Disclaimer: The characters are the property of Masashi Kishimoto and the Naruto franchise.

Author's Note: Firstly, I shall thank KARASU25, Rosebunse and Hot's and Clogs for reviews, which certainly made me feel as though I had managed to entertain them in some capacity or another, and I hope I'll still be able to continue entertaining so close to the end! Secondly, thank you to everybody who has favourited or followed this story since. It really is wonderful having you on board and joining here when I'm trying to wrap things up at the Guest reviewer who asked about why Naruto wasn't using his chakra to fight the Repenters, I'm sorry that you thought it made for a lame fight. True, it would have been much more impressive if he could have done so, however, I decided he couldn't for the following reasons: a) Naruto was, for the evening, an Acting Keeper, meaning he was under Keeper orders and the Keepers had all been told to withhold flashy chakra use to avoid provoking the Repenters b) If Naruto had tried to use his chakra based skills apart from shadow clones (which were being used) he would have killed the Repenters. Ninja fights are more violent than usual, presumably because ninjas are more resilient than civilians. I am basing this on how thirteen year old kids can smash each other into rock cliffs without breaking their backs. The Keepers have been told to avoid civilian deaths, because they will be held accountable for them later. Hence Naruto is avoiding using rasengan on these people. Also, c) I reckon deep down Naruto's pretty upset about knocking out people from his own village anyway.

In the meantime, this chapter and the next were originally one chapter, but it was getting so long I thought I ought to break them up to at least keep them readable. I hope you enjoy this installment, and see you next time! Best, Zen

In a moment of desperate panic, Naruto thought he had died and gone to Hell, which was frightening, but given how life had never made things especially easy for him wasn't all that surprising. All he could see was darkness lit up by a dim glow of red. Gritty smoke filled his nostrils and there was a hot wind whistling in his ears that sang with fire.

Then he realised that he was staring at the veined underside of his eyelids and that he was, in fact, alive. His mouth could open and close. When he breathed he took in a lungful of dust. He gagged. His ears were ringing. He could barely hear anything at all. He was dimly aware that he was lying on the ground, nose pressed into a crack in the pavement, and that all sounds seemed to have become muffled and distant.

He opened his eyes.

A wall of Naruto shadow clones, their arms and legs locked together in a towering human pyramid, was teetering over him. Forming a barricade against the flying debris and searing hot winds, the clones had taken the worst brunt of the explosion. Their job done, they dissipated.

The Keepers and Repenters lying on the ground began to stir. The clones might have protected them from the largest sections of debris, but there were still many wounded. Some had shiny burns on their faces, large cuts, and shards of wood blasted off the trees embedded in their hazard gear.

Naruto gingerly picked himself up. He shook his head. Echoes from the explosion were still resonating in his ears. Nearby trees were filled with flames, their bark charred black. Red hot bricks and stones rolled about the square.

The Academy was a radiant blaze of leaping flames. The entire face of the building had been blasted open to reveal the classrooms inside like a dolls' house. Billowing smoke glowed red and white under fire and moonlight.

A hand seized Naruto's shoulder. He spun round, and came face to face with Shikamaru, mouthing something at him. He needed to lip read but his head was spinning.

"Can you hear me?" Shikamaru was saying. He gave Naruto a shake. There was grey ash and blood all over Shikamaru's visor. "Can you –hear me?"

"Yeah, yeah," Naruto spluttered at last, as with a pop and a roar sound returned to him, and he could hear the crackling and spitting flames, the thuds as sections of the Academy fell to the ground, and the moans and sobs from the injured all about the square. "My ears are still funny, but I can hear again now."

Shikamaru looked relieved. "I was calling your name and you didn't answer. Well done for the clones. That was quick thinking."

"More like survival instinct kicking in," Naruto muttered. He felt something warm run down his cheek, reached up and found blood from a cut. "What are we going to do? The Bishop here just blew himself up."

"Hospital," said Shikamaru without hesitation, surveying the square. "The fight is over here."

"What? But the Repenters – " Naruto stopped and looked closer at the scene in front of him.

The Repenters were rising to their feet, but the ninjas were rising and getting their act together faster. Of course they would. Ninjas were trained to fight so they were also, some may say more importantly, trained to get back on their feet as quickly as possible. Having chakra helped the ninjas too. With the chakra system pumping additional energy through their bodies, they had additional support, were hardier and more resilient to injury than the civilians were.

