"Absence diminishes mediocre passions and increases great ones, as
the wind extinguishes candles and fans fires." - Francois de la Rochefoucauld
"Naruto!" exclaimed the young Mouse as he saw his older brother walking down from in front of the sun up on a hill. Lion and Badger looked up suddenly and started running toward him. All three of them stopped in their tracks to look at him in wonder as he approached them. They had seen him in his kimono once before, but something about him looked entirely different now.
Badger's eyes narrowed slightly as he took in the form of his stand-in sensei: over his bright orange kimono was a magnificient haori that was patterned with the shapes of flying birds. The birds themselves were not detailed, in fact, they were silhouettes of reds, oranges, yellows and white. The pattern spoke so brightly that it was obviously made to attract attention. Uzumaki Naruto was famous for his various attention-grabbing techniques.
Naruto grinned, tilting his head slightly and speaking with an easy, laid-back tone. "You guys gonna get ready or what? Where are those girls you said were going to the festival with us?"
"Oh, they're already over there with another small group that went earlier. I guess they wanted to eat breakfast and play in the morning games." Mouse said.
"Alright. Go get ready, then." He said and the boys walked back into the orphanage.
At about three fifteen pm, the trio was ready for the festival and stepped out the front door of the orphanage wearing the kimonos that they were fitted for earlier today.
Naruto laughed and the boys all looked at him with glaring eyes.
"What's so funny?" Lion demanded.
"Who knew the baba could put kimonos on so well! I thought we would have to wait two hours to get you guys put into those things. You guys are going to strike those little ladies of yours dead at first glance."
He crouched down just as much as his kimono allowed and reached into the folds of the upper body portion of the kimono to retrieve a small disposable camera. "Alright, hang on a second guys. We've got to take a picture or two, so get together by the wall right next to the door there." He waved them back and forth as he needed to and then told them to smile and took one picture, then he told them to make faces and laughed as he took the second picture. Afterward he showed them the magnificient Jiraiya's "Ero-sennin" dance and told them to take the pose at the end of it where they stood on one leg and held one palm out and the other back like a sumo off balance. Taking one last picture of the three stumbling against one another, he turned to start walking with a large grin on his face.
"C'mon. I've got your spending money here. We still need to meet up with the girls and then make it in time to see Hyuga-taichou's performance!"
The three of them looked surprised. "Hyuga-taichou is the jonin performance?"
They looked at one another and then Lion suddenly shouted, "Awesome!"
Naruto grinned. They were lucky that they were able to pick odd-looking kimonos that didn't look totally crazy on them... well, Lion's hair made his more masculine-looking dress look kind of funny though.
Lion was dressed in an aburn fall kimono with rounded sleeves and billowy pants that were tied at his ankles. It had a striped pattern halfway, while the obi that he wore was a little larger and thicker than most men's kimonos have. Like Naruto, he had chosen red sandals (although these were not geta) for the festival. "I want cotton candy!"
Lion was the one wearing a mohawk.
Mouse grinned and his nose twitched a bit as he leaned in close. He was wearing a green and blue kimono with curled shoes instead of sandals. His sash was stark white compared to the rest of his clothing, but it seemed to work well for him. "Now, now. We don't want Shi-Shi-chan to spoil his appetite for dinner later!"
Lion's eyes widened slightly in an ominous guesture as he seemed to be glaring at his brother. "Lions eat mice, y'know."
"And mice take thorns out of lions' paws and make them their friends." He said, grinning. Lion made a face, but then grinned too.
Badger had chosen bright blue shoes and socks and an even brighter shade of blue for his kimono. He wore a thin, dark blue obi that tied the fabrics and the colors in well, with only a small crest on the back with a swirl on it. It astounded Naruto that the boy had picked out the one type of kimono that had the whirlpool country's friendship symbol on it. It was the symbol of Naruto's own ancestors.
The small group head out quickly to where he and Nobume had decided to meet. It was quick, but they decided on just meeting near the sakura blossom trees. Badger pointed out that it was probably not very romantic to meet by a bunch of trees that wouldn't bloom until the following April or so, when it was barely October now. Naruto chuckled and nodded slowly, agreeing. It wasn't romantic to take someone to a place that reminded you of an old crush either, but Naruto didn't care. Sakura was more like a sister anyways. Maybe he could find her and get her to watch over the kids while he enjoyed the festival with Nobume.
Maybe he could just use kage bunshin. The boys would never know... unless they elbowed the clone or something.
They arrived at around 3:45 pm, and since Hinata was supposed to be there fifteen minutes earlier to prepare for the show, he was pretty sure that they hadn't missed anything.
The festival was always lively and even this early in the day there was a rush of life as civilians and ninja of all sorts stopped by to enjoy the festival by themselves or with friends, their family or their lovers. As the boys tried to rush him to move ahead, he went ahead and did his searching for the girls. He vaguely remembered Nobume's sister, whose skin tone was fair and had a tinge of natural blush to it, but with Nobume's platinum blonde highlights in her black hair and her dark complexion fairly common in Kumo, where she used to live as a civilian with her parents before they decided to move to Konoha, he should be able to spot her right away.
"Naruto-san!" came a voice from behind him.
He turned around and spotted the girl, but his eyes widened slightly. The last thing that he noticed was her hair. The first was the fact that she looked stunning in a pink flower themed kimono that looked like the green vines of the flowers were wrapping around her body as the kimono was tucked away. She got her hair cut and Lion seemed to be looking at her with hearts set in his eyes.
Badger's mouth was opened wide and Mouse chuckled, "And you said the Sakura blossoms wouldn't bloom today..."
Naruto was still sort of stuck on the way her golden eyes looked like they were the sun that made the flowers on her kimono glow... and other corny things like that.
"How cool!" Lion blurted out, surprised and suddenly head-over-heels for the girl now that she had a smilar hair-cut to his own. In his head, Nobume cut her hair that way to make him feel better about his accidental hair-do.
When she finally stood in front of them, Naruto gave his best smile and said, "He's right, that looks awesome!"
She smiled back and nodded, "Thank you guys! The girls tried their hardest to get the blonde highlights in my hair just right. My hair's always so curly though, it took forever to make it straight like this!"
"I can imagine. I liked the curls too, but you look great with this... is it a mohawk?" He asked, noticing that there was still hair on the sides unlike Lion, whose hair had been buzz-cut almost all of the way down on his sides.
"Yeah, a faux-hawk." She grinned at the lingo. "See how the hair on the sides of the mohawk is still there and only the middle part of the 'hawk is sticking up? It's one of my favorite looks."
