Naruto's planning was impressive, considering his so called stupidity. His execution of said plans was surpising, as he'd never shown aptitude before. But no matter how good his secret skills might be, he certainly overlooked several key details.
For one, his teammates were not stamina monsters like he was.
"N...aru...to....can't....breathe..." Sakura gasped behind him, and he and his clones paused on their current branch, looking back quizically.
Sakura was breathing heavily, clutching her side in an attempt to supress the pain there. Sasuke, while considerably more dignified about it, certainly looked quite as tired.
"Oh, shit. I forgot." He informed sheepishly. "Sorry. I guess we've been running a long time, huh?"
"Damn right, dobe." Sasuke agreed. His voice was strained, and a little rough.
"How....aren't you even....tired....Naru....to?" Sakura questioned weakly.
Naruto blinked, and his blood clones exchanged glances. "Nope."
"Stamina freak." Sasuke growled, shooting them an evil glare.
Tazuna laughed nervously. He was still over a clone's shoulder. The speed at which they'd been travelling was daunting to him, and he felt a little queasy.
"Well....uh....shit." Naruto frowned.
"Can't we... rest a bit....Naruto?" Sakura queried hopefully, and was startled at the abrupt change in her teammate's demeanor.
"Hell no! That would be stupid and dangerous. Chances are whoever's after us has a helluva lot more stamina than you do, so while we rest they'll be getting nearer! You're gonna have to hitch a ride on some clones." He made the seal, now confident enough with the sequence to shorten it. Two more clones appeared.
His teammates protested with what breath they had, while the clones slung them over their shoulders.
"It's either that or run yourself. I don't want to stop until late afternoon, at least. It's barely been a few hours since we set out."
"Six hours, actually." Tazuna informed, inspecting a miniature sun dial. "It's eleven am."
"Yeah, yeah, whatever." Naruto dismissed. "C'mon, get moving."
"Aye aye, boss!" The clones chirped, and abruptly took off again after Naruto's who'd resumed running.
"...This is uncomfortable." Sakura attempted to make conversation. The clone decided to ignore her.
"I'll say." Sasuke muttered. "It's humiliating. How come the dobe has so much endurance? Do you know, clone?" He prodded the one he was being carried by.
It shrugged. "Boss's buisiness. Why don't you ask him?" It wanted to avoid the issue as much as possible.
Sasuke harrumphed moodily, but was secretly grateful for the rest. They'd barely been keeping up at all, and every one of their joints burned.
And so the day went on.
xxxx
Zabuza sliced the head off the stupid genin, and she started a scream that never finished due to her lack of vocal cords. He frowned, and turned to the last two, who had taken the exact same freaking stances. Then they both leapt forward in the same way. He dodged, and eyed them suspiciously.
It was like their fighting styles were exactly the same.
He snarled at them. "Fuck's ass! They're having us on! These are fucking decoys!"
Haku slipped immediately out of hiding, taking in the identical looks of surprise on the two genin's faces.
"It seems so." The effeminate boy agreed. "It is a very effective technique....but just a technique." He sent needles into the jugular vein of the blonde one, who was too clumsy to dodge. Zabuza threw his sword, and it pierced through the belly of the other, leaving a gaping hole where Kubikiri Houchou had passed through.
"Dammit." The missing nin growled. "Get back to the first trail. The old man might be alive after all."
xxxxx
Naruto started in mid leap, and stopped on the next branch. His three clones had a similar reaction, looking at eachother confusedly.
"What? Why'd we stop?" Sasuke questioned, instantly alert.
The original blonde shook his head dazedly. "Damn. The decoys just got taken out."
"How can you tell? Don't you only get the memories when they dispell?" Sakura quickly added her imput.
"Well, yeah." Naruto frowned. "I've been having flashes of images of the way back whenever I thought about the decoys, but I passed it off as my imagination or something. I guess I've got some kind of mind link with the clones. But whatever, they were definitely just killed."
"How?" Sasuke questioned.
"Uh..." Naruto concentrated. "Really big ass sword. Took the head off one, and stabbed through the belly of another. The last one got some needles in its throat, in the vein. I think there were two people."
His team winced.
"I'll create another team of them, and send them back a bit. Have them be 'taking a rest'. It might hold up the enemy, at least. And I'll get to test the telepathy thing." He made the seal. "Chikage no jutsu." Four clones appeared, and promptly tranformed into copies of the team plus Tazuna. Then they headed abruptly back along the trail, even the Tazuna clone.
"Damn, but it's weird to see me all ninjalike like that." Tazuna commented.
"Hm." Naruto watched them go, until they were out of sight. He concentrated on them.
He saw rushing forest ahead of them, felt the rush of the wind in their hair...
I wonder if I can get thoughts across? He wondered absently, and concentrated on the clones harder. Uh...hey? No response. The images gave no indication that his thought had been heard. He sighed in frustration, and rubbed his temples. Dammit!
-Boss?- The thought came to him, sounding startled, and it didn't feel right, not like one of his own thoughts. It was more like one of his clones talking, but not aloud. He blinked, and looked around. He focused on his clones, and found that they'd stopped.
