Raiders of the Lost Sandcastle, Part 2
The trip was easier than they had anticipated. The dunes rose up on either side of their path but the Sand Siblings showed the former Leaf ninja the best ways to climb them when needed. Naruto and Hinata took the early part of the sand to master Sand Walking technique. The skill needed was somewhere between tree running and water walking. The group made better time once the technique was mastered and the managed to reach the site of the buried town near dusk.
Gaara became worried when the consistency of the sand in the region changed. It became more like dust than true sand but the group had adjusted easily. Kankuro spotted a stick in the sand to one side and the ninja walked over to investigate. The 'stick' turned out to the flagpole at the top of the buried castle. They had arrived.
The party of ninja all grinned. It seems the buried town was directly below them. Naruto cheered and started to dig at the base of the flagpole.
"Naruto, knock it off," Tsunade commanded. "There are better ways than that to dig. Besides, this sand is more like powder or dust than the stuff we were walking on to get here. We need to be careful."
Naruto pouted but listened to the former Hokage.
Shizune looked around but could see nothing else but the sand surrounding them. Nothing was growing in this part of the desert. It seemed strange to her mind because until the sand changed there had been a slight bit of life. She squatted down to check the sand and found it to be light and airy. If the team had not been using chakra to sand walk they surely would have fallen into it and suffocated.
Tsunade watched Shizune think and asked, "What's wrong, Shizune?"
"Well, Tsunade-sama. You did notice how the desert changed a few miles back?" Shizune asked.
Tsunade nodded and motioned for her apprentice to continue.
"The lightness of what we are walking on won't support the weight of someone who doesn't use chakra. That would explain the lack of civilians returning from this place. But it doesn't quite feel like sand to the touch," Shizune explained.
Gaara knelt down and touched the ground. "She is correct," he said after focusing some chakra directly into it. "This is not exactly sand. My chakra has trouble penetrating it like the sand I keep as my gourd. If feels familiar somehow and Shukaku is screaming at me to leave this place."
Before anyone else could say anything, a ripple moved under the sand.
Naruto felt his fear of ghosts rise up and he shivered. "Maybe this place is haunted by the spirits of the people who died here," he whispered.
Tsunade chuckled. "Most of the people were evacuated, Naruto. There are no ghosts here."
Naruto pointed to the far side of the flagpole he stood next to. "Then what is that?" he said in a panicked voice as the dust sand slid off of a lump that had risen up.
The layer over it fell away to reveal a familiar head made of sand looking at the group of ninja.
"Is that Shukaku?" Temari said in a low voice.
"No," Gaara replied. "Its one of Shukaku's children."
(During the trip to the hidden castle)
Kakashi stood on the edge of the training field and glared at his remaining students. Sakura had collapsed at some point but was now crawling along the ground. Sasuke continued to move upright but at a snail's pace.
"All right, you two are done for today. Same time tomorrow," he said in a tone that would accept no argument.
"How does … this … make me stronger?" Sasuke panted out.
"It makes you physically stronger, Sasuke. Prior to your little escapade with the Sound ninja, you were physically the weakest boy in your class year in spite of your standing as Rookie of the Year. Even Shikamaru had more physical strength and stamina than you did. Look at the people who got sent after you. They ran down jonin level opponents and fought them; in nearly every case beating them. Naruto ran the longest and fought you after running for more than a day and whether you wish to believe it or not, he beat you into the ground. If his mission had been to simply kill you, you would be dead right now. You won that fight because he was fighting tired and attempting to capture you while you fought to kill him," Kakashi said with no kindness in his voice.
"I defeated him!" Sasuke managed to yell out. "I …" Sasuke managed to stop himself. He had nearly admitted the truth of what happened in the Valley of the End to Kakashi.
Kakashi just walked over to the now still Sakura, slipped her weights off and picked her up before walking off with her unconscious body. She stirred slightly when she was picked up. Kakashi carried the pink haired teen toward her house.
The girl had mostly woken up by the time they arrived. "Why Kakashi-sensei? Why not just give up on us?"
Kakashi smiled kindly under his mask. "Because you have not given up Sakura. It would be easy to simply give up. But you've shown up each day for over a week now and do what is required so I keep coming back each day."
"I'm not worth that much effort, Kakashi-sensei," she said quietly. "I'm just taking my punishment for being a bad teammate for Team 7."
"For the team in general or for Naruto?" Kakashi asked slowly.
"Does it really matter?" Sakura said looking away.
"Yes, it does. It matters a great deal. If Naruto was here how would he have responded to this training?" the sensei in him had to ask.
Sakura thought then replied. "He would be doing it like he did everything else, laughing and trying to make a game out of it."