"I'm gonna let my hair do that!" Lion exclaimed, grinning widely.
Naruto laughed and Nobume smiled. He pressed his palm gently against the small of her back and they walked together as the boys started moving toward the games. "Wait guys, remember we still need to meet up with the other girls. Plus, the presentation is going to start soon."
"They're with another volunteer. They were part of the group I was planning on bringing to the festival anyways. A lot of them really wanted to see Hyuga-sama's presentation today."
Naruto nodded, "Ah, that's good then. Where are they?"
Nobume looked around briefly as they continued walking, then she smiled and pointed meekly. "Right over there, see the lady with the really big hair?"
He saw a woman with glasses and really large, fuzzy-looking hair leading the rest of the children to their seats. "Yup. Alright guys, looks like they're getting ready to sit in front of the stage. Why don't you guys go join them?"
The four of the kids walked away, with Nobume's younger sister asking Badger, "So you really are a shinobi? A chunin? Really?" as they moved along to meet the other two young girls and sit next to the volunteer that came with Nobume earlier.
Naruto chuckled, "So you told her about him, huh?" He asked, glancing at Nobume. "How sweet of you to break the ice like that for him."
"He probably never would've said anything. Isn't he pretty quiet compared to his other brothers?" She commented with a gentle smile.
Naruto nodded slowly. "He acts a little older also.. I'm not sure why out of the three that he's always in a somber mood, but I guess it's just his personality... it's more likely that he's not taking to the shinobi lifestyle as well as his brothers are."
"Probably. Are they your disciples?"
Naruto shook his head. "Not officially, but I guess I spend enough time with them for them to look like they are. They made chunin before meeting me, though. I guess we sort of bonded when I found out that they were still living in the orphanage."
The couple walked off together to stand near the back behind the rows of stone seats that were set before a large stage about two meters tall.
"You never met your parents, then?" Nobume asked awkwardly, her gaze averting away from his.
"I think maybe in a dream once or twice," he laughed, "but no, I've never met them in person before."
"In a dream?" She asked, puzzled. How could he have met his parents in a dream?
Making a face, Naruto slowly looked away, muttering 'that's not the sorta thing you tell a pretty girl, Naruto-sama.'
"Naruto-san. What do you mean 'in a dream'?" She asked again, pushing the subject.
"It's not too interesting... stuff about chakra and chakra sealing, you know." He said, smiling.
"No, not at all!" She said, tugging on the elegant sleeve of his kimono. He really did have fine taste, at least in choosing the type of material, if not the color. It was hard to say that she didn't like the expressiveness that came off of the kimono he wore; the bright colors seemed to suit him and his yellow blond hair just fine.
"Hm," he pressed his thumb underneath his chin and looked at her curiously. "Well, if you're really interested, I think it had to do with some kind of chakra sealing technique that my father used on me when I was a baby. He was able to seal some of his memories, personality and chakra into me, and some of my mother's along with his. I had a very realistic dream because of it that could probably be a really late-acting genjutsu or something."
Nobume still looked unsure. "Isn't a genjutsu some kind of illusion that you ninja make using chakra?"
"That's a perfect description of it, actually." He said approvingly.
"So your father was that powerful, huh? Wow..." she muttered, silently wishing she hadn't brought up a potentially tough subject for the man, "I'm sorry for your loss... or well... I'm sorry. I don't think that that technique your father used could've been a normal genjutsu, though!"
Naruto entertained that thought, idly tossing aside the thought that she couldn't possibly know too much about genjutsu to provide an adequate explanation for her observation, "Really? Why's that?"
"Because I'm sure they told you something that only your parents could tell you from deep within their hearts, and no illusion no matter how powerful can replace true love like that." She said with stunning confidence in her words. "I bet you actually met your parents that day, Naruto-san!"
He was at a loss for words. He tried to come up with something to say, but in the end he could only smile. It grew on him, little by little, and in the end he felt like he was smiling with his whole body. A boulder may as well have been lifted off of his shoulders after that and he started to forget for just a little while that he was shinobi.
Nobume noted the body language and gave him her own, toothy smile as she gazed up into his eyes.
"Ladies and Gentlemen and little ones! Welcome to the twentieth Kyubi festival!" The host spoke loudly over the crowd as they started playing some background music. Naruto and Nobume moved forward to take a seat behind their younger siblings, grinning to one another at the conversations that the group was having as the announcer began speaking. "So your 'big-brother' is really an elite shinobi?", "He-he, yeah...", "I wish I could go to the academy!"
"Welcome back everyone, and for those of you just arriving, welcome once more to enjoy the spectacular events at our twentieth Kyubi festival! We expect there to be a large turnout by eight p.m. tonight for the fireworks display, theatrical productions and boat racing, dragon dancing and origami folding lessons, so make sure you eat and drink plenty and enjoy yourselves! First, we will have a display of one of Konoha's finest shinobi's techniques for those ninja enthusiasts out there! Everyone should look forward to this young woman, she really is a glowing star among diamonds here in the leaf; our very own, the once heir and now head of Konoha's Hyuga clan, Hyuga Hinata-dono!"
When Hinata stepped out onto the stage, several people stopped talking to watch. Most people who dealt with the Hyuga and had met Hinata when she was younger generally could not recognize her as that tiny, mute girl who played with her fingers when she got nervous. Hyuga Hinata, on the surface, had changed so drastically that even her friends hardly recognized her. Naruto knew, also, that her old teammates no longer associated with her because of personal reasons. Apparently Shino felt that she had insulted his family, and from what she told him Naruto still wasn't sure what had been said. Kiba's sister died a few months ago due to a bad decision on Hinata's part in expecting too much of the girl. Naruto hoped it was only that she had miscalculated, but sometimes he wondered; Hana's death looked like it was expected to happen from an outside perspective, and Naruto, again, not knowing the details of the mission because of his absence at the time, hoped that Hinata really wasn't the one to blame for the young woman's death that came far too soon. She was to be wed only three weeks later to an Akimichi who was, for a long time, her boyfriend and lover.
"Who's that girl?" Nobume asked, her jaw dropped ever so slightly.
"Hyuga Hinata. She's the current head of the Hyuga clan and a respected member on the Village-Shinobi Council."