Whilst the Repenters were still struggling to stand upright, the Keepers were flitting between them and driving the hilts of their kunai into the back of their heads, until they were all down on the ground, stretched out like corpses.

"That's the last of them," shouted a Keeper, dusting his hands, before staggering and dropping to his knees with a grunt. There was a twist of piping embedded in his calf.

"Good work. You two," Shikamaru pointed at two Keepers who looked relatively uninjured compared to the rest. "You know where the nearest safe-house is? Fetch both the ox-carts from it."

They nodded and limped away from the square. When they left, the surviving ninjas – Naruto, Shikamaru, two other Keepers, Ino and one last clone – went around the bodies lying on the ground looking for those ninjas and Repenters who needed first aid.

"Aid's too good for them," growled one Keeper, as he checked over an unconscious Repenter with burns on her face. "We should just leave them. They're the ones with the death wish."

"How can you say that!" Naruto startled the Keeper with his flare of anger. "They're crazy but they're still Konoha citizens and we're Konoha ninjas. We're supposed to protect them. Even if they go crazy, even if they try to kill us, it's our job to help them out of their mess, because…"

Because we failed to protect them from themselves in the first place.

Naruto trailed off as the Keeper glared at him. Then the Keeper clicked his tongue and moved off to check another one of the bodies.

Shikamaru came to stand beside him. "Not everyone's as forgiving of people who betray their trust as you are, Naruto."

"But you agree with me, right, Shikamaru?" Naruto checked another man on the ground for breathing. "Right?"

Shikamaru didn't reply. He wanted to, but the more Naruto stared at him urging him to agree, the more he found that he couldn't.

The green glow faded from her hands. Ino stood up from the Keeper she had found alive, but bleeding from a gaping wound in his abdomen, and went to Shikamaru.

She took off her visor. Her eyes were shiny. Words began to spill from her mouth. "I'm so sorry I couldn't find the Bishop sooner. Now he's dead and – "

"Don't apologise," Shikamaru cut in quickly. "We've still got a chance of finding another Bishop somewhere else."

"I promised Asuma-sensei I'd look after you and Chouji." Ino brushed tears from her eyes. "I feel like such a failure. What am I doing here?"

"You're here watching my back like a teammate should," he assured her. "Don't say you're a failure, Ino. If there's a sure-fire way of disappointing Asuma-sensei, that's one of them."

Ino's mouth trembled, but she took a deep breath in and breathed out slowly. When she recovered some of her composure, she opened her mouth again. "So the next part is looking for another Bishop?"

Shikamaru was glad that she had pulled herself back together. "We'll find one, and then we'll find the Eye of the World, and then this all ends tonight."

But first, they needed to get the men to the hospital. The Keepers had to ensure the Repenters got treated as soon as possible. The Keepers might have been angry, they might have been vengeful, but with ninja-civilian relations as strained as they were they couldn't afford a civilian dying whilst in Keeper custody, waiting for treatment.

They loaded the ox-carts in front of the burning Academy. They would come back for the dead tomorrow.

A tree crackled with dancing flames and a small spark leapt from its branch to the roof of the nearest shop.

Neji knew he was out of sorts when he began to feel breathless. Ducking and diving, avoiding the flailing knives and hammers being slung his way and swinging the bag of leads at the nearest blank silver faces, he could feel his lungs tightening. He was tiring, far quicker than usual. His fast and fluid strikes that he had always been so proud of were slowing and his joints felt stiff. Neji hadn't moved like this in days, perhaps weeks, and he was feeling the strain.

And doubling the strain was the discomfort of fighting without the byakugan and the Gentle Fist at all. It was as though he was trying to compensate for the byakugan vision by relying on sounds and smells, the warmth of bodies, the rankness of sweat, the squeak of boots on stone. It was even an effort to stop his limbs falling into the stances of the Gentle Fist, ineffectual even if he could use chakra, because the damned civilians didn't have chakra coils in the first place!

A shape dropped down from above. A glowing fist, laced with chakra, sank under a jaw and threw the Repenter off his feet, sending him and the three Repenters behind him crashing back into the gatehouse wall.

"Thank you!" Neji said to Sakura, who had landed next to him with her two fists raised.

"Go inside, Neji-kun. You need a rest." She cracked her knuckles at the advancing Repenters. "Don't put on a brave face, just go. I'll help you up."

