Disclaimer: All your ninja are belong to Kishimoto.

All your base are belong to us.

A/N: This is the start of the mini-arc! Most people don't seem adverse to the idea of it, so I've decided to go ahead and post it along with the rest of the story. Again, loads of thanks to everyone who reviewed and gave me their opinions! :) Input is always welcome!

Title art for this chapter is in my profile. It's pretty fun this time around - at least, I had fun doing it! :3

Chapter 6 - Into the Deep:

The day was hot and the water was cold, and best of all, there wasn't a plant within petting distance! This was definitely Naruto's favorite place of everywhere they had lived so far. They'd come here right after his eighth birthday and were still here several months later. He grinned, constantly adjusting his chakra output to keep him on top of the madly rolling surf, then leapt up in a nimble flipping maneuver when the waves pulled him too close to the rocky shore. This was heaven! Why hadn't they moved to the seaside much sooner?

His smile threatened to spilt his face as he plopped himself down on one of the large black rocks that jutted out into the ocean on his favorite training beach. Not so far off in the distance he could hear other children laughing and playing over the sound of the constantly moving surf. He liked to sit and watch the families when he ran out of usable chakra or just needed a break. Some of the kids had pets to throw Frisbees to, or siblings to dunk in the water…and almost all of them had fathers.

He sighed and shook his head to clear it of those kinds of thoughts as well as to shed some of the moisture that had gathered in his hair from his romp. It didn't help the later problem much, his blond mop stayed pretty much soaked from the ocean's spray, but it did get his mind off of the former and he eagerly stood back up and stretched, ready to have another go on chakra surfing. This was such a cool technique, and he thought if he worked on it enough, he might be able to change it up so it worked on other unstable surfaces like snow or sand! How cool would that be?

Before he could hop back onto the water and make a mad dash for the deeps – he had to be careful to time the jumps correctly and get out of the way fast or he'd be smashed against the rocks – he heard a sudden shout and the rumbling of falling stones. His head shot up and his eyes darted in the direction of the noise – over towards the formerly laughing family that had been playing in the sand. The dog was missing and so was the littlest kid – a daughter who'd been wearing a bright yellow sundress. Without thinking about it further, he took off towards the remaining two adults and older sibling.

When he got closer, he saw that the mother had tears running down her face and a hand over her mouth. The father was leaning into a small crevice barely larger than Naruto's shoulders.

"Nina!" The man yelled, but there was no answer.

"What happened?" Naruto asked the slightly older boy who was standing beside his mother and looking kind of guilty and very worried.

"My sister! I, well, I threw the ball for Muffy, that's our dog, and it accidentally went into the rocks there. Muffy went in after it, and when he didn't come out right away, Nina followed him in, and then the entrance collapsed a little, and now she won't answer us!"

"Damn!" Naruto scampered forward over the sand and rocks to look at the little cave beside the frantic father. He bit his lip in thought. Kaa-san had warned him that this area was riddled with tunnels and caverns made by the same volcanoes that had left the huge chunks of rocks lying all around, and volcano rock was pretty full of holes to begin with, even without the ocean working on it for years. She'd told him to be careful if he practiced making craters with his newly mastered freakish strength, because you could never tell if you were on top of something like that, and you could open up a hole that went much farther down than you expected.

It looked to him like Nina and Muffy had found one of those little caves and were probably trapped now.

"What are we going to do! Oh, Nina!" The woman behind them wailed and the father cringed, looking helpless.

The man began to twist the large ring on his finger, deep in thought. "Calm down, darling. I'm sure she just slipped when the rocks here fell and now she'd too scared to come out. We'll get some men here to move the rocks and have her out in minutes."

"That will take too long. Don't worry, I'll take care of it!" Naruto quipped, "I'll go in after her and bring her back! I think I'm small enough to squeeze in. One of you can just run to town and find my kaa-san in case we need her to move these rocks. She's a really strong ninja and a medic."

The woman began wailing at the prospect of her daughter needing medical attention.

"I appreciate the offer, but I don't think it's safe for you to go down there, you could end up trapped too. You stay up here, and I'll go to town for help. Where can I find your kaa-san?"

"She's a tall woman with blonde hair and 'Gamble' written on the back of her coat. My neechan will be with her with a little pig. Neechan has dark hair and a black yukata! If they aren't at the hospital, they'll be at the casino. You'd better check there first, since it's closer. Kaa-san's name is Tsunade."