"She's... beautiful." She said, still gawking. And she most definitely was. Hyuga Hinata was an envy of the gods. No real mortals were like her. She had dark hair that shimmered like blue amber in the sunlight and lightning silver under any tone of moonlight. Her lips soft; the clouds became as they are by imitating the feel of that soft portal to her voice, another angelic talent. Her voice could kill men and embolden them to face unbeatable odds, yet she could coo and even the mocking birds couldn't imitate her. Her skin was a soft, supple fabric woven of silver chain and rosy-pink pearls. The crook of her neck was where every man wanted to curl up to and die; the toes of her feet and the fingers of her hands were always soft and delicate even though she had used those very same hands to steal the breath of countless assassination targets. If pleasure was pain and pain were pleasure, agony would overcome you at the barest of touches of her thighs and pleasure like no other would burn you like silk dangling over a candlestick when she bites your flesh. Her breasts, her bosom, her bounty, her love and her heart; her chest was her skin of pearls and silver polished and orgasmic to the eyes like an explosion of many suns in the sky.
Then, he looked her in the eye. The eyes were knives, drenched in poisons, each one sharpened until the blade of the knife was not unlike a single strand of hair, stretched out from the hilt. Her eyes gave away the pain of guilt that she harbored; her misery, her sorrow, it was all there like a cracked mirror. Her resolve broken down into despair while her vindictive glance remained. The walls that once were too high now had no end in sight to them. One could only turn his head up and hope to catch a glimpse of the end of the new walls that she had erected. Walls that were put into place even before her father was killed.
Even Nobume, he had to admit, paled in comparison to the white eyed girl.
Naruto nodded slowly, his eyes staring on callously as he remembered the conversation he had with her. "The girl inherited that slender, soft Hyuga look, minus the terrible attitude... although lately she's been kind of pissy."
Nobume looked at him, surprised at the tone of voice and the slanderous word he used to describe her attitude. "You know her personally?"
"She's the captain of my team."
Nobume's eyes widened. So he sees her every time they go out on missions together? "Together with the boys?"
Naruto nodded.
"Wow. So, since the Hyuga clan head is your leader, then you guys must be really powerful."
Naruto nodded slowly. "We are a great team together, but sometimes we all bump heads a little more than I would like."
"Ah." A characteristically 'ninja' answer. Nobume smiled, but it was quickly phased out when she turned to look and saw that Hinata was gazing in their direction as she knelt down on the floor of the stage. Nobume gulped, affected slightly by the look and the feel of the strange, creeping chakra that passed over her a second later.
Suddenly, ninja stars whirled wire around her in intricate loops that totally bound her limbs apart from one another. She felt needles pressing against her throat and saw Hinata standing before her with a scorpion in her hand, which she held by its stinger. She suddenly felt compelled to open her mouth seemingly by Hinata's sheer sense of will. Nobume almost cried out as the scorpion's tiny legs began touching her lips just as Hinata brought it up to her mouth. Then, blue flames engulfed them for a fraction of a second and just as suddenly as the vision came, it was gone.
The blue flames, the scorpion, the wire and Hinata; it had all vanished, right before her eyes and her ears and her skin. She could almost still feel the touch of the scorpion's legs on her mouth.
She turned to look at Naruto and was surprised to see that he was looking nonchalant, as if he didn't just feel that terrible, scary wave pass over them.
'That sort of power you don't feel everyday...'
"Did you feel that?" She asked as she turned her head toward him, shook up slightly.
"Feel what?" Naruto said curiously.
She shook her head and looked back at Hinata. Is she... looking at us? At me?
Nobume shook her head slightly. Whatever had just happened, it was now over. What really crept her out was that Naruto had not even felt that monstrosity of a killing intent. She didn't know there was a ninja that could target his killer intent without allowing others to feel it.
"So, have the two of you... You and Hinata-san, I mean, have you ever..."
She watched as he slowly turned his head to look at her, terror written all over him. The look on Naruto's face made her laugh almost, although she was still too scared that she would hurt her stomach if she laughed with all of the rocks that Hinata had put in her stomach with that look and killing intent.
"What are you asking me? If we've ever... eh... done it?"
She laughed, stomach be damned.
"Ha ha ha! No, no... well, that too, I guess... Mmm. I bet she looks yummy without her clothes on..." Nobume mused while Naruto's loose feeling pants suddenly felt snug and his face twisted into a dreamy look.
Don't say, 'Yeah, she does.' Don't say, 'Yeah, she does.' He told himself, over and over again. "Well, no, we've never gone out."
After saying that, he realized his mistake by the slightly surprised and suggestive look on her face. "Really? So you... have done it... maybe out in the field?" She asked, eyebrows raising suggestively. "What's it like?"
"Ah! No! No-no-no! Never done that either!"
Nobume cracked up laughing at the wide eyes on his face and shook her head. "I was just asking. You don't have to be so defensive, Naruto-san."
He may be ninja, but he's still just a gaki at heart, huh? She grinned as he looked at her with an unamused scowl on his face.
"I'm serious!"
"Don't worry, I believe you."
He sighed. "Good."
"If you had ever laid that, I'd say you'd probably already have my panties in your haori right now..." she grinned and pulled back each side of the vest as if to peek in and check, then she smiled up at him. "Nope, pretty sure I've still got them."
Naruto flinched, doing a double-take as he glanced and then turned away from Hinata up on the stage to gaze deep into the eyes of the girl from Kumo as she whispered to him, 'I think I love teasing you.'
Her soft lips curved ever so slightly as a hand moved up to stroke just under the vest of his kimono. After a few minutes of locking eyes while Hinata took her first step forward after standing up onto her feet, Nobume tugged on his haori again and he could barely see her pearly white teeth underneath her embarrassed-looking smile just as nervousness set in and she took to staring at the folds of his kimono near his chest. "What are you thinking, Naruto-san?" The way she said his name made him shake. He hadn't even bothered to tell her not to call her 'san', because the way she said it stirred a flame in his belly.
Nobume wasn't totally different from all of the women he knew in Konoha. Every kunoichi in his age group was built a certain way. Because of their constant training, their bodies had lost their baby fat and their arms and legs turned into strong bundles of sinewy muscle that were taut and, aside the fat from their breasts, had little bounce or sag. Nobume's body was just perfect. It was soft, supple, but for some odd reason it reminded him a little of Hyuga-taichou's. She must work out, he thought. Usually, civilians were a little less shapely all around unless they were models, and since those came far and in between, he was pretty sure he had not just snagged himself a model out of a hair dressing shop. Although he was curious about her and her past, he let it go for a while to watch the presentation. He tried his hardest to let go of her, Hyuga-taichou that is.
