but he was still a Leaf Shinobi. If Mei or the others thought he wouldn't take the chance to copy anything interesting he found in that office to bring back home then they were too naive to be shinobi in the first place. (Mei very reasonably asked if he had found anything interesting, but pointedly didn't ask if he had made copies.)

Scene Change: Uninhabited Island In The Land Of Mist

The original Naruto and Yagura appeared on a 'small' one mile square island where the only living thing around was plant life. The moment they arrived, Naruto slammed Yagura down face first into the ground and zipped around the island, grinding his face down into the dirt and taking particular glee to run his face through any high tree roots. Doing a full circuit of the island, he then ran inwards and slammed Yagura into a tree trunk in the middle of the island.

At the same time he had started running, the strongest barrier Naruto could make with seals had sprung up when the clones stationed where sand met water had sensed his arrival. Those clones got front row seats to a massive three tailed turtle suddenly appearing as a panicking Yagura who just got wrecked out of nowhere went straight to the 'big guns' of Jinchuuriki in an effort to keep even more damage from happening to him.

Naruto's response to Isobo the Three Tail's appearance was to go bigger himself, replicating the action he took in fighting Pa during his test at the Valley of the End, if not the scale. Now standing a good three hundred and fifty feet tall, Naruto wrapped an arm around one of the tails and with a grunt of effort swung the three tails around in a full circle before up and over to slam down onto the ground on its back sending tremors through out the island. Before the three tails could begin trying to right itself, Naruto formed a Rasengan about three times the size of a 'normal' one shimmering with his Uzumaki Chakra and slammed it into the (hopefully) relatively soft under-shell.

A horrendous racket filled the air as the sphere of death ground against the shell. Naruto could only keep the sphere there for a few seconds before he had diff out to the way of a tail the Three Tails sent at him. A moment later, the chakra beast folded up on itself like an armadillo (though not before he saw that he had actually been making some progress through the shell) and started rolling quite rapidly in one place before shooting itself at Naruto.

What would have been incredibly fast for others was easily manageable for Naruto though and he formed another, more tightly packed Rasengan in his hand as he moved to the side, pressing the sphere into the other spinning mass of fed chakra, scoring a 'straight' line across the tailed beast as it went past, the rotation meaning that he actually scored damage across a rather large chunk of Isobo's right side. Of course, scoring damage and doing damage were two different things. When the Three Tailed Turtle unfurled itself, there were several furrows in its side but none were particularly deep enough to break through the shell.

And they definitely weren't deep enough to stop the Biju from spitting out a fast and cutting stream of water at Naruto. A stream which Naruto sidestepped before he pulsed his Presence and threw a 'minor' lightning bolt right into the Sanbi's open eye. Needless to say, that got a reaction from the Biju, causing it to roar in pain and flinch back, right front leg moving to cover the eye.

Naruto meanwhile shook out his right hand trying to get rid of the tingling feeling in it. Having a Hurricane as his Presence might allow him to throw around lightning but said electricity only agreed with him better than it did his enemies begrudgingly. Still, he kept most of his attention in his opponent who after a few moments of 'real time' opened his other eye to glare at his enemy. Lowering his leg but keeping the now damaged eye closed, the Biju began preparing his kind's signature attack. Naruto frowned at the sight of the beginning to form attack before he shot forward, going into a baseball slide that put him under the still growing ball of chakra death and slammed an upwards kick into the three tail's chin, forcing the Biju up off his front feet so that way he was pointed up into the air. The Biju's eyes widened in surprise and prematurely fired the Biju Bomb due to that surprise, the orb shooting up into the sky before detonating three miles up.

But even as the ball of destruction was launched up into the air, Naruto was still moving, using a breakdancing style maneuver to spin on his back and to his feet, Naruto's right hand formed a wind sword which he thrust at the now exposed flesh behind the Sanbi's armored head and main body shell. The tip of the sword entered the relatively soft part of the neck and came out the other side. Before Isobo could even realize what was happening, Naruto spun around the massive biju, decapitating the mass of chakra.

The moment Naruto had completed the decapitation, he shot away from the body to the edge of the island, slapping down a bunker seal and crouching. Good thing he did too, as before the head had even hit the ground there was a massive chakra explosion that hammered into the barrier surrounding the island and the one protecting Naruto. The barrier funneled all of that energy upwards as a white pillar that consumed the still just forming explosion of the prematurely launched biju ball, the pillar of light reaching ten miles into the sky before it slowly began to dissipate.

When Naruto thought it was safe, he waited another minute then dropped his bunker barrier and blasted the still remaining smoke upwards with a wind Jutsu. The revealed island was now a completely flat wasteland of glass and Naruto let out an impressed whistle as he said to himself "Damn, and that was from the lower end of the power spectrum.'

There was a sense of disquiet and grief from the back of his mind, but the Kyubi remained silent so while Naruto made a note of it, he didn't make an attempt to speak with the biju contained in his own seal. Instead, he began carefully picking his way across the glass towards where the Sanbi's body had been. It was highly unlikely after that explosion, but Yagura might have survived.

But when he reached where the Sanbi had been, all he found was a corpse so charred he only knew what it was by it's shape. He forced himself to kneel down and check for a pulse anyway. Finding none, Naruto pulled out a storage scroll and solemnly sealed the body away. If Mei asked then he would give it to her, but otherwise it was going to the autopsy specialists of the Konoha Shinobi Corps when he got back to the village. (Standard practice when it came to dead enemy Shinobi after all)

Giving a slight sigh to himself, Naruto made his way back to the edge of the island where his clones dropped the barrier, collecting the seal tags and giving them to the original before dispelling. (And incidentally sending Mei a 'Mission Complete' message) He then took off the Hidden Mist Village. There was a still a coup going on after all.

END

Author's Notes: I blame Legends of Arceus for how long this took to write. Damn completionism game is addictive. Anyways, standard reminder to vote in the poll for what I work on next, and another reminder that if you guys actually want me to answer a question left in a review, you need to have an actual account and have the ability to reply set to 'On'.

Until next time, this is Tac signing out.