A/N: Thank you Kishimoto for telling us this chapter instead of cutting back to the Kage's fight. Take that guest review! You owe me 50 Ryu. (He'll probably cut to Sasuke and co. or the Kage's next week)
XXVI: Green Dragon
Road to Konoha Present Day:
"Hold up! You're saying that they were attacked by zombie fishmen? An army of them? What do you think I am five?" Tsunade was offended that Jiraiya would think she would believe such a ridiculous story, "How much of the story so far has been you making stuff up?"
"The Fishmen weren't zombies, Hime. They're the creation of a madman. And I wouldn't lie about something like this." Jiraiya answered sounding hurt.
"He's all kinds of bad luck, isn't he Jiraiya-sama?" Shizune, amused by the amount of trouble Naruto got into, commented.
Jiraiya chuckled, "I'd say he's just a magnet for the weird. It's like he's the star of his own movie or something."
"We're almost to Konoha Jiraiya; do you think you'll be able to finish the story before we get there?" Tsunade asked. Indeed the walls of Konoha now loomed over the tops of the trees; at their current pace they would reach the gates in two or three hours.
"If you'd let me finish, probably."
The Land of Sea: Four Months ago:
"Oh, you have GOT to be shitting me…" Naruto just stared at the approaching horde for a moment, before coming to his sense and shouting, "Sasuke! We've got trouble! Get your lazy ass over here!"
Despite the creatures' odd shuffling walk, no doubt caused by their large webbed feet, the fish monsters moved with alarming speed. Before Naruto finished shouting the first group was in striking distance. Naruto barely had time to duck under the lead fishman's sweeping blow. "They're fast! Be careful!" Naruto countered fishman's blow with an upper cut of his own. The creature was launched a short distance away, but Naruto discovered another thing about the sea monsters, "OW! Damn it! Their scales are like steel!" Naruto ducked and dodged as the monsters clawed at him. Trying something different, Naruto flew through the hand seals for Fuuton: Daitoppa, the blast of air threw a group of fishmen through the air, but a few seconds after they landed, the fishmen got back on their feet. Naruto dodged some more attacks, while trying to some distance between him and the horde. Once he was a good distance from the monsters he made the familiar cross shaped hand-seal and formed a shadow clone, before using his clone to form a swirling blue ball of energy in the space between their hands.
"Rasengan!" Naruto shouted as he slammed the glowing ball of chakra into the stomach of one of his opponents. For a moment nothing seemed to happen, but then force of the blow nearly split the Fishman in half. But behind the fishman Naruto just killed were two more, moving directly towards him, "Well, crap." Naruto said as they barreled towards him.
Meanwhile, Hinata was having a much easier time against her group of opponents. Her Juuken strikes ignored the fishmen's scales, allowing her to drop them with a single strike. Sasuke, on the other hand, was having a hard time against his opponents. He lacked Naruto's physical power, and without that he couldn't actually damage any of the fish monsters with Taijutsu. His Ninjutsu was also ineffective, without his ninja-wire his lightning jutsu were useless against multiple opponents, and even if he could throw an infinite number of Katon: Gokakyu, the monsters seemed to be highly resistant to fire.
The fight seemed to stretch on for an eternity, as hundreds of monsters relentlessly, and seemingly endlessly marched out of the ocean slowly pushing Team Seven farther and farther from the beach.
After more than half an hour of fighting the unrelenting tide of monsters, they were at the end of their rope. Sasuke's hands were a bloody mess from punching the monsters, his body was covered in scratches from their claws, and his chakra nearly drained, "I…I…can't…keep…this…up" He panted.
"N-Naruto-kun, I'm almost out of Ch-Chakra." Hinata managed to say through her ragged breathing. Despite her initial success, there were simply too many of the monstrosities for her to handle, her chakra reserves were almost empty, and she was covered in so many cuts that her clothes looked more like a fishnet shirt than a one piece swim suit.
On the outside Naruto looked the worst, because of his reliance on clones to form a Rasengan, Naruto had to intercept many attacks meant for his clones, leaving him covered more wounds than Hinata and Sasuke combined. Despite the apparent severity of his wounds, and the amount of blood he lost, Naruto's advanced healing rate kept him in fighting shape. "Guys, if I can get Uzu no Tsubasa out I think I can turn this around, but they won't let me finish summoning it."
Sasuke jumped onto the shoulders of a Fishman and killed it by jamming his electrified fingers into its eyes "Can't you blast them with your eye or something, Fishcake?" he panted before jumping off the convulsing monster and landing next to Naruto.
