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Title: New Wind Nation: Alliance

Chapter 4: Lair of the Snake ~ Diver (part 3)

Notes: A pretty short chapter, unfortunately.

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Naruto came to slowly. His head was pounding, and his body felt strangely sore. Even as he blinked his salt-encrusted eyes, everything remained largely dark. The only sound was his own raspy breathing and the soft splash of water against rock.

"Take it easy. You almost drowned," someone said softly next to him.

"I… Isaribi?" Naruto said. "You saved me…?"

He tried to sit up, only for his head to spin, forcing him to close his eyes lest he vomit. A gentle hand rubbed his back, and some kind of container was pressed to his lips. Naruto drank slowly, though it was probably against what shinobi would consider common sense.

It was just water, slightly stale, but Naruto was glad for it. With his throat clear, he could finally breathe and take stock of the situation.

As his adjusted to the gloom, he could see that Isaribi was indeed kneeling next to him, both of them still damp from their swim in the sea. She had found and lit a lantern, which illuminated a rough cavern, with a pool of dark water on one side and a narrow strip of rock shore on the other. Several old crates were stacked against the wall, something that looked like a doorway nearby.

"Thanks. You really saved me," Naruto said, smiling at the girl, who turned away quickly. He didn't let her shy manner bother him - it wasn't any stranger than Gaara's odd behavior. Both of them had led tough lives.

"I told you to stay away," Isaribi said quietly. "Because it's dangerous like this."

"So you followed me because you were worried?" Naruto asked. "Thanks for that too. But now we're on Demon Island, right? And this cave…" He saw the way Isaribi tensed, but went on. "...It's the place where the people who disappeared were taken."

Her instinctive flinch was answer enough. 'Looks like we found Orochimaru's lair,' Naruto thought.

"But it seems like this place has been abandoned for a long time," he continued casually. "So I guess we don't need to worry about getting caught or anything. That's good." Groaning a little, he climbed to his feet and stretched. Grinning, Naruto decided, "I'm gonna look around!"

"You mustn't!" Isaribi burst out. "It's not safe, even if there isn't anyone here!"

"It's okay. You don't need to worry," Naruto assured her with a smile. "I'm a shinobi. I can avoid traps easy! And this is why I came to the Land of the Sea. Thanks, for guiding me here. This place must have many bad memories for you. You don't have to stay."

"But…" Isaribi tried to say.

"There must be another way out," Naruto reasoned. "They wouldn't have swam here through the whirlpools every time. I'll find that." 'And drag that stupid Kaze here,' he added mentally. 'So he can help me look at everything.'

"Do you… do you know what this place is?" Isaribi asked quietly, looking away again.

Naruto nodded slowly. "Not exactly, but I can guess," he said. "The guy who used this place experimented on people. He kidnapped anyone who came close and used them for his messed up research. Probably… most of them died. But you managed to escape."

Finally, Isaribi nodded. "...It's because I'm…" She couldn't form the words.

Instead, she held up one arm, the one that had been wrapped in bandages before. That entire arm… was covered in scales.

Scales also ran up her neck and along the side of her face. One of her bare legs was similarly transformed. This was what she had been hiding with the bandages, and probably the reason the locals had rejected her so completely. Isaribi had returned from being spirited away, but not fully human any longer.

"A mermaid!" Naruto said brightly. "Getting rescued by a beautiful mermaid… I'm really a lucky guy!"

"A mermaid…?" Isaribi repeated in disbelief. "I'm not a mermaid! I'm a monster! Look at me! Look at my true self!"

She stood, spreading her arms wide. But she did more than show off the places where her body had mutated. Her skin trembled visibly - and, before Naruto's eyes, transformed. Her entire body and even her hair changed to fish-like scales, her limbs thickened and her bared teeth sharpened. She looked almost feral as she glared at him.

Naruto blinked in surprise. But he had stared down Shukaku, a real not-human monster, and Gaara under Shukaku's influence. His surprise lasted only a moment, and then Naruto smiled again.

"I already saw your true self, when you worried about me and saved me," he said. "No matter what you look like, I know you have a good, human heart."

Isaribi flinched as if his words had been an attack. She shook her head frantically, denying what he said. Abruptly, she spun around and took a running dive into the dark water.

Watching her flee, Naruto only bit his lip and sighed.

"Okay! I'm gonna look around," he said to himself, marshaling his determination. "There's got to be something useful here…"

/~/~

A few hours later, even Naruto's optimism was beginning to wane.