"Tsunade?! The legendary medic-nin?!" he gasped, hurriedly standing up to go find her.

"Yeah! She'll definitely be able to help."

He nodded and took off towards the town as fast as he could while his son attempted to comfort his mother.

Naruto looked back at the hole and bit his lip again. The man was probably right…he shouldn't go down, but the little girl could be hurt or something, and it must be scary to be trapped down in a hole. He was sure he'd be okay with his chakra. If he needed to, he could just walk up the wall or something to get out. Thinking things through before acting would never be his strong point.

Without further ado, he used his own strength to toss aside the main stone blocking the entrance and then began to squeeze himself through what was left of the opening.

"Hey! Dad said you should wait for help from town!" The other boy gasped, his hands twisting nervously in his silk beach robe.

"Don't worry," Naruto called, "I'll be fine! I'm practically a ninja already, too!"

It was a tight squeeze between the rocks for what seemed like ages. It took him quite a while to worm through, and he scraped his knees and elbows several times before the tunnel suddenly opened up into an area wide enough that he could comfortably stand up, then seemed to widen even more up ahead as it sloped down a bit into uncertain blackness.

"Nina?" he called, coughing a little on rock dust in the air and looking around. It was really dark in there. He wished he'd thought to bring a flashlight or something, but he hadn't packed anything but weapons and a few bottles of water into his ninja pouch that morning. The light from the opening was getting smaller and smaller and further and further away as he walked on. Nina wasn't answering, but he thought he heard a dog whimpering somewhere up ahead. The noise was echoing oddly, so he couldn't be sure.

There was a sudden rumbling and before he could even scream, the ground fell out from under him, sending him tumbling into a quickly widening hole he hadn't seen in the floor several feet away.

†

Tsunade tuned Shizune out as she put another coin into the machine in front of her and pulled the handle. Who cared if she blew a few ryo on the slots? It wasn't like their work wasn't in high demand! She was the best medic-nin in all of the Five Countries! They weren't in debt like they'd been before she'd gotten over her phobia of blood. She could always make up the cash she lost by saving some rich bastard's wife from a splinter or something. Nobles would pay the stupidest prices for fixing the lamest things, and they wanted only the best. This place was teeming with rich people on vacation some in disguise, and some not, but half of them hypochondriacs.

The little wheels in the machine turned and clanked and Shizune lectured on and on. Cherry, Cherry, Cherry…Oh crap, something horrible must have happened! The last wheel stopped on Cherry too. Lights and buzzers went off, and coins began clinking into the tray in front of her.

Shizune stopped and stared at her mentor, a look of horror on her face, "you won." That was never ever, ever, a good sign.

"Damn….where's Naru-chan?!"

Just then, a man ran up to them, panting and looking worried. "Are you Tsunade, the medic-nin? Your son said you could help me! My daughter is lost in some rocks on the beach!"

Tsunade stopped collecting her coins and immediately jumped up from her stool. "Where at? Show us!"

Together the three – plus one pig – ran towards the shoreline.

†

Naruto groaned and struggled to open his eyes. There was an odd pressure on his left side and everything hurt like he'd just got done with a dodging practice gone horribly wrong. He had no idea where he was or what had happened, and even when he finally managed to pry his eyelids up, it didn't help. Wherever he was, it was pitch black in there. He could smell rock dust and hear water dripping somewhere, but couldn't make out anything else about his surroundings or remember quite how he'd gotten there.

His arm and ribs hurt so badly he could hardly think, and he could feel the Kyuubi trying to get at whatever was wrong in order to heal him. If that happened, he'd be in trouble because he couldn't do much to get himself out of this mess, let alone a scared little girl, if he was seizing and coughing up blood. He had to figure out where he was and try to stop it.

The ground beneath him seemed to be made of uneven, porous rock, and there were smaller stones digging into his back. He felt along the object pinning him, and judging by the texture and the way it curved around and to the side, he realized it had to be a larger version of the stones he was laying on. Similar boulders seemed to be wedged all around him, and by the feel of his headache, one of them had become acquainted with his skull at some point. He couldn't hold back a groan of pain and a little whimper as he tried to wiggle experimentally to see how stuck he was. Nothing budged.