At the same time, Hinata brought her hands together and then extended her legs outwards as she released some of her chakra for a flashy show of some of her family jutsu. As she performed actions that she had been doing monotonously for ages to perfect them, she became lost in thought while her body continued on automatically, yet still gracefully. She thought about when she first met Naruto, then she thought of the night when they celebrated and almost kissed when she made ANBU, and how she felt when only a few days later he had made ANBU. She couldn't help but feel a little remorseful that he was a genin, in fact the only genin to ever make ANBU, technically anyone's subordinate on their team, and yet he was stronger than all of them.
Even with Naruto a few words away from holding a swooning girl in his arms and Hinata as busy as she should've been trying to focus on the presentation, they couldn't help but remember the soulless samurai that attacked Konoha, their withering morale and the night that Hyuga Hiashi died.
" 'Tou-san! 'Tou-san!" She cried out, her hands reaching out desperately as she fell before the broken body of her father. Scattered around them were the empty shells of tar-covered samurai armor, uniform plates of steel and leather, silk and lacquer. Each piece of armor that lay around her and the rest of her three man cell was utterly decimated; meat torn and sliced prettily like only a master butcher could do. There were no bodies. To Hinata, the soulless samurai that attacked their village were once something to fear and loathe.
A single unit attacked the front gates earlier that day, undoubtedly to gauge Konoha's military strength and cunning. They weren't destroyed easily. It wasn't actually until the copy-cat ninja Hatake Kakashi split one's body in half with an exceptionally powerful Raikiri that the enchanted samurai armor finally stopped moving forward. When the last one was left 'alive' and intact, it scurried away much more quickly than it had advanced before leaving back over the hills just outside of Konoha that lead to the chain of rivers and lakes that made up the majority of Hi no Kuni.
Now, the only feeling in Hinata's body was strain and tension. Her mind fed her meager proportions of the memories that she gathered over the years of her father slowly coming to accept her, and eventually announce to the council and at the festival of the lion only six weeks ago that she was to be the next Hyuga clan leader. She may as well have been in paradise; who could see the day, when Hyuga Hiashi finally saw what so many others had long seen before him? Kurenai, her old team mates, Kiba and Shino, even the Godaime had been impressed with her potential in medical ninjutsu; Hinata had to decline a mentorship underneath the current Hokage to continue with her career in ANBU and as the future head of the Hyuga clan.
Now, she thought solemnly, now that her Tou-san was gone, she was all alone. She swallowed pitifully as she gazed upon her father's face and noticed that it was paler than she had ever seen it.
He had always seemed rather pale. Now, his face reminded her of spilled white ink. His chakra, which had filled the air much like Kiba would say a musky scent would, had grown stale, but prevalent. It was the chakra-sensing equivalent of sitting in a room with a rotting corpse; Hinata calmly turned around and emptied her stomach on the floor behind her.
Looking up from the evidence of her folding stomach, she saw the bright blond hair of her fellow ANBU, Fox.
She felt disgusted. He had prepared for so long for what? For her father to make a martyr out of himself? For her to be alone again, without even a single parent to praise or love her? Was he going to take his place, the selfish bastard? Was he going to galavant down and sweep her off of her feet like in fairy tales and take responsibility for the loss that she has endured? Would he even look her way after!
She clenched her fingernails into the dirt and dragged them roughly against the ground until they were sitting near her hips. She wasn't naive anymore. Not when it came to love, anyways. She had tried, time and time again, to get his attention, but Naruto never gave her the time of day. Now, with the odd, cynical personality that he seemed to adopt from out of nowhere, like those three boys that he sometimes visited and trained with at the orphanage who were currently working on their chunin exams. Out of nowhere, he had changed, and suddenly he was interested and flirting, but she knew that it was just the way he had become. He did that with every girl; no woman held his heart. What he didn't understand was that she didn't just long for him to give her his heart, she ached with every fiber of her being to give him hers and for him to accept it.
But again, she wasn't naive. She couldn't pretend that he loved her, no matter what sort of words he said or actions he took. She didn't care how unfair that seemed to be to him, it was only fair to her that she had the last say in their relationship after years and years of waiting.
Damn him! And damn everyone else... She shook violently as she glared at the floor, then she closed her eyes and tears began to well at their far corners.
"Hinata! Just stay back! Let everyone else handle them for now, I need to prepare more chakra!" He bellowed, his own body shaking in anticipation of a surprise attack while he was gathering the natural energy around him. He wasn't sure exactly what he was going to do with it, but he had already tried using the rasengan and some of the weaker variations of it, to no avail. He figured his next best bet was to dip his hand into the chakra that flowed around them in nature. If he could only get a little while longer, he would be able to spin the chakra into a small enough point that he could fit it into his tenketsu and allow it to explode all at once.
Hinata looked up and screamed, and from far away, Naruto felt his stomach drop like a rock in his abdomen. He knew that feeling that she felt. He had gone through life and death situations before, and had nearly lost many of his precious people, but it didn't seem like her father could be revived at this point. Hiashi had given it his all and utterly destroyed no less than forty suits of the enchanted samurai armor. How he did it, Naruto wasn't sure. He didn't have the Byakugan, but he was pretty sure that those suits didn't have any chakra coils, so the gentle fist shouldn't have done much.
Whatever Hiashi had augmented his attacks with was what Hinata needed. Hopefully, Naruto thought, the young Hyuga heiress, no, the young head of the Hyuga clan, had surpassed her father.
"Hyuga-sama!" Beetle yelled, raising her arms up and clenching her fingers tightly without closing her hands into fists up above her head. "I'm right behind you!" And with a sudden burst of chakra, two large hands made of rock and soil reached up from the ground and then pressed down upon the surface of the Earth as they helped lift the gargantuan form of a slender woman out of the ground, immediately forming a large trench around Naruto just as another group of shinobi came up from behind him ready to assist in any way possible.
A man wearing a mask that only covered the top half of his face let out an amused grunt when he saw the woman with the beetle mask as her eyes suddenly began to roll back as her kekkai genkai overcame her. He was a mercenary hired from the capitol of Hi no Kuni where he served as an elite bodyguard to the daimyo. Konoha called for assistance at the beginning of the first wave after the initial attack, and he was one of the many Hi no Kuni shinobi, independent from Konoha, that was sent, for a price, to aid Konoha.
The man in the mask reached behind him and pulled out two shuriken with lengths of wire attached to them. Using his chakra, he threw both of the shuriken toward the crowd of soulless samurai.