He had found plenty of things, of course - very disturbing things. Mutated corpses floating in glass tanks, reports of progressing mutations, chambers full of decayed bones, all remnants of Orochimaru's research. Naruto didn't have the expertise to judge what the purpose of it all had been, and he didn't have the time to try to puzzle it out.

What he hadn't found were the two things he needed - some clue to where Orochimaru had gone from there, and some way out.

As Naruto had expected, there was at least one exit out to the island surface. But from there, it was still an island. As a shinobi, Naruto could walk down the stiff seaside cliffs, but after a bit of testing - far more cautious now that he knew what could happen - he discovered that the whirlpools and powerful, unpredictable currents extended all around Demon Island. There wasn't a single place where he could safely cross.

"Argh! What am I, castaway on a deserted island?!" Naruto yelled into the sky, losing his patience. "Civilization is right there!" Crumbling to the ground melodramatically, he hung his head. "What if I can't get off? What if I starve to death here? And where is that stupid Kaze?!"

More than getting off, Naruto wanted Kaze to take a look at the contents of the hidden lab and see if he could find some other lead on where Orochimaru had gone.

Surely the jonin would come looking for Naruto eventually?

In fact, Kaze knew exactly where Naruto was and had already taken a look around the lab using the Gold Dust he had attached to Naruto. There was nothing useful, as far as he could see. Like Kankuro had said, the records of gruesome human experiments did nothing to change his opinion. He might have found them distasteful, but he had been a shinobi too long to be truly swayed by such things.

And as for Naruto, a few days of solitude to ruminate upon his foolishness would only do the boy good. After that, Kaze would retrieve him with the Gold Dust.

/~/~

Fortunately for Naruto, there was someone else on Mother Island who was thinking about him.

After speaking with everyone who owned a boat being turned away, Sasuke took to combing the island again. Theoretically, he was searching for another lead, but he was also keeping his eyes open for a flash of bright blond hair and orange t-shirt.

Had the Sand-nin found something Sasuke hadn't noticed? That seemed impossible. That idiot? Yeah, right. Or had he left? That didn't seem likely either. He seemed like the stupidly stubborn sort, and he had been so insistent about needing to investigate this…

Completing another circuit of the town, Sasuke found himself pacing restlessly around the marketplace. He was all out of leads. Should he report to Kakashi that there was nothing to find? Was the mission a failure? No, it wouldn't be that. No one had expected anything in the first place.

But he still had so many questions...

Sasuke was pulled out of his thoughts as the chatter of the locals around him fell silent. He turned in the same direction as all of them were looking and blinked in surprise.

Isaribi was striding determinedly through the marketplace, the newly wrapped bandages clinging to her still-wet skin. She stopped in front of Sasuke, her lips pursed determinedly as she studied him for a moment. "I need to talk to you," she said quietly but firmly. "It's about your friend."

"He's not my-" Sasuke started to say reflexively, but cut himself off. This was something he wanted to hear. "Alright," he said instead. "But let's talk somewhere else."

Once he heard what the Sand genin had done, he had to fight the urge to facepalm. 'That… idiot!' Sasuke thought. 'Even though we were told over and over again how dangerous the waters over there are, he just charged in!'

"Let's start from the top," Sasuke decided. "Can you show me the safe passage to Demon Island?"

Isaribi shook her head. "There isn't one," she said. "The whirlpools appear all around the island. I… I'm strong enough to swim through and under them, but it's impossible for a normal person."

"That can't be right," Sasuke said, brow furrowing. "Even if he's an S-rank and could make it through, he wouldn't have bothered going that way every time. Not to mention he would have had to get supplies there somehow. There must be some other way onto the island."

'But what? A tunnel? That seems unlikely. A technique for going past the whirlpools?' Sasuke thought. 'Or… the opposite?'

"You said the whirlpools appear. And it caught that idiot by surprise," he said slowly. "Are you saying they aren't always there? They activate when someone comes close? Was it always like that? Ten years ago, no, before that, was Demon Island the same? Or did the phenomenon start within the last generation?"

Isaribi's eyes widened in surprise as she listened to his barrage of questions. "Y-yes, they aren't visible from afar. Or rather, they're not always there. I guess… they always appear when someone comes close, I haven't seen them appear otherwise…" she stammered out, caught off guard. She had to think for a moment before continuing, "I don't know when it started. Demon Island was always dangerous, but I think I heard it became impossible to approach ten years ago…"

Though, after the numerous disappearances, few had tried, and there was no way to tell how many had been drowned and how many became more experimental subjects for Orochimaru.

"I think I understand," Sasuke said, nodding to himself. "After setting up his hideout, he used some kind of technique to create those whirlpools, to keep anyone from being able to access it. Most likely, he left it active after abandoning this place ten years ago."