"You two were in the way;" he said to Sasuke before shouting at Hinata who was fighting a mob of fishmen twenty feet in front of Naruto and Sasuke. "If you can get behind me I should be able to buy us the time I need to summon my sword."
Hinata managed a weak nod, and began trying to fight her way towards Naruto and Sasuke. She barely made it there before chakra exhaustion took its final toll on her, and she tipped forwards and collapsed in Naruto's arms, "Did…I…do…good?" she asked weakly, before passing out completely.
"Yeah, you did great." Naruto said to Hinata, before passing her to Sasuke. "Be careful with her, and stand behind me, these guys can handle getting launched a hundred feet into the air but you two can't." Naruto spread his arms so the approaching horde was framed between his extended palms. Naruto pictured a rolling wave of force blowing the horde away, before pouring as much chakra into his right eye as he could. The resulting blast launched the monsters through the air and gouged a trench that slowly deepened the farther it got from Naruto into the sand in front of them. When the blast reached the ocean its force sent a plume of water thirty feet into the air, and actually parted the sea.
As Naruto slammed his palms together to summon the Uzu no Tsubasa, Sasuke said with a hint of awe, "Are you sure they'll even come back after that?"
Naruto didn't respond, however, and after the Uzu no Tsubasa appeared in a puff of smoke he began a series of complex hand seals that seemed to give him a massive aura of Fuuton Chakra. "Fuuton: Uzu no Tsubasa: Ryokuryū" Naruto grabbed the floating weapon with both hands, this time his aura swirled into the weapon in several small green tornadoes.
"Um…Naruto can you hurry? They're back already." Sasuke stared at the horde that was charging them from the beach; Naruto's blast didn't even seem to slow them down.
Just before the first monster reached Naruto, his technique finished charging. Naruto's aura solidified into the shape of a serpentine dragon wrapped around his chest, arms and weapon. The head of the dragon was at one end of the Uzu no Tsubasa and its body continued down the shaft until it reached the other end before it wrapped itself around Naruto's right wrist and continued up arm before circling his chest three times. At the bottom of the third loop the tail wrapped around Naruto's left forearm twice, leaving enough slack so he could raise his elbow above his head, before trailing off of his left wrist. Ryokuryū, unlike Hakutenshi, didn't increase Naruto's speed or mobility. What it did increase was his range and the lethality of his strikes, the green dragon's body was actually made of thousands of whirling blades that shredded anything that wasn't him.
Naruto charged the approaching horde; he lashed out with the dragon's tail in his left hand and wind chakra shredded through the closest fishman's tough scales. He swung the Uzu no Tsubasa in an arc, which sent a razor sharp blast of wind chakra from the dragon's mouth, easily bisecting twenty monsters. For the first time since they arrived, the horde's forward charge was stopped. And as Naruto continued his mad charge, they began to lose ground. Ten feet, twenty feet, forty feet… soon Naruto had managed to push them all the way back to the shoreline.
Naruto stood at the very edge of the beach, immovable, like a stone wall. The rushing fishmen crashing towards him fazed him as much as the waves lapping at his toes did. So intense was his focus, he didn't notice Kakashi shunshin behind him. Obviously the fish monsters attacked elsewhere on the island, because Kakashi too was covered in cuts and bruises, his ninja uniform reduced to tatters and smeared with blood both his and the monsters.
"Sasuke, is Hinata alright?" Kakashi asked when he saw that she was unconscious.
"I think she's out of chakra, and she lost a lot of blood, I used the towel to try to stop as many of her wounds as I could, but…" Sasuke looked down, ashamed, "We didn't bring any of our gear, I don't have any blood or chakra pills."
"Accidents happen," Kakashi reassured Sasuke, while pulling a small bottle of blood pills and a vial of ointment out of a pouch in his tattered vest. "Be glad I can treat her wounds, there's nothing as painful as losing a comrade." He began to rub the ointment over Hinata's wounds after making her swallow two blood pills. When he was done he rebandaged her wounds with the shreds of towel Sasuke originally used to bandage her with.
"Sensei did they attack the other side of the island as well?"
"Yeah they put up a good fight but they had no real tactics. It really was only a matter of time, what would run out first, my energy or their numbers? It was close near the end but they stopped coming."
"THAT'S ALL YOU GOT?" Naruto shouted from the beach, after apparently killing the last fishman. "DON'T COME BACK UNTIL YOU LEARN TO FIGHT!" He let his jutsu dissipate, and unsummoned the Uzu no Tsubasa, before tuning around and staggering up the beach, "Is she alright?" he asked Kakashi.