She had seen him tiring. She could tell how sorely tempted he was to summon up his chakra to boost up his stamina and fix his balance. The Repenters had backed away from the door at Sakura's appearance, eyeing her glowing fists like they might explode. If Neji was going to go back inside the Den, now was his chance.

Neji nodded. "I'll be back."

Sakura knelt on one knee, cupped her hands. He leapt, stepped off her hands and she boosted him back up to the open window on the second floor. He grabbed the ledge and swung himself inside.

Once she was sure Neji was gone from the window, she turned back to the crowd of Repenters who were regrouping at the splintered gates. Neji had done a bloody job. The training kunai for Academy students were blunt. Only the points were sharp. The only way they could have sliced through an arm or leg was if they were forced through the muscle and tendon by brute strength. Several bodies on the ground were oozing blood from cracked foreheads and smashed in temples.

She heard the tinkling of falling glass at the back of the house. Focus, Sakura told herself, focus on the ones in front of you. Lee was at the back. Lee could deal with them fine. She planted her feet on the steps leading up to the front door.

All of a sudden, tiles shattered and a figure in black and orange landed on the gatehouse wall.

"Hey, Sakura-chan!" the Naruto clone yelled, waving cheerfully. "You look beautiful when you're just about to punch someone!"

As her jaw dropped and she exclaimed, "Naruto!", the clone dropped down from the wall and barrelled its way through the crowd of Repenters. Punching one, and sending another flying with a kick, it soon made its way to the front door.

"They want the children. What happened in town? It sounded like thunder and the ground was shaking," Sakura said as soon as the clone reached the steps.

The Repenters came under sudden fire from a deadly volley of lead weights and drew back to the gates again. Neji nodded at Naruto's clone from the window then ducked back inside the house, presumably to make sure nobody was breaking in from the back.

"I just got the message from my original – two Bishops blew themselves up. They had bombs strapped on them."

"Suicide bombers?" gasped Sakura.

There was a muffled boom and the steps shook under Sakura's feet.

"Make that three Bishops," the clone amended sheepishly, as all eyes turned to the third column of smoke and fire rising above Konoha.

"What?" Sakura cried. "Then how are you going to find their leader? How many Bishops are left?"

"No idea," said the clone weakly, as the crowd of Repenters finally moved into a formation and looked ready to charge. Then a thought occurred to him and he lowered his voice and said, "There might be one here."

Five dashed towards them with their weapons raised. Sakura flung out her arm. A line of training kunai dropped into a line before the Repenters' feet, exploding tags fluttering from their hilts. They blew up in a line of snaps and crackles and the Repenters stumbled backwards.

"There might be one here, but, we can't let Neji-kun know." Sakura glanced up at the window, hoping that Neji wasn't there to hear what was being said. "He's weakening and he'll use the byakugan. It might push him over the edge."

"You're right, but I've got a plan," said the clone earnestly, leaping off the steps to kick a Repenter in the face. Sakura threw another line of exploding tags and the Repenters shrank back. "We strip every one of these Repenters down to his undies and find the one with a bomb strapped to him – "

"You are unbelievable!" Sakura screamed, over the sound of more crackling and popping exploding tags. She dashed forward into the smoking trench to gather up the blades and went back to the steps. "That isn't a plan. That's a lucky dip!"

"You got any better ideas?"

Sakura chewed her lip then struck an idea. "The woman who told Neji about Bishops, didn't she say something about showing them a flyer and the Repentance would help him?"

"So?"

"Do you still have the flyer?"

Neji pushed the body off the window ledge, its eye sockets streaming with blood. He had modified the Gentle Fist precision strikes to target the eyes, nose, throats and tops of spinal column. As far as he was concerned, the Keepers could keep their No Civilian Death Policy. These Repenters were invading private property as soon as they came through the old Hyuuga boundary gate.

The beams above him creaked. Something heavy was shifting about on the floor overhead.

He finished resetting the bear trap beneath the window and went to the next room. Lee was lifting his visor to wipe blood from the corner of his mouth. The window had been barricaded again with a heap of chairs.

"I heard noises upstairs," Neji said. "I'm going to check the kitchen. Either it's one of the children or – "

"I shall boldly go forth to the next floor!" Lee cried and he took off down the corridor.

Neji went to the kitchen and knocked on the door, a coded knock, a series of loud and quiet taps he hoped some of the older Academy students would recognise. They did. He heard footsteps and the door was unbarred.