"When you fell down exhausted, what would he have done?"
"He would have encouraged me and tried to get me to keep going. Maybe even make a remark that would get me angry and chase after him," Sakura replied realizing what Naruto did for her besides seem like an idiot. "He was always doing that, wasn't he?"
Kakashi nodded. "Yes, he was. But you never saw that. You just saw him as an annoying idiot who got in your way. Does that sound like someone else on your team in relation to you?"
The pin haired girl nodded as small tears ran down her face. "I sound like Sasuke talking about me."
"Two more days, Sakura. If you can get through two more days of this you will have proven yourself."
"To who, Kakashi-sensei?" she asked.
"We can worry about that on the third day, Sakura. Go eat, get some rest and be at the training field on time tomorrow." Kakashi put his student down to stand on her doorstep and jumped off.
A few houses away he stopped to see Kurenai waiting for him.
"If she makes it through two more days without quitting, she is your team's replacement, Kurenai. That should at least prove her worth as someone who wants to be a ninja even to Kiba."
Kurenai nodded as Kakashi left on other business.
"What do you mean one of Shukaku's children?" Tsunade asked with a hint of anger in her voice. "I think this was something you could have mentioned before we came here."
"Shukaku just admitted it to me moments ago," Gaara replied in his calm voice. "But they are not true children, just splinters of its chakra animating the remains of its sand body."
"Oh, like the residual chakra that was in Konoha after the Kyuubi attack thirteen years ago," Shizune said nodding.
Gaara looked at the sand creature crouching just a few dozen yards away. "Yes, without the central consciousness of Shukaku to eventually return to, the chakra just pooled into the sand of its former body and created these low powered sand oni."
"It looked confused," Yuugao said. "Its posture is one that it wants to attack but something is making it stay back at the same time."
Gaara nodded. "That would likely be Naruto and I. Both of us have the chakra of our bijuu running in our systems and likely give off a stronger 'presence' than this oni. A weaker oni does not attack stronger oni unless it thinks it can win. I believe it is sizing up the competition."
"Or it could be waiting for help," Tsunade said. "Hinata, activate your Byakugan and search for chakra similar to the creature in front of us. There might be more of these creatures."
Hinata quickly made a hand sign and activated her bloodline. "This dust is infused with chakra. It limits my sight but I can see chakra nearly to the ground below the sand. The castle itself has a faint chakra signature of its own. I see at least two other creatures deep under the dust, Tsunade-sama. They are at the edge of my sight but there is an open space near them that might be a nesting area. I am seeing confusing chakra from there. It does not make sense and is nothing I have seen before. But the one before us is the strongest of the group so far."
"So if we make this one back off, we should be able to get what we came for fairly easily," Tsunade said with a smirk. "Naruto, flare your chakra. That should be enough to scare the crap out of this thing."
Naruto just made a ram seal and flared his chakra as instructed. Before he could blink the sand creature had fled beneath the sand. Hinata confirmed it had gone down to the 'nest' and seemed to be guarding the indistinct chakra signatures.
Temari walked over to the flagpole where Naruto had tried to dig and saw the dust sand had nearly filled in the small hole. "This stuff is strange. It flows like mud to fill in any spaces dug out of it. I think the chakra in it makes it do that. Gaara, can you move it?"
Gaara focused on the material beneath him and in seconds his own sand erupted from his gourd and began to dig downward. "It responds weakly to Shukaku's chakra but I think it can be held back enough for us to get the treasure and any water we need."
"Sweet," Kankuro said as he watched his younger brother work.
Naruto made over a hundred shadow clones to help shift the excavated material further away from the buried castle. Together, the pair of jinchuuriki managed to dig a hole about twenty feet deep and a hundred feet across in a few hours. The width was so that the dust sand would not refill the hole for some time. A secured window leading into the top floor of the castle was now exposed.
Tsunade grinned. "The treasury vault was in the castle itself. If we can work down through the building or alongside of it we should be rich in a few hours. Is the dust filling the inside of the castle, Gaara?"
"Strangely, no. It seems to just stop at the edge. Some kind of chakra barrier is in place holding out the dust. That explains the slight chakra trace Hinata reported," he replied.
"I think it is the old castle defenses," Tsunade explained. "A number of the old castles had seals in the walls to protect them from jutsu until the hidden villages came into being. When that happened wandering seal masters became too hard to find. This one being a treasury means it needed the extra protection from ninja. If we can get inside we should only have to deal with the internal defenses."
Tsunade had Naruto come over to the closed window. She wedged a kunai into the frame and levered it open a fraction of an inch. "Naruto, make a shadow clone on the other side of the window. The gap should allow your chakra to bypass the seal on the window. Then the clone can open it from the inside."