He slammed his palms together fiercely and grinned, saying "Shuriken Kage Bunshin no Jutsu." Suddenly the two shuriken turned into a hundred, and he pulled, making the shuriken turn upwards and wrap around the behemoth as the sound of the wires stretching out met his ears. Molding the chakra and pushing it down to his legs, he dashed forward and leapt onto the shoulder of the woman that rose up from the dirt.
Beetle's eyes were still rolled back, but she brought her hands together and formed several seals for a Doton: Odama Doryudan.
There, he brought his hands together in a horse seal and then a tiger seal before he brought his hands together as if he were about to play an instrument like a harmonica or a small flute for a Katon: Karyudan, and then he pulled his arms away from his face and belched out a great big flame that engulfed the boulder-sized Earth bullets that Beetle formed and spat out from its mouth rather than from the typical Earth style dragon head.
Hinata had already started running. She was known as Bear among the ANBU ranks, and some of her superiors often joked around by calling her a cute little cub rather than a fearsome bear like the ones that they sometimes came across when camping out on longer missions in forests or by rivers. She already had a technique that she showed twice to Naruto and once to the person who destroyed their village not too long ago, leaving them to have to help rebuild it from scratch and devastating their ranking as a shinobi power for a long while. After that fight, she no longer called it 'Juhu Sohiken' (Gentle Step, Twin Lion Fists). She was followed by a large trail of very dense chakra that hopped and skipped around behind her like a trail of light. Instead of the lion head which was present only because it helped the user of the technique mold the chakra properly for the technique rather than just carrying it without form across mid range distances, she held a deep blue flame that was starting to completely engulf her arm. Just as she was about to strike, the chakra of the head suddenly expanded and the form of a large bear engulfed her arm and body as she devastated the first few enemies with a burst of chakra so condensed that it was visible from a much further distance than she herself was.
From far away, it looked like a demon beast was running about, rampaging against the groups of samurai armor. If anyone had the nerve to take a step closer, they may have noticed that the Hyuga girl was actually engulfed by a shield made of chakra that ate away at the armor while animalistic limbs and a head of chakra that was less condensed was there for aesthetic value more than anything else.
Fox nearly lost all of the chakra he had been gathering when he saw the bright light coming from Hinata as she barely touched the plates of armor, and yet her chakra mangled them and gnawed on them, tearing them apart as if the bear that she had created was actually tearing into meat and not steel. He quickly went back to work and used a tiny bit of it to send a small squad of kage bunshin after the girl. He didn't want her to die, and if she was as angry as he thought she was, she may just make the mistake that kills her if he's not there to stop her.
"Oh-ho!" The man in the mask chuckled, his grin visible although his eyes were not due to the odd mask. "So that little girl has some talent!"
"Shut up, fool! She is Hyuga Hinata-sama! She is the heir of Konoha's own Hyuga clan! The most prestigious in the village!"
"Tst! What a joke. The title doesn't make the shinobi... but I wonder why she's able to do damage like that?" He said and shot out another stream of fire as the large Earth clone continued to spit out mud boulders. Each of them drew from the bottom of the large woman's Earth body, and the more that she exerted herself, the shorter she became as her body now seemed to be sinking back into the Earth, currently shin deep. The boulders of fire exploded upon impact and knocked around several of the samurai.
"What do you mean?" Beetle called out, a confused look knitting her brows together.
"Doesn't the gentle fist only affect tenketsu, the use of chakra and the organs of the body?"
Beetle was silent for a moment and shook her head as she focused more chakra into the large, voluptous Earth woman. "I don't know..."
The masked man formed another few seals and spat a burst of water at a group of arrows that were shot up into the air at him. "So these bastards aren't entirely mindless!" He was about to laugh, when suddenly the giant Earth woman's body lost everything from it's knees up to the middle of its abdomen as they crashed down to the floor and a cloud of dust filled the air. He turned to look back at Beetle, who was struggling to stand herself as a lone Samurai had made it past them and started hacking away at her, leaving her to defend herself with only a kunai in her hand.
"Shit." He muttered, and without another thought he jumped up into the air directly above the enemy. "Tsuyoi kaze ga fuki-ha!" He formed several hand seals: bird, hare, horse, ram; and then he pressed his palm up against his chest and pushed as he breathed out. Several sharp gusts of wind, like blades, tore through the samurai armor and left it a pile of heap in front of the girl. She looked up at him as he flew over her and landed behind her at the end of his jump off of the shoulder of the tyrant. Beetle turned around to look at him and he nodded. "Toss'er in."
She nodded and then turned back around to the giant who was crawling like someone whose body had been chopped in half and was desperately trying to gather her spilled organs back off of the floor. Beetle grunted and brought her hands together, palms flat, to concentrate on the chakra she needed to push more Earth element into her kekkai genkai. Suddenly, the giant was taller again, and as soon as she had feet, she stood up and then dropped herself down on a giant army, impaling herself on the suits of armor and absorbing some of them into her abdomen and her bosom. Even Hinata turned her head to watch as the giant girl's arms reached out and she scooped up as many of the invading samurai up against her as she could before the man in the mask took a leap back up into the air and landed on the small of her back. He reached for a group of the wires that he had wrapped around her and then jumped off.
"Too easy. Katon: Dai Karyudan." When he jumped back off of the giant's back a spark lit on the wires in his hands and it travelled along them until it hit the mud girl. Before them, a giant inferno had taken up a large section of the battlefield, turning the giant girl into a smoldering wasteland made up of melted steel. He dropped down to one knee, sweating and out of breath while Beetle tugged at him to back up from the front line. There were other shinobi fighting in different areas all around the village.
"We can't hold off this front on our own."
"Doesn't matter, we have to." As soon as the last of the samurai melted into the ground, the next wave stepped over the ash and boiling tar of their brethren to push on the attack. With a grim face, Beetle brought her hands together and slowly closed her eyes as she summoned as much chakra as possible to use with her Earth kekkai genkai. "There's no one else."
"How are Kurenai-san and Gai?" Kakashi asked impatiently, looking at the Godaime.
"The wounds they received were flesh wounds. Gai is already out on the battlefield again, but Kurenai nearly had her throat slit, so I ordered her to sit back and recover for a while longer. Besides, a genjutsu user is of no use to these things... None of hers have worked so far, anyways, and they are some of the best genjutsu that Konoha has to offer."
The white-haired man nodded, then looked back toward the front lines and shook his head. "We can't keep this up much longer... the samurai are very resilient. if only Jiraiya was here to help us figure out what makes these things keep coming... and why they even came here in the first place." For a brief second, he thought about the old man and asked himself why no one can ever die of old age as a shinobi... both him and the Sandaime were close enough to, but they both died out on the battlefield. "Where's Naruto?" He asked.