At the sight of Neji covered in blood and damp with sweat, Jo shrank back from him with a squeak. White faces peered out at him from the darkness, momentarily stunned then displaying a mixture of relief and fear.

"Neji-niisan!" gasped one of the children. He couldn't see which in the gloom.

He did a quick headcount. All the children were present, which, unfortunately, meant that intruders had got in upstairs. He had to go and back up Lee.

"Is everybody here alright?" he asked quickly, just in case, but then he blinked and narrowed his eyes. "What are you two doing?"

Yabane was sitting on Nagira's shoulders to reach the kitchen window, his hand on the latch as though he had just closed it. He was letting the blind fall, but before the canvas dropped over the barred glass, Neji caught sight of a blonde head disappearing from the window.

"Nothing," Yabane trilled, looking far from innocent.

"You think we'd be stupid enough to open the window when we're basically under siege?" Nagira deadpanned, but his eyes drifted upwards.

Neji followed his gaze to the kitchen dartboard. Naruto had put it up to throw shuriken at. He had taken immense pleasure out of flicking shuriken after shuriken at a wanted poster of Orochimaru and had urged Neji to put up something as well. 'Stress relief' he called it, and more in an effort to get Naruto to shut up than actual willingness, Neji had obliged. He had put up the Repenter's flyer…

…which was now gone, one shuriken that had been holding it in place moved aside and the other still in place with a little fragment of paper attached to its tip. Nagira's fingers were bleeding. Somebody had been handling sharper objects than they were used to very recently.

Neji looked at them two boys closely. "Was that Naruto outside the window?"

Nagira lowered Yabane to the kitchen floor. They looked at each other. Yabane nodded and said, "Niisan wanted the flyer. He didn't say why."

"But he told us specifically not to tell you that he had taken the flyer," Nagira said slyly.

"Specifically not to tell me?" Neji raised his eyebrows. "Arm yourselves and keep quiet. Don't open the door unless someone knocks like I did."

With that, Neji left the kitchen, and his silver eyes were gleaming.

"I have this!" Sakura suddenly cried, snatching the flyer from the clone as soon as it had returned from the kitchen window. "I call upon the Sixth Repentance. I am ready for the Sixth Repentance of the Cry. Is there any Bishop amongst you who will help me?"

The clone readied to spring. Sakura was open to an attack, but he was surprised to see heads turn, eyes flicker, and the next row of advancing Repenters halt, as they looked to the back of the crowd.

"You ask for a Bishop?"

The crowd parted. They revealed a man with a beer belly, the bleached hazard gear stretched across his enormous girth. "I am the Bishop here," he announced, his voice ringing in between the muffled shouts coming from the back of the house and fire sparking in the craters at the front.

Sakura and the clone stared, first at each other then back at the great man who had appeared from the shadow of the wall. Identifying the Bishop was the first and easy part. The second part was capturing him and taking him as a hostage against the other Repenters. The third part was disarming him then finally…

"I see you have a Parade ticket. One of our disciples saw you fit to receive our highest Repentance," the man continued to say. He reached out with his hand. "I am a Bishop, one who receives the direct teachings of the Eye. I will see you receive the Sixth Level of the Repentance – the purest and most holy of all. Come here, daughter of sin."

The clone made a noise in his throat halfway between a snort of laughter and choke of outrage. Sakura ignored him and stepped down from the porch, holding out the little flyer. "If I Repent, will you spare the children?"

"No," the man replied simply. "If the gods will not spare those children, then a mere man such as I most assuredly cannot."

Sakura felt a surge of disgust but clamped down on the feeling. "Then will you promise not to harm my friends?" she said, trying to keep talking as she approached him, talking as she scanned him for signs of a bomb, talking to bring down his guard, so that when she was upon him she could loop a coil of wire about his fleshy neck and hands.

The clone remained standing at the front of the house, hovering on the balls of his feet.

"We will not harm them," the man said with a smile. "We will hope that your good example will inspire your friends to also come to us, although they will be judged through all the Repentances that the gods seek of them, from the Word to the Fire."

"But then they will have a choice of the Fourth, Fifth and Sixth?"

"Oh, all may choose, but not all may be given their choice. The gods decide and the Eye sees," the man intoned, putting his bloody hands together as if in prayer.

Sakura was nearly upon him. She was so close she could see the man's manic eyes behind the mask. The clone was tentatively stepping down form the porch, ready to back her up.