Naruto smiled and made his favorite hand sign. Scant seconds later, they heard the bar on the window lift and the panel over the window lifted outward. "It worked just like you said, Baa-chan," the clone said a moment before an irate Tsunade flicked it into non existence.
"Ow," complained Naruto. "That … hurt? How did I know that hurt?"
"That is one of the reasons why that technique is forbidden, Naruto," Shizune told him. "It was created as a means to spy on others. The memories and experiences of the shadow clone are returned to the creator and any existing shadow clones along with a small amount of the remaining chakra. The chakra returning is what brings back the memories. I am surprised you didn't know that since you use the jutsu so often."
Naruto rubbed his forehead as the phantom pain faded. "Well, most of the time I use it in fights or doing boring things like cleaning up or grunt work. Nothing I really want to remember there."
Yuugao leaned over to whisper to Tamari, "I bet using a few shadow clones in the bedroom would make it more memorable. Hinata is a lucky girl in a few years." Hinata overheard that and blushed along with Temari.
Tsunade pretended not to hear the comment. "Shizune, I would like you to wait out here with Gaara and Kankuro. Their skills are most useful in open areas. Temari's wind jutsu are as well but she is the most familiar with what we might encounter so she goes in with us."
Gaara nodded acceptance while Kankuro grumped over it. "I will also be able to keep the dust sand from covering the castle if it takes a large amount of time to explore," Gaara added. He did not mention that he found close spaces uncomfortable.
The group entered into the castle through the open window. Temari, Hinata and Yuugao had small flashlights and pulled them out. Tsunade looked at Naruto who patted his pockets and looked sheepish. "Um, Kakashi-sensei never went over that," he said quietly.
Tsunade shook her head and muttered but nodded toward the stairs. Hinata gave her flashlight to Naruto. Naruto created a trio of shadow clones to go first and handed off the flashlight to one of them. Tonton followed just behind the clones to sniff out anything the clones might miss. Yuugao was with Tonton. Tsunade, Temari and Hinata followed with the real Naruto bringing up the rear.
It did not take long before one reported the first trap. A wire stretched across the stairs barely a half inch over the surface. An inspection of walls showed pinholes where senbon would be fired from hidden launchers. Naruto was most familiar with traps. He went into his own stores and pulled out a pair of metal clips and attached them where the tripwire entered the wall then cut the wire. The clips kept the wire in tension while the group was able to pass by safely. Clones moved into the rooms on either side and disabled the launchers. The fact they still worked after all this time was a testament to their craftsmanship so the clones also removed and sealed the launchers into storage scrolls for Naruto.
Tsunade raised an eyebrow at his actions but Naruto just grinned.
The group moved lower into the castle. Temari proved invaluable as she had long ago memorized the design of the castle. Being the daughter of the Kazekage had given her access to the plans. Her own curiosity into the castle and treasure had helped as well. She just blushed and huffed slightly that all girls, even a preteen training to be a ninja, have dreams of being a princess.
Naruto's clones moved down one level at a time looking for more traps but found none active. Tsunade felt that many were not set as there had not been an actual assault on the tower. The samurai had only left their posts under orders when the town had begun being covered in sand. The seals remained active as they were passive defenses. However as the group descended they noticed an occasional room having some normal sand scattered on the floor.
"That must have been a serious battle with sand getting inside the building," Hinata mentioned.
Yuugao broke her silence again. "I would think that it was the guards were watching through the windows there. You can see the seals are intact or the building would be full of the strange sand. Most likely normal sand blasted the building and got in through those windows when they were open," she said. "You need to make guesses based on more than what you see Hinata. You need to take into consideration the circumstances something happened in." Tsunade signaled the group to halt to confer with Temari and rest at that point so Yuugao sat next to Hinata to continue.
"Take your former teammate, Kiba for example. He was admitted to the hospital after his last mission with a self inflicted wound to the side. If you knew nothing else other than that about him what would be the first thought?" Yuugao asked.
"But Kiba-kun had to …" Hinata began.
"For this exercise, you don't know that, Hinata. You are a team leader with a recovery team and find a genin with a self inflicted wound. He had been assigned a dangerous mission with a large chance of death. What would be your first thought?" Yuugao pressed.
Hinata blushed and finally answered. "I would think that he injured himself to get out of the mission," she said quietly.
Yuugao nodded. "It is easy to make a judgment based on your first impression on seeing something but a team leader needs to realize that in our work, first impressions have an annoying tendency to be wrong. That is why Kakashi always spouted off his 'Look underneath the underneath'. He messed up on that in regard to that Uchiha but there were factors even he did not know and couldn't take into account."