"Ninjas can do even something like that?" Isaribi wondered. The scale of that sort of technique was entirely different than anything else she had seen or experienced.

"Well, I don't know how," Sasuke admitted. "But in that case, there must be a way to deactivate it."

"Should I tell him about it?" Isaribi offered.

Sasuke sighed. "Not yet. I don't know what this sort of technique would even look like, and he probably doesn't either. First… we'll have to consult my team leader." He couldn't help making a face at that.

Kakashi was bound to say something annoying, like…

"I'm so touched you thought of me. I'm always happy to help out my cute little student~!"

Yes, just like that…

With a startled yelp, Sasuke spun around - only to find Kakashi standing behind him, waving with the air of a bright smile. It was absolutely infuriating, more so because Sasuke hadn't sensed him at all. He had no idea when Kakashi arrived or when he started following his student.

Isaribi had also let out a small sound of shock, jumping back. Her bandages, tied in a hurry, slipped a little, and Kakashi speculatively eyed the small flash of scales he caught sight of. Before Isaribi could notice - and cringe away - he turned his attention back to Sasuke and smiled again.

"Now, why don't you tell Sensei all about it?" he suggested.

/~/~

After praising Sasuke for his hard work a little too enthusiastically to be genuine and ruffling his hair, which Sasuke hated, Kakashi had finally considered the matter seriously.

The only way to create such a wide-scale effect, he told Sasuke and Isaribi, was through seals. A large seal, probably either in the center of the island or somewhere halfway into the water. The sealing arts were not his specialty, so he couldn't speculate much further about its workings, but since they didn't really need the seal intact, disrupting it wouldn't be too difficult.

Destroying part of the physical array and causing a break within the circulating chakra would shut it off, Kakashi explained.

"Physical array?" Naruto repeated thoughtfully, once Isaribi relayed the information to him, having swam back to Demon Island to tell him everything Sasuke had found out.

"The, um, jonin said it would look like a bunch of black scribbles," Isaribi repeated faithfully.

"Oh, I know where that is," Naruto said, slapping a fist into the opposite palm.

Although he hadn't figured things out the way Sasuke had, he hadn't been idle either. After his short bout of melodrama, he set about completely exploring and mapping out the hidden lab. The massive seal array had been easy to find, the large chamber it occupied all but humming with the chakra circulating through it. Naruto had stared at in bemusement for several minutes, but he hadn't had much of a head for the sealing arts, despite Kushina's best attempts to teach him the basics.

Since this seal was supposed to last for years or even decades, it wasn't possible to just scrape the paint off, not that Naruto wanted to put his limbs anywhere near the seal when it deactivated. There was always a chance the whole thing would explode.

Naruto supposed he could have just used an explosive tag. But that also carried the risk of a cave in, and Naruto still wanted to get a better look at everything in the lab. So he went with what he was good at and his all-purpose solution to every problem - wind style ninjutsu.

Standing at the very edge of the chamber housing the seal, Naruto clapped his hands together and exclaimed, "Kamaitachi no Jutsu!"

There was no particular reason to clap. This was Temari's favorite jutsu, and as such was used in combination with her war fan, with no hand seals. But Naruto had gotten into the habit of making the motion, especially since Temari had beaten him over the head every time he tried to substitute some dramatic gesture instead.

Kamaitachi was nothing resembling precise - well, not in Naruto's hands - but it was powerful and destructive. The gale Naruto unleashed howled through the chamber, cutting deep gashes in the walls, the ceiling and the floor, including the seal array drawn across it.

The seal symbols glowed brightly as the chakra within the seal wavered and began to go out of control. It wasn't quite the explosion Naruto had half-expected, but force of the chakra being released made the entire cave shake, dust raining down from the ceiling.

That was nothing compared to what was taking place outside. Sasuke had followed Isaribi, having finally intimidated a local into renting him a small boat, to the very edge of the danger zone, Kakashi stretched across one half of the vessel leisurely. They had been waiting, with growing impatience from Sasuke, when the sea in front of them suddenly became wild.

Whirlpools formed and clashed without any rhyme or reason, the waters frothing and roaring just beyond their where the Leaf shinobi waited. The boat bucked over the suddenly choppy waves, and Kakashi prepared to grab Sasuke and jump out, not trusting his genin to manage this kind of situation.

But a moment later, the sea abruptly subsided. The waters became calm once more, as if nothing had occurred.

"Well," Kakashi commented mildly, "I guess that's that. Sasuke, why don't you go check?"

The look Sasuke shot him was mixed annoyance and disbelief, an increasingly familiar expression when it came to his teacher.