Memories of what had happened began to trickle through, and he knew he had to free himself before too much of the fox's chakra entered his system. He was already beginning to feel a little feverish – the first sign of chakra sickness. It was hard to concentrate, but he managed to summon up enough energy into his coils to use some approximation of his freakish strength and move the boulder holding him down. Kyuubi's power must have already mixed enough with his system to cause some problems, because instead of just pushing the rock aside, it exploded on impact, splattering him with sharp splinters of stone, and his tenketsu burned like nothing he'd ever felt before. He nearly screamed with the pain of it. 'Oh, not good. Not good…I want kaa-san!'

He forced himself to calm down and take a few breaths. Panicking wasn't going to help anything! He'd never before tried to use his chakra much when Kyuubi's energy was leaking into his system, and he made a mental note not to try it again if he could help it, but he managed to fight down the lasting ache to clear his thoughts enough to function again. He gripped his wounded shoulder and was disconcerted when his hand came away wet and sticky with blood.

He forced himself into some semblance of a meditative pose, gasping through the pain as he struggled into a sitting position. He slumped against one of the larger rocks, and pulled his legs up. This was so not good! His stomach tingled more urgently, where the seal sat, and the mark on his cheek began to 

burn. He frantically sent as much chakra as he could towards the site to try and keep the filter intact. If he could only strengthen it enough to hold for a few minutes…there!

Quickly, while he was able to use his chakra for other things, he tried to summon up one of the few healing jutsu he knew, a basic 'heal light wounds' sort of thing, but it was the best he could manage at the moment. His left arm didn't want to work right to form the seals, and It took him four tries with even the small amount of Kyuubi's power in his system throwing off his control. He usually had about a 75 percent success rate with basic healing jutsu, but he'd never had to try it under these kinds of conditions before.

He silently promised himself that he wouldn't argue with Kaa-san and Shizune about augmenting his training with medic-nin skills anymore, if he managed to survive this.

He finally succeeded in activating the jutsu. A light green glow sputtered around his right hand, and he immediately held it over the large, bleeding gash on his shoulder and ran it down over his aching ribs. As he worked, it got easier to keep back the fox's power, and the jutsu flowed more smoothly, but there was only so much he could do.

By the eerie green light of his glowing hand, he could see that the rock that had fallen on him had been sharp and heavy enough to make several small gashes along with the larger slash he'd been healing, and he was bruised up really good, but he didn't think his shoulder was dislocated. It evidentially hadn't damaged anything too important because the bleeding was sluggish and he could still move his fingers. By the feel of his head, he'd probably had a concussion at one point, but he guessed that's where Kyuubi's chakra had been heading because he wasn't dizzy enough to be newly concussed.

He took a few more deep, painful breaths and tried to remember what Shizune and Kaa-san had told him to do if he were ever hurt by himself somewhere. Emergency medical care? Check. Assess the surroundings? Check. Figure out as much as he could about the rest of the situation? Well, he guessed that was next.

He killed the power to the healing jutsu and started up the diagnostic one he'd just learned last month. He didn't like what it told him, but it could have been much worse. It looked like two of his ribs were cracked, but the bones in his arm were whole and he'd been right about his head - it wasn't a full-blown concussion anymore. All in all, he needed more medical attention than he could give himself, but he didn't need it right away. He had water in his pouch, not much but enough to last him a few days if he rationed it.

Now that he knew where he was, what was wrong with him, and had determined how long he could stay that way, he needed to figure out how to get out. He knew he couldn't afford to burn the chakra it would take to keep a light going indefinitely, but if he fell down again or something, having chakra left wouldn't do him much good. Besides, he had to find the little girl, and see if she was hurt, and then see if he could get them out of there. This was proving to be a much tougher task than he'd thought when he climbed into that hole. Hopefully his kaa-san was on the way…He didn't want to admit it, even to himself, but he was only eight, and he was scared and hurt and wanted a hug.

Okay, calm down, calm down! He closed his eyes and concentrated. He'd been trying to learn the chakra scalpel for ages, but the control at that amount of small-required output was still beyond him. When he'd begun learning it, it had been a sort of compromise between himself and his kaa-san. He'd 

wanted a cool offensive jutsu, and she'd wanted him to learn how to ease inflammation. They'd settled on the chakra scalpel because it could be both a medical jutsu and used offensively.