Just as she was reaching for the wire up her sleeve, her gaze never wavering from the indulgently smiling Bishop in front of her, she heard a light thud from behind and something travelled into the corner of her vision, fast as an arrow, into the crowd of Repenters.

The Repenters screeched, boiled, seethed as one mass like water, then –

"Come any closer and I'll cut out her throat!"

The Repenters drew back. They formed a large ring about the young man who had appeared in their midst.

Neji pressed the tip of his kunai against his captive's windpipe. She whimpered. The Repenters gave him space. He began to step back towards the house, long, hurrying strides, dragging her with him. She struggled and tried to twist her hands out from behind her back.

"That man's the bait!" Neji shouted, as everyone stared, Sakura stopped only metres away from the huge pot-bellied man. "He isn't the real Bishop. This woman is!"

And Sakura knew Neji was right, because the veins around his eyes were bulging and his eyes were wide and bright, chakra flowing to the activated byakugan.

He flipped the kunai round in his hand and rammed it into the back of the woman's head.

"Madam Bishop!" gasped the Repenters, surging forward as she slumped unconscious in Neji's hold.

Sakura leapt back from the decoy Bishop. She threw another array of explosive tags at the advancing Repenters, then, for good measure, drove her fist into the churned up lawn with a pulse of chakra to shake the Repenters to the ground. They wouldn't be able to avoid the explosions this time.

In the smoke rising up from the explosive tags, Naruto's clone darted forward, leapt over the line of charred and blackened bodies, and knocked out a dozen Repenters, swiping left, right and centre. The Repenters retreated and, as the smoke cleared, the clone chased after them. Their attacks were weaker, less coordinated, less certain – it was as though whatever had been holding them together had turned to smoke – or perhaps many of them had never had their hearts in the fight in the first place, perhaps they had only been fighting with the Bishop looking over their shoulders, their only link to the Eye of the World himself.

With a drumming of fast footsteps, Lee came running out from the back of the house. The remaining Repenters saw him coming and realising that, in a ninja vs. civilian fight, four ninjas against ten civilians left the civilians grossly outnumbered, fled, stumbling over their feet to run over the splinters of the gate they had brought down.

Lee and the clone ran after them into the street. When it was clear the crowd of Repenters had scattered into the town and showed no sign of returning, they stopped their pursuit.

"That's it?" cried Lee in outrage, throwing up his hands. "They come, they try to kill us and then they run off?"

There was another boom, a rippling tremor, and in East Konoha another column of smoke and fire erupted into the sky.

The clone clenched his teeth. "Let's go back to the Den."

As soon as the Repenters were gone, Neji exhaled slowly and set the unconscious woman on the ground. He removed the kunai from her neck.

Sakura dropped down and pulled off the Repenter's mask. Underneath was a middle-aged woman with laughter lines and smile creases at the corners of her eyes. "Neji-kun, are you sure she's the Bishop?"

"There's chakra inside her head, in her brain. None of the others have it. It must be her."

Sakura swallowed and unzipped the woman's hazard cloak. She gingerly pulled apart the fabric. Lee and Naruto's clone returned and came running up to the front step.

The clone cleared its throat as he peered over Sakura's shoulder. "If there's a bomb, I can take it and run -"

"A bomb?" said Neji sharply.

"Don't worry, guys." Sakura wiped her forehead on the back of her hand. "She – she doesn't have one on her."

The clone sighed with relief, but Neji was frowning. "You expected her to have a bomb on her?"

"All the other Bishops did," said the clone with a grimace.

Neji furrowed his brow. He stared down at the woman. "It takes a very strong mind manipulation jutsu to override the instinct for self-preservation. Maybe she was stronger than the others and refused to rig herself with a bomb."

"Maybe," said Sakura, but she wasn't entirely convinced. She zipped up the woman's cloak again then patted her pockets for weapons. "Neji-kun, why don't you switch off your byakugan for a bit?"

He shook his head. "I can see the chakra link. It's a really faint line, it goes north. If I switch off, I can't say I'll find it again."

But he could see it! Oh, he could see and it was marvellous! A thin pale blue thread, as fine as spider silk, spooling off from the cottony mass of foreign chakra in the woman's brain. The line continued out the back of her head and went straight through the gatehouse wall, pointing north like a compass – and if he followed this line to its source, at the end of it would be the 'Eye of the World'.