Inside the underground hideout, the same had occurred - the tremors eased after just a moment. Naruto raised his head gingerly and peeked into the chamber where the seal had been. The black symbols were gone, the seal disabled. Exchanging a glance with Isaribi, Naruto shrugged.

"Huh. I didn't think it would be that easy," he said. He didn't dwell on it for long though.

/~/~

Naruto didn't know it, but his instincts were right. It wasn't that easy.

In another underground hideout, much like the one in the Land of the Sea, but much larger, more elaborate, and still in use, the master of the hidden labs watched as one of his many subjects made his way into the chamber and knelt.

"How is your condition, Kimimaro?" Orochimaru asked, offering something that might have been meant as a kind smile to the pale teenager in front of him.

"Stable, Orochimaru-sama," Kimimaro reported. "I am ready to carry out your will."

Orochimaru smirked, pleased. "Good, good. I have just the thing - a little errand to get you warmed up. The defenses around one of my old labs have been deactivated."

Kimimaro nodded, understanding. It might have been a malfunction, or simply the seals giving out with time, but Orochimaru didn't make miscalculations like that. His work was superior in every way.

The lab must have been breached by outsiders.

"I will hunt them down and eliminate them," Kimimaro swore. "I will not fail you, Orochimaru-sama."

"Take Jirobo with you. That place has no further use to me. Get rid of it," Orochimaru ordered, accepting his words easily and waving him away.

Ducking his head until he was almost prostrate, Kimimaro flickered out of sight.

/~/~

Q&A

Why is this chapter so short? Because next chapter is going to be action-packed. Or something.

How strong/weak is Naruto? I get this questions sometimes. What is NWN Naruto's strength anyway? Well, since this chapter is so short, it's time for a stupidly long author's note!

In terms of stats, I would say this: in canon, from the first databook,

Naruto:
Nin: 2, Tai: 1.5, Gen: 1, Int: 1, Str: 2, Spd: 2, Sta: 4, Seal: 1, Total: 14.5
Sasuke:
Nin: 2.5, Tai: 2.5, Gen: 1.5, Int: 2, Str: 2, Spd: 3, Sta: 2, Seal: 3, Total: 18.5
Gaara:
Nin: 3.5, Tai: 1, Gen: 2.5, Int: 2.5, Str: 1, Spd: 2, Sta: 4, Seal: 3.5, Total: 20

In NWN, Sasuke and Gaara are about the same, but for Naruto, I would say...

Naruto:
Nin: 3, Tai: 1.5, Gen: 1, Int: 1.5, Str: 1, Spd: 2, Sta: 4, Seal: 1, Total: 15

His ninjutsu is a little better than Sasuke's, but his hand seals and genjutsu are still abysmal. Since he practiced only his wind style ninjutsu, his strength and taijutsu are also bad. In fact, his overall skill spread is pretty close to Gaara's, but lower in all the mental stuff, haha.

Jutsu list:

Reppusho (Gale Palm): Naruto's favorite. C-rank. Naruto likes it because there are no hand seals. The user just claps their hands together and creates a strong gust of wind, which can even knock over human. It can also be used to increase the force behind projectiles. Naruto has practiced it enough that he can change how the gale winds blow, in terms of origin point and direction. Used by Nagato in the flashback to his training with Jiraiya.

Senpujin (Hurricane Formation): Creates a whirlwind around the user, which can push away materials clinging to the user's body. It was taught to Naruto by Baki, since it can even temporarily free the user from Gaara's Sand Coffin. Appears in the last Part 1 filler, used by Seimei, from Takumi village. The full name in the filler is Kujaku Senpujin, but Baki (or rather, I) dropped that part of it.

Shinkujin (Vacuum Blade): Infuses wind chakra into a weapon, such as a shuriken or a kunai. This increases the weapon's sharpness and reach. Used by Danzo in his fight with Sasuke.

Kamaitachi (Sickle Weasel): Temari's favorite. C-rank. Creates many chaotic air currents that collide and cause countless invisible blades, which carve up everything within the jutsu's area of effect. Temari can manipulate the winds with great precision, to trap her opponent in a tornado that lifts them off their feet or direct what is cut, but Naruto can only use it for wide-scale brute force.

Kaze no Yaiba (Blade of Wind): Baki's favorite. A-rank. A pinpoint slashing strike that is like an unavoidable longsword that leaves the target's body mutilated. Baki can even throw the blades like projectiles. Naruto isn't nearly at that level, of course, and his version still lacks range and sharpness.

He might know some more or learn others, but since Naruto's wind manipulation basics are really good, he doesn't have any problems with it.

/~/~