Naruto grumbled hearing that but kept quiet as his clones prowled around the hallway looking at various things.
Tsunade motioned for the group to continue down the next flight of stairs into the main foyer of the sand covered castle. The closed doors stood at one end of the hall. The flashlights made strange shadows with the still tapestries that hung from the ceiling. Naruto wrinkled his nose as the still air took on a faint musty smell.
"Baa-chan, I don't think everyone left the place," he said quietly.
Tsunade nodded and swung her flashlight towards the main doors. The body of a lone samurai knelt there in full armor facing the doorway. A large dried puddle of blood surrounded the body. The group could see the mummified remains of his hand wrapped around the tanto in his stomach. In spite of its dessicated state, the armor held the corpse upright. A small scroll lay on the tray a few feet before the body so it would be the first thing seen upon opening the portal.
"Someone had to activate the seals to protect the building and it could only be done from the inside. He must have waited until he was sure no one would be returning. So he ended his life in honorable samurai fashion with seppuku rather than starve to death. The scroll is most likely his name and his death poem so the first person through the door would know who he was and that he died doing his duty," Temari said in the silence.
The Kazekage's daughter walked down to the armor enshrouded skeleton and clapped her hands together once to attract the attention of any spirits before bowing to the corpse. She then stepped around it to kneel at the edge of the dried puddle and pick up the scroll. Temari carefully opened it to read the name of the samurai.
"Shingen of the House guard, I, Temari of the Desert, Daughter of the Yondaine Kazekage of Suna, acknowledge your service to your daimyo. I will inform his descendant of your following your duty and maintaining your post unto death. Rest and join your honored ancestors," she said in a firm clear voice.
The rest of the group stood quietly as Temari spoke. The blonde girl rolled the scroll to put in her waistband and bowed once more before returning to the group. "I don't know the proper ceremony so I just did what I felt was best," she said.
Tsunade smiled and put her hand on the teen's shoulder. "It sounded good to me, Temari. Let's go make sure his reason for dying alone is taken care of properly"
Temari nodded at that. "The vaults are in the basements. The stairs should be past the formal reception area," she said.
Once the group had gotten to the basement a new problem developed. The vault door before them was locked. Tsunade chuckled and cracked her knuckles. A single punch to the frame of the vault and the door fell out with a slow creaking sound. The treasury appeared to be intact.
Hinata was worried, "This is going …" She could not continue before both Naruto and Tsunade loudly shushed her.
"No talking like that, Hinata-chan," Tsunade said in a low voice as she shook her hand. "No comments on how anything is going."
Tsunade pulled out the remaining heavy storage scrolls from when they had left Konoha. She looked at the pile of gold and silver bullion, precious gems and objects, and the large amount of coinage. She made a quick decision.
"All right, the items and gems first. They have the most overall value for the least weight. Then we seal the solid ingots. Last, we seal up the coins. I don't think we have enough space for all of it but we are going to try. Naruto, you set up a line of clones to get things passed up higher in the tower. IF we need to come back for what we cannot carry, I want it more accessible."
Naruto nodded and went out to the open areas on the floor above. He made several hundred shadow clones to make a line up the stairs to the room at the top. One peeked out to check on Gaara, Shizune and Kankuro and told the trio what was happening. The clones then started passing the ingots and bags of coins along and up the stairs while Tsunade and the rest worked on sealing the more expensive items.
Suddenly, something changed. A clone dispelled at the top of the tower and all of clones shivered in fear. Naruto looked at Tsunade with fear on his face.
"Shizune said this is going well," he said with a trembling voice.
Tsunade's eyes went wide. "WORK FASTER!" she yelled.
Hinata was confused and Temari just looked at them. "What's wrong?" Temari asked.
"It's Baa-chan's luck, Temari," Naruto said in a low voice. "When she has something good or lucky happen to her it is a sign that something even more unlucky is about to happen. That is why we shushed Hinata a few minutes ago. It we talk about how things are going for good or bad, they tend to get worse in a hurry."
They kept working quickly as both Naruto and Tsunade feared the worst. Slowly the vault emptied out into sealing scrolls or passed along the line to the upper levels by Naruto's clones. The full scrolls were passed along as well so the group would not be as burdened on the way upstairs.
A creaking noise alerted one clone on the second floor just before a window was pushing inward by the sand creature they had seen earlier. The sand tanuki bit down on a clone and it dispelled. The dust sand flowed in behind it as the creature dispelled a number of additional clones.