An ANBU wearing armored wrist guards and a plain black jumpsuit that even covered the top of his head behind his mask stood beside the Hokage. He was the Godaime Hokage's personal bodyguard appointed, of course, by the council. He was privy to more information than necessary, which meant he knew the identities of most of the ANBU out on the front lines. "Fox is still gathering chakra for an attack. I'm not sure what it is, but it must be pretty big."
"Probably his Rasenshuriken. It's the strongest attack that I've ever seen him use, but it doesn't hit that many targets... well, at least not enough to use here since he can only use it once or twice."
"That move doesn't take this much time to gather chakra, does it?" Tsunade asked, her eyes narrowed. "He must've been out there gathering that sage chakra for at least an hour or two now."
"It's not just that he's gathering the chakra, he has to condense the natural chakra flow around us to a small enough space so that it can be used for the jutsu. He's probably covered in warts and balding by now because of the sage chakra... but actually, it shouldn't take that long though... he must be trying something else?"
The ANBU made a face, but luckily no one noticed. "Does that technique make him really old, or something?"
Kakashi shook his head, "No, sage chakra turns him into a frog."
Again, the ANBU in the room with them made a face together with an audible hiccup.
"Chouji! Ino!"
"Right, Shikamaru!"
"Ready, captain!"
Shikamaru brought his hands together and could feel that same old odd sensation that he always felt when he molded chakra to use his shadow stretching techniques. He closed his eyes and molded more chakra, breathing out as his shadow suddenly widened out until it was at arms length on either side of him and then shot straight up toward the crowd of Samurai. Their armor shuddered as they were caught in the breadth of a giant shadow shaped like a tree. Shikamaru captured as many as he could as Ino leapt up into the air and threw down kunai with bushels of exploding tags attached to them. Meanwhile, Chouji was charging up his chakra and dragging these large chains around his body that fit loosely, until he inflated and turned into a giant ball and crushed the small platoon of samurai just before the exploding tags went off.
Chouji continued to roll about, crushing the empty shells easily, until Shikamaru let go of his hold on them and one of the samurai suddenly lifted its arm up and caught the rolling meat tank, stopping him in his tracks.
Shikamaru arched his brow and threw a line of exploding tags on the end of a kunai. "Get the hell out of there, Chouji!"
Chouji quickly began to back pedal as katana were jabbed and slashed against his spinning form. When he unrolled and fell back on his ass next to Shikamaru and Ino, he inspected himself briefly and then growled, standing up. "This is crazy. How can we spread out our forces like this? We're sitting ducks in teams of three this way." He looked toward another group and his gaze hardened. A samurai just pressed his sword up to the hilt into the abdomen of a chunin that Chouji had never formally met, but had seen at a few meetings and around the village a couple of times. He looked at Shikamaru, who shook his head.
"You're right, but these are the Hokage's orders. She's scared that if we don't stop them outside of the gates, we're doomed. She thinks we won't be able to defend ourselves against all of these lumps of metal from inside the gates." he said.
Ino smirked. "If one team fails though, that'll be it."
Shikamaru nodded slowly. "Probably... They just seem to keep coming back if you use regular attacks on them and most ninjutsu is pretty useless. I'm sure even someone like Naruto is having problems with them."
The three of them took a step back as the samurai finally managed to get back on their feet and start walking forward again. The crazy thing was that there was another group of about fifty right behind them, and they wouldn't move until after the ones in front were completely destroyed. They just stood there and waited.
Shikamaru narrowed his eyes. "Alright, Chouji. Extend your arm out and push that group back. Me and Ino are going to prepare a trap for these bastards."
The chubby ninja nodded and ran forward several steps, throwing a haymaker that pushed the entire group of samurai back several meters. He brought his arm back and stood in a very offensive stance, yelling, "Osu!"
"Tenten! Neji!" The two brown haired ninja turned to look back at their teammate who was bringing his hands together in front of his stomach. "Step back! I will devour them with the winds of the forests of Konoha!"
Neji grunted, acting as stoic as always, but not far from the surface were feelings of contempt and anger. He was furious. How could it be that these samurai were moving about if they weren't using chakra? Or if they were using chakra, why is it that he couldn't see tenketsu? Those chakra openings that every living being had; he was sure that there was some type of deviltry that made these puppets move en mass. He jumped back just as several spears shot out toward him and moved to hide behind a tree as arrows suddenly littered the floor where he had just been. After all. He could only use Kaiten for so long.
Tenten threw a bundle of explosive tags over the crowd of samurai and brought her hands together to activate them just as they flew over the archers, destructively disarming some of them and throwing many off their feet and into the mud on the floor. The explosions heated up the tar that drenched them and made them look even more dangerous and evil. She watched the archers as they pulled themselves together and set up to attack once more while Lee finally opened the chakra floodgates to unlock a speed and strength that was strong enough to seriously damage the suits of enchanted armor.
"This is so pissing me off! Why can't these cowards come out and fight us themselves instead of just sending these hoards of zombies after us! Gah, they're not even zombies, they're like... ghosts in armor, or something." She said, complaining to herself because she knew that Neji and Lee weren't listening.
"Uooah! Konoha Senpu!"
She winced when she heard the loud humming sound of metal that was shaken by that monstrous kick. She pressed her back against a tree as arrows came flying after her as the group of samurai advanced. She heard several thuds as she shrunk her small frame up against the tree while she wondered whether or not it would be a good idea to peak out to try and help her teammate. From what she could hear, there were several other chunks of armor being destroyed and smashed, and she could hear the sound of crumpling soda cans whenever Lee used another spinning kick on the helmets of the "ghost samurai".
"Neji!" She called, looking over to him.
"What is it?" he called back, his byakugan activated and his eyes glaring at trunk of the tree. She tried her best not to laugh at the sight of him staring down the piece of bark, especially since she knew that he was actually looking almost everywhere else at once.
"Are the archers pointed at me?" She asked, pulling a scroll out of her kunai pouch and laying it on the floor in front of her as she gathered some chakra for a summoning spell.
"Yes. Hang on!" And with that said he reached into his pouch and procured an explosive tag and a kunai. After gaining their attention and running out toward Tenten, he timed his next divine spin just as a volley of arrows came within arm's length of striking him down. With that, Tenten was on the move with a club in her hands.