"Uhh, boss? I heard that too." A nearby clone volunteered.
"Huh. Must be something about having your fingers on your head. Or- oh right, the chakra." He recalled he'd started focusing chakra to his fingers when massaging his head, it was much more effective for relieving headaches. Something about the chakra triggered the mind link. He focused the chakra again. Hey? Turns out I can give you my thoughts if I focus chakra to my head with my fingers.
-Really? Cool.- The reply came afterwards, fascinated.
-How come we don't have to focus our chakra?- Another inquired.
Probably because I'm doing it myself. I'll stop, and you see if you can contact me just by thinking normally. If you can't, try with the focusing.
-Kay.-
Naruto removed his hand. He waited. Nothing happened, until a good few seconds later.
-You're right, at least one of us has to be holding the connection. We'll report if we see anything.-
You do that. Naruto signalled to the rest of the teammate-bearing clones. "C'mon, let's get moving." They set off immediately with a burst of speed, and Naruto explained his discovery to his teammates. "I can talk to my clones with my thoughts, turns out. Like walkie talkies, I guess. Handy."
Sakura blinked. "That's actually really useful." Naruto nodded, then decided he might as well dispell the dead decoys.
He did so, and got the memories. "Hey guys, I just dispelled the dead decoys, and yeah, there is two of them. A big guy wearing bandages as a mask, and he looks like he skinned a giraffe to get his clothes. He's the one with the sword. The other one's smaller, looks sorta like a girl, but they're wearing one of those hunter-nin mask things, so I can't tell. They're handy with the senbon needles, though. Got the clone on the first try."
"...So they're good, then." Sasuke concluded.
"Mmhm." Naruto confirmed. "Which is a good reason to hurry the hell up! Pick up the pace, minions!" He ordered his clones, abruptly increasing his speed and leaving the 'minions' to follow.
Naruto didn't want to admit it, but after a while he had to.
This constant pace was tiring him out.
He might have inhuman stamina, but he had limits. And he was getting near those limits. He pumped chakra into his lungs and limbs, which definitely helped. He should be fine for a good while yet.
xxxxxx
Zabuza sprang in among the little den of genin, who looked remarkably surprised at his entrance. They were apparently resting, along with the old man. He smiled triumphantly. These are the real ones. Then he realized something, and scowled.
"Oh, for fuck's sake!"
"They have no injuries, despite having had a confrontation with the demon brothers." Haku observed, sweeping out of nowhere.
"Yeah." Zabuza nodded, in a notoriously bad mood. "More decoys." With that, he promptly charged the decoys. But they'd had time to prepare, and were a lot harder to dispatch than the previous ones. They were slow, and were disgustingly sloppy, but undeniably strong and unpredictable. They seemed to pull moves out of their ass at a second's notice.
They were very good, for replicants. He wondered how powerful the genin creator could be, or if they were even a genin. He shrugged, and shit halfway through the neck of one. One down. Three to go. Haku stood patiently at the side. His master obviously needed to blow off some steam.
xxxxx
"Shit!" Naruto swore suddenly, stopping along with his clones to curse in a wide-eyed frenzy. "Those two have caught up to the new decoys already! That's like, over a hundred miles in only that long! They've already taken one out."
"What do we do?" Sakura asked, wide eyed and anxious.
"I create as many clones as I can to fight and delay them. Once I dispell them I might know enough about how they fight to do better. Will hopefully wear them down a bit too. The clones will give us an idea of exactly how close they are, and we run like hell. Get as far away as possible. If they get too close, I dispell all the dead decoys and we get ready to fight. Get the hell moving!"
There was a distinct difference from 'travelling' running and 'sprinting' running. The travelling type, while fast, was generally slow enough that it could be sustained for a while. Sprinting was going as fast as physically possible, and meant for shorter distances. Sprinting was what the clones did, all the while Naruto made the same handseal many times again, letting loose a miasma of chakra. He created clones as he went, and they took formation behind him, not bothering to transform. It was futile. He distinctly mused that he must have created over fifty clones in the last eight minutes, and observed his connections with the clones to see how far the enemy was getting. The clones were definitely holding them up.
He began to realize as he ran, made clones, and continued that while Chikage clones took up less chakra, maintaining a steady stream of them like this was bound to cut his chakra supplies low eventually. Either way, he didn't really have to start worrying until he'd made the high hundred mark with their numbers, but they always had chakra pills.
"Freaking hell, dobe. You really do have a lot of chakra." Sasuke commented, sounding mildly impressed at the consistent stream of chakra erupting around him. Naruto merely grunted in reply.
xxxxx
"Who the hell has this much chakra?!" Zabuza snarled, confronted with a small army of blondes rushing at him angrily. Haku had joined in, if only to quicken the progress. The decoys fell like skittles, each wave of them harder to beat. They were getting used to their fighting styles. That couldn't be allowed to happen! He roared with frustration, aware of the blood on his blade poofing into nonexistence with the decoys themselves.
xxxx
Naruto made the seal again. By now, he'd abandoned use of the words entirely, simply allowing the seals and intent to guide the jutsu. Words took too long. "We're learning their fighting pattern. It's getting easier to resist now! We have to hold up as long as possible." Four more clones dropped into position behind him.