Neji felt a gentle touch on his hand and looked down. Sakura was prying the kunai out of his white-knuckled grip. "Listen to me, Neji-kun. You don't need to see the chakra link," she told him. "We just need to wait here for Keepers to arrive, and then one of the Marksmen will be able to see the link just as you can, and they'll be able to lead the Keepers to where the leader of the Repenters is. You've identified the Bishop. Now, leave the rest to Naruto and Shikamaru."

Sakura turned away to talk to Lee and the clone about the number of bodies in the grounds of the gatehouse and Neji stared at the Bishop.

No. Neji refused to leave everything to his friends. He had never rejected such a course of action more. He rejected it with every living fibre of his infected body and suddenly he was seized by a kind of mad panic that was all too familiar. It was feeling he had had before the Caged Bird seal had been etched into his forehead, the feeling that he was standing at the door of a cage and peering into the dungeon where he was about to be trapped forever, without a voice or a future.

Neji glanced sideways. Sakura, Lee and the clone were huddled together in conversation.

They weren't watching him.

"- so we have around twenty at the back of the house, seven bodies on the second floor, one injured man stuck in the bear-trap," Sakura told the clone, packing him with information to send Naruto, "- and the Bishop is knocked out, no bomb to deactivate at all. Got that, Naruto?"

"I think so," he murmured, screwing up his face. "Fifteen or so at the front, twenty at the back – "

"Naruto, you look like you're trying to give birth to a coconut."

"Hey!" the clone objected loudly, opening his eyes. He stopped, stared over her shoulder. "Neji's gone."

Sakura whirled round. He was right. Neji had disappeared, along with the unconscious Bishop. The space behind her was empty except for smoke and charred Repenter bodies.

She sighed and put her face in her hands. "What is it with guys running off doing as they please? We girls would never do that."

"Sure you wouldn't," the clone muttered under his breath.

"Alright, change of plan – Neji's gone to find the Bishop. If we run now, we'll still be able to catch up with him. Naruto, tell Shikamaru to meet us…er…" She scratched her head and turned to Lee. "I don't any landmarks in the North part of Konoha."

"There's a canal lock you can't miss," Lee told her. "Shikamaru will know where it is. Neji knows probably knows it from his rounds as well."

Sakura blinked. "You aren't coming?"

"I saw him in the fight. Neji-kun wasn't moving as fast as he usually should be able to. He needs a…he might need a medic-nin with him soon and somebody's got to stay to look after the children," Lee said gravely. His big round eyes glistened with tears.

Sakura chewed her lip then turned decisively to the clone. "Have you got all that?"

"The canal lock in the North – "

"Good." She threw her fist into the clone's face and it popped out of existence.

Casualties were flooding into hospital in from all parts of the town – Keepers and Repenters aside, there were tens of ordinary citizens. Some had shards of glass in their backs. Some had been near-crushed by furniture that had been shaken by the bomb blasts. Worse, fire was spreading, out from the sites of the explosions but also from knocked over candles and shattered lanterns. It was slow thanks to the lack of a wind, but there were people beginning to come in with burns and smoke irritation. Standing around waiting for Shikamaru to finish signing off the casualties his unit had brought in was dull and achieved nothing, so Naruto had decided to pitch in with the hospital staff.

Naruto was carrying one end of a stretcher when the clone's memories were dumped into his head and he nearly dropped it. Luckily, a nurse running up behind him took the stretcher handles before it could slip to the floor.

"Have a short rest," she said briskly. She forced him to sit down in the hospital corridor and took off with the patient.

Shikamaru came back from the reception and found Naruto muttering to himself on a bench.

"What's happened?" Shikamaru asked, folding his arms across his chest.

Naruto started and leapt to his feet. "Neji's found a Bishop and started tracing the link back to the leader. Sakura's gone after him."

Shikamaru looked nonplussed and sighed. "You know, Naruto, I'm beginning to think the real Plague here is you and your unpredictability. Seriously, what have you done to Neji? Anyway, if a Bishop's been captured, this is our chance. We've got to meet up with Neji and Sakura. Which way are they going?"

"North," Naruto told him, as they moved to the doors. "Sakura said we're to meet them at a canal lock. Do you know it?"

"I've seen it on patrol," said Shikamaru with a nod. "We'll find Ino and go."

Thanks for reading!

Next time: The Eye of the World closes at last.