Naruto looked up. "We have trouble. The sand tanuki just broke through the second floor and ate a couple of my clones. It must have thought it could win a fight since the clones are getting weaker over time."
"How are we doing on getting the treasure to the top?" Tsunade asked quickly.
"Most of the treasury is on the upper floor and we can carry up the rest as we go." Naruto saw the first clone in line nod and dispel itself to pass that word along to the other clones. Sounds of 'Okay, boss' echoed all over the tower.
Yuugao was waiting for them as Tsunade, Hinata, Temari and Naruto emerged from the basement. She pointed at the mud-like globs of dust sand flowing down the stairs into the main foyer from higher up. They knew this was not going to be easy to get past. Naruto sent a clone ahead to check out the stairs but it was crushed by the weight of the sand when a large glob fell on it.
"The stairs are blocked," he told the girls. "We aren't going to get out that way."
"There is still the servant's stairway," Temari called up in a slightly panicked voice.
"No good," said Hinata. "The sand has blocked off the back exit to the foyer already. We're trapped."
The group backed up as the dust sand flowed into the room. The heard stress sounds and creaks above as the weight of the flowing mass pressed down on the supports.
Temari was panicking worse now. "It's just a matter of time until we drown in this or get crushed to death."
Tsunade shook her head. She tried to remain calm but even facing death like this was not something she really wanted. "We can find a way out. There has to be one."
"Gaara!" Naruto cried out. "He controls sand right? He can push this stuff aside long enough for us to get out of here. I think I still have some clones up there." Naruto created a new clone and had it immediately disperse. "Now all we can do is wait and hope."
The minutes passed and the flowing dust had filled nearly half of the foyer. The group was reduced to standing on top of it with chakra. Naruto tried to send a clone up through the stairwell but the pressure of the sand moving prevented it from forcing its way out before making it dispel.
The group stood near the outside wall of the tower and hoped that Gaara would be able to something when they heard the sound of wood cracking behind them. Normal sand forced its way into a crack that appeared and pulled the wood out. More sand followed and soon a hole large enough for the ninja to crawl through had been ripped into the wall. On the far side of the hole, Gaara stood in a bubble of his own sand.
The red haired boy had a slightly angry look on his face but otherwise did nothing as the five rescued ninja clambered out of the filling tower into the safe area Gaara had made.
Tsunade looked up to see daylight at the top of a long tube to the surface. Places to grasp lined the sides of the tube. "Start climbing people," she said with a wry grin. Yuugao led off with Temari and Hinata following. Tsunade pointed at the hole for Naruto to go after that when Gaara spoke.
"No, Tsunade-sama, you go first. Uzumaki and I have something else to do before we go to the surface," Gaara said in his raspy voice. Tsunade just nodded and began climbing.
Minutes later after four women had climbed from the tube, the bubble sealed off and the boys were in darkness. The bubble descended through the dust until it settled down on the solid surface that had been the ground decades earlier.
"While you were in the tower, I used my sand to probe beneath this dust and found the springs this town was built over. The springs should have filled the cisterns down here but my sand could not penetrate the lining. I need to you to use your Rasengan to punch a hole in one of them so we can fill the canteens. Then my sand can carry us back to the surface," Gaara explained.
The sand bubble bumped along the ground as Gaara forced it to move to the nearest water cistern. Once over it, Gaara made it spread out from the bottom so Naruto was standing on sandy soil. Gaara held the flashlight while Naruto started forming chakra into a Rasengan. The blue orb glowed brighter than the flashlight as Naruto got ready to slam it into the ground to rip open the cistern.
Gaara looked to one side of his bubble when it dented in deeply from an impact. Gaara's eyes went wide as a voice of Skukaku yelled in his head. "No, don't kill the babies!"
Next Chapter: Raiders of the Lost Sandcastle – Part 3
End Notes: Sorry I have been away from this story for so long. I had to totally rewrite my original plan for this story once I found myself written into a corner. Other non writing factors crept in as well and making a very LONG delay. I appreciate all the reviews. There are only a few issues I wanted to make note of.
As far as Naruto being related to half of the royal houses of the Elemental Countries. All it took was a brief look at European history. Those lineages are some of the world's most redneck intermarried families in history. I mean even today, there are family member of monarchs reigning in other countries listed in the line for the throne of Great Britain. The current King of Norway is listed as 63rd in line of succession for the British throne. Royalty tends to marry other royalty. Royal Daughters were used to seal alliances with other countries for centuries.
For Ikasury, I have to say that SHE (I never apologized for called her 'he' in another note) of course something was going to go wrong.
I will not take 5 months to get out the next chapter
Posted 10/23/2009
Edited and reposted January 2011.