Together, the three of them kept changing the directions of the crowd's attention and slowly cornered them until Lee finally opened another gate and smashed them all with a single punch that was backed by all of the physical and spiritual chakra that was at his disposal. His fist only connected with the one in the first, or so it seemed. In reality, he moved so fast that even Neji couldn't keep track of his movements and saw a little bit more than Tenten saw. He was able to see the exact moment when Lee disappeared from his vision and suddenly the rest of the group started crumbling as if a strong gravity had suddenly pulled on them into a single space and they folded over like paper in the palm of a person's hand. When he was done, the group of samurai were all crushed into a tight mass of metal that was glowing red from heat. There was one samurai whose upper arms were still usable and so it continued to draw arrows and shoot a couple of times at Lee and then once at Neji, until Tenten walked over beside it and yanked away the bow and pulled the rest of the arrows out of the quiver at the same time. To their horror, it was still reaching out to them, but the rest of his torso had melted and attached to the mass and could no longer move.
Tenten sighed and pointed outward with the bow, her hand shaking slightly. "The next wave... it's on its way."
Lee shuddered as his power suddenly hitched and it left him briefly. He clenched his fists and glared in the direction of the advancing section of the army. "We will defeat them... I will not let them pass, even if it costs me my life!"
Neji looked at Tenten quietly for a moment and then pressed his palm on Lee's shoulder and nodded affirmatively, "Or mine."
Tenten discarded the bow and arrows and took her teammates other shoulder. "All of ours."
Lee and Tenten shared a grin while Neji smirked.
The three of them charged the platoon of their enemies together, crashing into the front of the army like waves at the beach.
She had not bothered to wear her mask. Hinata shook her head, taking several steps back as another group of samurai moved up from the back lines. This was getting them nowhere. Even setting up giant pits had been useless. They simply climbed out of them with inhuman strength, even going so far as to dig their way out with their gloved hands. They felt no pain. They never grew tired. Hinata and her squad, they were the ones getting tired. And still, Naruto was in the back charging up for some ultimate attack. At this point, she didn't care. She just hoped that whatever he was building up, it would be worth it.
"Oi! So you don't have any wind techniques or anything?" Groaned the masked man, apparently tired of pushing back the crowd of samurai who weren't affected very much by his blasts of fire. The damn things were even starting to shoot arrows, so the curvy woman in the beetle mask had to lift up another monstrosity. She formed a giant wall in front of them that forced them to try and climb the wall, which they were doing quite well until she concentrated her chakra and formed rock instead of mud or regular Earth out of the soil.
"No! I told you, I'm all Earth chakra! I can't even do a regular bunshin, damn it!" She spat out at him, glaring daggers at her attackers in front of her.
"I didn't ask you about bunshin, but how the hell did you make ANBU then?" He said, groaning. "Wind chakra seems to be working against them. I'm just cutting at their knees and joints and then all they can do is shake a little bit."
He was charging up for another attack when a spear went sailing through the air. His head tilted back once he noticed it coming and he closed his eyes, expecting it to pierce directly through the front of his throat under his chin. When his throat was still unpierced, he opened his eyes again to see the ANBU that had initially charged the army with her chakra attacks. Apparently she was a Hyuga, and a damn talented one at that. She was one of the few people who used chakra as an extension of her body like Hyuga Hiashi had been able to. The branch house genius that was famous for being 'the strongest' of the Hyuga clan for the past two or three years couldn't even come close to that. He saw the spear in her hand and how her chakra was starting to crawl around it like ribbons that extended out in spirals from her belly button until they formed a tangible mass around her hand and the weapon. "You're really scary, lady. Where's your captain, by the way?"
Her eyes were "As of right now, I am acting captain of this squad. Bear-taichou. You? Where are you from, stranger?"
He grinned, tilting his head slightly. "Ah, that's right. I never did introduce myself." He was a hulk of a man, standing several heads taller than any of the suits of armor and wearing the mask that covered his eyes and the top of his head and a two piece jonin suit with a piece of red cloth tied around his waist and tied to one side. "Since you are Bear-taichou, the blondie is Fox-kun and the cutie-pie is Beetle, I'll choose something too... I'll be tortoise."
"How presumptuous. You are not ANBU." She said, patting the mask that was tied to her belt at the moment. He only looked into her eyes and watched as the veins around them pulsed every once in a while as she glared through him, past him and in him. He only smirked at her.
"For someone with eyes that can see beyond what normal eyes can see, you have very limited vision." he said.
Hinata rolled her eyes and started walking toward the group of samurai while twirling the spear in her hand as if she had practiced doing it all of her life. She walked carefully toward the group of samurai, easily deflecting their arrows and disarming them of their katana as she pushed the group back with jabs that punctured their bodies over and over. These monsters were deadly because they never hesitated, never flinched or feared anything or grew tired, but they were also quite easy to boss around by someone good enough to be able to deflect all of their attacks and continuously disarm them. However, Hinata could tell that her chakra pool was drying up and she would have to back off to rest or take a soldier pill eventually. She just hoped that Naruto... or Fox, was able to come up with something devastating.
She turned back to look at him and was surprised to see him walking toward them. He stopped by Eri, who had taken off her beetle mask as she looked at him and pressed her hands against his shoulders. He gripped her wrists and said something in her ear and she shook her head. He told her again and, this time, Hinata could see a different look in his eye. Eri nodded slowly, apparently complying with whatever he said, and she looked back up to him expectantly. Much to her disappointment, he simply turned and continued walking. When he stopped again, Tortoise was looking down on him and she really got a better observation of how tall the man was when she saw that Naruto's eye level was barely at the top of the man's stomach. She could hear him from here. Naruto was the first to speak.
"Move aside."
"You're Uzumaki Naruto, aren't ya?" the masked man asked, his grin devious almost.
"No. I'm Fox. Only Fox."
"Not Uzumaki Fox then? Maybe you're Naruto's twin brother?"
"When I release this chakra... if you're standing in my way then so be it, but do it a little closer to them."
"Oh," he said, walking away. "I was just leaving. Just wanted to say hello, and I can't wait to join you guys on our next mission together. I'll be on your team soon. You'll learn to like me later, I'm sure."
Fox shook his head and walked over calmly to Bear. She looked at him, uncertain what to make of this attack that he was going to unleash. She was starting to get antsy.
"Naruto? F-Fuck, Fox! What's going on?" She asked, irritated that after all of that time he was just going to go to them and tell them to retreat.
"Hinata..." he said, surprising her even more. She looked him in the eye and her byakugan disappeared. She felt her heart pounding with the way that he was looking at her.