"She'll be fine, probably won't even have any scars to remember the ordeal."
"Good." Naruto said, before toppling over, "I'm so tired… I think I'll sleep for a week…" Naruto began to snore.
"Ugh…I'll carry Hinata," Kakashi told Sasuke, "you get Naruto."
Naruto's Mindscape: Four Months Ago:
"Why didn't you use my power Kit?" Kurama asked Naruto as soon as passed out in the real world.
"No offense Kurama, but I was afraid I might hurt someone if I went four tails, it's so hard to think, and against opponents like that? I don't want to lose my self to blood lust…"
"What about three tails? You never use my power, and it almost got you and your friends killed today." Kurama scolded Naruto. "Tell me the real reason you won't use my powers."
"I'm sorry Kurama…" Naruto looked down, "I don't want people to think I'm a monster. I don't want people to look at me with disgust and fear. Even if they don't know that I have you sealed in my gut, sprouting for tails and a blood red chakra cloak will make people think I'm a monster for sure."
"If they think you're a monster, kit, they're idiots. Never refuse to use your power because you're afraid what people will think of you. Someday, probably soon, there will be an enemy you can't defeat by yourself don't be afraid to call on my when that time comes."
"Thank you Kurama."
The Land of Sea: Three Months, Twenty-Nine ago:
Naruto woke up slowly. "I better not be in a hospital," he said before opening his eyes.
"No, you're just in the hotel room Naruto." Kakashi said. "Hinata's already awake, she'll be bedridden for a day or two, but she'll be fine."
"That's good news." Naruto said with a smile, but his face quickly fell, "You don't think they'll come back do you?"
"I'm sure of it Naruto, We're going to have to make preparations to defend the island until we can find the source of them." Kakashi stood up and turned to leave. "Get ready, You have the most experience building things we're going to need your help to fortify the island."
Naruto and Kakashi met with the Daimyo of the Land of Sea and his advisors to discuss building defenses for the island. After three hours of planning Naruto had enough information to create a thousand clones and order them to begin building walls and traps around the island.
After two days of constant labor the island was relatively secure, but undermanned. After a short discussion Naruto agreed to summon both the Toads and the Lizards and have them patrol the island.
"Okay here goes nothing." Naruto slammed his palms one the ground and summoned both Gamabunta and Shiromari.
"Hey, Brat." Gamabunta greeted Naruto cheerfully, "What's up?"
"What do you want mortal?" Shiromari, on the other hand still seemed to be upset with Naruto.
Naruto explained the situation the Boss summons. Gamabunta readily agreed to help. Shiromari was harder to convince but in the end he agreed to lend Naruto twenty of his best warriors, fierce lizards the size of a cart with broad flat heads and talons the size of Naruto's forearm.
The Land of Sea: Three Months, Twenty-Six ago:
"Kakashi-sensei, come quick!" Naruto shouted suddenly. "A clone just dispelled. There's a ship coming in!" Naruto and Kakashi ran for the wall where Naruto's clone dispelled. Naruto grabbed the spy-glass left by his clone and took a good look at the ship before handing the glass to his sensei.
The ship was battered, its deck covered in blood, and it smelled like death. It listed heavily to one side as it came crashing onto the beach. Once the ship ground to a halt a lone figure hopped off of the deck and began to stagger up the beach. Kakashi got a good look at the person before she collapsed. She wore a tattered tan trench coat over mesh armor, an orange miniskirt and shin guards. "That's Anko. Come on Naruto; help me get her through the traps."
Naruto and Kakashi jumped over the wall and ran in a seemingly erratic line to towards the ship wreck.
"K-Kakashi? Is that you?" she asked weakly.
"Yeah it's me Anko. What happened?"
"Monsters attacked ship…Only survivor…They'll be here soon…" Anko managed to say before she passed out.
"Come on sensei, let's get her back inside." Naruto and Kakashi managed to get her half way to the hotel they were using when Naruto's look out clones dispelled. "Kakashi…they're here."
Something about Naruto's tone worried Kakashi, "How many? Where are they coming from?"
"Thousands of them sensei. They're everywhere…."
A/N: The Lizard warriors look like a Komodo Dragon with Crocodile scales. I wanted to finish this arc in one chapter but it kind of grew in the writing, the next chapter should bring an end to this arc and the chapter after should bring us to the Chunin exams, so hang on to your hats the big changes are on the horizon (much like Konoha)
Ciao
Xahn777