Unfortunately, his scalpel was more like a chakra butter knife. It worked really well in this situation though because instead of coating his fingers in a sharp, thin layer of energy, it lit up his hand in glowing blue waves. He levered himself upright and staggered along the way a bit until he could see the ceiling of the area he'd tumbled in with the jutsu's light. It looked like the floor of the smaller cave up above had given way, sending him down in a shower of rocks into this cavern, which stretched on in an undeterminable distance in front of him.

Studying what he could see of the area above, he thought it ended in this hole. He hadn't seen any other offshoots when he'd been up there, and the walls rose on three sides of the chasm. That meant Nina and Muffy had to be down here with him somewhere. What remained of the ledge was about 20 feet up at a sharp incline and bits of sand and small stones fell down between the rocks piled up making a sort of really steep ramp. He figured he must have at least partially rolled down that because if he'd fallen from that height with the boulders littering the floor, he doubted he'd have survived.

If he weren't hurt, he thought he'd have been able to climb back to the main tunnel easily, and he could probably still make it up there if he absolutely had to, but he hadn't found the little girl yet, so he couldn't just abandon her here.

He chewed on his bottom lip, a habit he'd picked up from Ero-jiji, and looked from the hole in the ceiling towards the forbidding darkness of the tunnel in front of him. He didn't want to go, but Nina couldn't be much older than him, if she was even his age yet, and she wasn't a ninja, so she was bound to be even more scared. He'd told her dad he would go get her, and he never went back on his words…

There was nothing for it. He gasped in pain, even breathing hurt with the damage to his ribcage, but began to stagger down the tunnel, his chakra lighting up the pathway in front of him. He used as little as he could, but it still showed him the uneven path a good five feet ahead. Hopefully it would be good enough to keep him from falling into another pit. He wished he'd thought of it sooner; it might have prevented this mess.

†

It wasn't too long before Shizune and Tsunade reached the beach where Nina's mother and brother were waiting anxiously. The Slug Sannin felt her stomach drop when she didn't spot Naruto with them. Knowing her son's penchant for getting into horrible situations, there was little doubt he'd decided to play hero. She had hypothesized that the gene for stupidly risking your neck for other people must be hardwired into the particular blue of his eyes because his father'd had the same eyes and the same problem. Damn that man!

It had taken about ten minutes for them to arrive on the scene, traveling at the fastest speed their guide could run, and Tsunade mentally cursed all non-shinobi as she quickly strolled forwards to assess the situation. A small opening in the rocks was the only clue to where the children had gone.

"He-He followed Nina in there."

She turned to face the sobbing woman, holding tightly to the boy beside her that could only be her son and staring unblinkingly at the rocks. "The little blond boy went in after her, but neither of them has come out yet, and we heard more rumbling a minute ago!"

Tsunade thought she was going to be sick. No, no, no! Not her Naru-chan! He was fine. He was the strongest damn brat she'd ever seen, and she'd made sure he was well grounded in medical basics. There was no way a few rocks were going to kill her stupidly heroic son.

Shizune caught her wrist before she could send a chakra imbued punch into the rock pile to enlarge the opening. "No! This area must be really unstable if there have been minor collapses twice in an hour, and this sort of rock is extremely fragile! Destroying more of the structure could bring it all down and crush them!"

"You're right…" Tsunade sighed; she needed to get it together. She obviously wasn't thinking clearly. Worry and fear were clouding her judgment. "We're going to have to do it the hard way." She picked up a boulder the size of a small pony with one hand and threw it aside. The worried father, now comforting his wife and son, gaped on, completely stunned, then hurried to help them widen the opening.

"Shizune, go back to town and get us more help. Bring ropes and lights too – this cave must be pretty deep if they can't hear us calling to them, so we'll need a group of workers."

"Yes! Of course!" The younger woman scrambled to obey. The rest of Nina's family came forward to help move debris as best they could.

†

No Japanese notes this time!

A/N: The 100th commenter prize is going to Super Saiyan 2 Gohan! who wants to see Tsunade and Naru-chan playing Shogi! I'll get to work on that this weekend! There will be a similar prize for the 200th comment! I hope you all enjoyed this chapter! Questions, Comments, and Crits are all welcome. :) I love input!

Don't forget about the title art in my profile! :D There's also a wallpaper-sized thing in there with several chibi!Naru images if you're into that sort of thing. :)