"H-h-hai, Naruto-k-k..." She whispered, suddenly reverting back to the timid young girl who followed her crush around Konoha with a dream of becoming strong enough so that he'd look her in the eye... kind of like this.
When he kissed her, she was pleasantly surprised. When his hands grabbed her head and pulled her close once more after they parted for only a second to gasp for air, she felt like she was floating. When his hands started to roam, she was moaning in his mouth. She pushed back all of her feelings of guilt over her father's death as she shared this brief moment with her crush who she dreamt of night after night for so long. By the time the kiss was over, her thigh was pressing up against his and she was leaning into him from head to toe, feeling the hard calf of his left leg with her right foot as they shared their hidden passion for one another by themselves.
He let go and she shuddered ever so slightly. He looked her in the eyes and reached back up to cradle her head as he whispered into her ear. "I lied. To you, I'm Naruto with or without my mask; dead or alive, comatose or like a shooting star. I'm Naruto to you always." He stole her lips once more and she sighed contently as her eyes closed again.
"But Hinata. I need you to move. Go round up everyone you can and tell them to head back into the village gates. I'll let who I can know using kage bunshin, so just make sure you get back safe... oh, and if I die, please visit the orphanage and let the old lady that runs the place know. She'll introduce you to three young boys that I think you might like to meet."
"You won't die, because I won't..."
"Hinata, don't argue... go." he said, and with that he turned away from her and walked toward the advancing army. He saw no end in sight. They were walking out of the forest slowly and, from what he was able to see during their fights, as one group was destroyed another just filled the gap while the rest waited. He stood before the mass of evil that was infecting and sweeping the forest like a dark shadow that spanned the entire horizon. They had completely surrounded the village, from all sides, and there were no gaps in between the armies. They all walked at the same pace and even attacked in short bursts rather than striking as an entire body.
Hinata looked at him for a moment as he lifted his right hand up and brought his left to meet it.
"Kage bunshin no jutsu!"
Hinata's eyes widened as orange and blonde filled the area, suddenly pushing back the swarm of evil samurai. The two groups looked like two oils of different consistencies trying to separate after mixing together. She turned left, then right, then activated her Byakugan to look even further. She saw groups of the her fellow shinobi back up suddenly as the wall of Naruto's surrounded Konoha like a ring made up of sunlight to combat the darkness. When they all started molding chakra together and their bodies began to glow, it really did look that way. She looked at Naruto as he suddenly broke from the chain and stepped forward, standing in front of the clones that he created. He turned around and formed a rasengan in his hands. When he looked back up, he glared at her, "Hinata! Get out of here! I don't think I can control this once it's started, so please! Leave!"
Hinata looked on with wide eyes as she ran back toward the village, but kept within range of her byakugan.
She could faintly see Naruto running now, carrying the rasengan and holding it out in his left hand in front of each of the kage bunshin. They seemed to be putting some of their chakra into the orb as he was moving forward, but the sphere had also began to change shape. Halfway around the village, and Hinata knew because she was now standing up on the Hokage monument and looking down on him as he warned more shinobi away using his clones and continued to run as fast as he can along the chain of clones, she saw that he was now carrying a disk of chakra. Wondering what that meant, Hinata had to quicken her pace to move close enough so that she could see when suddenly a sharp headache made her deactivate her byakugan and stop running. As she looked down toward the ring of Naruto clones that surrounded the village, she couldn't help but wonder why there were so many rows of them if only the front row was going to help him condense the chakra that he was carrying.
When she figured Naruto probably reached the front gate, Hinata and the rest of the village could hear him and all of his clones belt out, "Shimatta, dattebayo!"
Hinata's eyes widened as powerful winds kicked up and suddenly the whole village broke out into fits of screaming and gasping and other downright cowardly noises coming from people who lived with and worked as shinobi. Suddenly she remembered that her father's body was still lying out there. She started running toward the front entrance to the village in a rush to get to him before Naruto's powerful wind attack could destroy his body. She wanted to bury her father, not find remains of him out on the battlefield after all of this was over!
As she ran forward, however, she saw that the walls were being torn up by this attack, and rooftops were literally sliding off either whole or in pieces from the winds created by his ring rasengan. Then the winds changed, and suddenly it wasn't every hard to run up toward him and his attack. In fact, her, together with shingles, vendor's stands and various goods from some of the stores nearby were being drawn in toward the center of the spinning winds. She used her chakra on her feet and eventually had to place her hands down on the floor and use those as well as she walked over toward a tree to hang on.
Nearby a building collapsed and a tree suddenly snapped in half. She looked at the one that she was holding and hoped that the girth of the tree would keep it from befalling the same fate as its kin. At least while she was around it.
Her father's body was long gone, she realized, and she tried to weather the storm as she looked at the hurricane that had appeared from nowhere and had engulfed the forest just outside of the village all around it, bouncing back and forth around the clones like a top spun with a string.
Definitions for Terms used in this chapter:
Haori - A coat men wear over their kimono
Kage bunshin (no jutsu) - There are different words for it, but the one I use is shadow clone (technique)
Baba - Grandma (Not 100% sure.)
Hi no Kuni - Land of Fire
Raikiri - An assassination attack based on speed and the strength of the user's affinity toward lightning chakra. A more advanced version of the 'Chidori'.
Rasengan (used as "Rasengan" for plural in this chapter) - Spiraling sphere
Doton: Doryudan: Earth Seal: Earth Dragon Bullet (The one Beetle uses is a variation of this one)
Jentoru no seishin: Hāshu kyōda: Gentle Spirit: Harsh swipe
Tsuyoi kaze ga fuki-ha: Powerful wind wave
Katon: Karyudan: Fire release: fire dragon missile ('Dai' Karyudan is just a 'large' fire dragon missile... although he doesn't necessarily use it as a missle, it's enough for him to light up the Earth woman with the wires)
Konoha Senpu: Leaf Whirlwind (spinning kick that Lee spams every once in a while)
Author's note: Thanks for waiting for the new chapter. I thought I had it ready to post like two weeks ago, but I kept needing to add more to it and more until it turned into this monstrosity. The next chapter will conclude the flashback and the festival and we can then move on to a little bit of fluff maybe. Anyone finding my OC's a little 2-D? Let me know in a review! I'll try to post the next one before Christmas since classes'll be out, huh? Anyways, I hope you all had a Happy Thanksgiving and that you have a Merry Christmas, Kwanzaa or Hanukkah. Anyways, happy hallowdays! :)