The stream of time continued in its powerful, wide-eyed flurry, all three genin tense for the coming battle. The suspense was unbearable, the head of the rushing chakra made them dizzy...
"We're not far now!" Tazuna urged, recognizing the lake they'd just passed. "Not far at all! It's just a mile or two until the water's edge!"
"And then what?!" The clone carrying him snarled. "No fucking rowing boat is going to outrun them! We're gonna have to fight whatever happens."
Another clone growled its agreement. Naruto bit his lip, and did the jutsu again.
xxxx
"Zabuza-sama?" Haku questioned timidly, taking out another opponent. "How long do you suppose these decoys will continue before we find the source?"
"Hopefully we'll find them at the edge of the sea. If they're genin, they might not know water walking."
"Genin with so much chakra?"
"Probably a bloodline. Don't ask me."
Haku stiffened at the mention of bloodlines, and continued the onslaught through the masses.
xxxx
"Ah!" Naruto exclaimed suddenly. "We know the name of one of them. Zabuza. The smaller one called him 'sama'. Probably a subordinate."
"Zabuza?" Sasuke frowned. Then his eyes widened in recognition. "Of course! Big sword, large guy - I've read about him in the bingo book!"
"Tell us what you can." Naruto ordered.
"A-rank missing nin." Sasuke replied immediately. "Former jounin of the hidden mist. He was one of the seven swordsmen of the the mist before he tried to kill the Mizukage. It's said he killed a hundred students of his graduating class to graduate. He's been called the 'Demon of the Bloody Mist', or 'Zabuza of the Bloody Mist'."
"...A jounin. Shit. That's bad."
"A jounin..." Sakura murmured, voice thick with fear. "Oh kami..."
Naruto squinted ahead. "There's the treeline! We're at the shore." He breathed out heavily. "Time to make a stand..." He stopped just outside the trees, in the open shore. The water was dark and shrouded in mist. The exhausted clones let down the well-rested teammates, who were considerably sore from the position. They immediately began stretching, while Naruto downed a few soldier pills and chakra pills. with that, his energy and chakra took a massive boost. He flipped the poisoned, sensei-killing gauntlets out of his bag, and stared at them spitefully. A ninja must make use of the tools he has. He told himself firmly, and put them on.
"Bastard! You got any poison?"
Sasuke nodded cautiously.
"Dip your best weapons in it. Sakura, watch Tazuna. CHIKAGE NO JUTSU!" He roared, fueling a gargantuan amount of chakra into the attack.
Roughly thirty clones materialized, and Naruto suddenly fell to the ground, gasping for breath.
"Naruto!" Sakura rushed over. "What's wrong? Have you used too much chakra?"
The blond genin was pale, very pale. It looked like he'd turned completely white. He panted. "No, chakra's fine. Feel dizzy..." He abruptly took in a solider pill and a chakra pill, but it did little good. "Shit..." He looked around the remaining pills, then tried a blood pill. To his surpise, he perked up immediately, colour returning to his skin. "Something to do with my blood, I guess. I'll think about that later." He ate another blood pill, feeling himself return to normal. "Everyone, take some of these! You might need them. Old man, have some blood pills in cast they slip past our defences." His team accepted the pills, and watched the forest, tense. Naruto dispelled his dead clones one by one, observing the enemy as they approched. He gained more and more knowledge with every clone, but it didn't help the sick feeling he had at the moment.
"He fights with a lot of killing intent. Try not to let it scare you." Naruto informed. He'd long gotten used to this 'Zabuza's' tactics, and could now withstand the killing intent with ease, but the same didn't apply to his teammates. He concentrated, and clenched his fists. "Right. That's it. They're here." The clones took a semicircle formation around them, providing a steady wall of defence.
To their surprise, only Zabuza emerged from the trees. Not his subordinate.
"Finally..." The jounin breathed, then eyed the clone barrage with distaste. "Tch, talk about wasting chakra. You must have hardly any left."
Naruto grinned. That's what you think. Then he blinked, watching as a thick mist joined that above the waves.
"...A mist jutsu? Fitting." Sakura remarked, trying to hide how her voice was shaking.
"Come on, Zabuza. You've caught up to us at last." Naruto called.
"You've done your homework, hm?" The next second, a miasma of killing intent saturated the air, and only Naruto and his clones seemed unaffected. Sakura trembled and her breathing shook. Sasuke's eyes widened and he froze.
"Breathe, guys! Breathe!" Naruto snarled at them. They couldn't afford to lose their cool here. His teammates nodded shakily, doing their best to ward off the effects.
The clones charged, and Naruto was aware as those on the initial assualt died. They were clones, they didn't need to be careful. He, on the other hand, definitely did. He closed his eyes briefly and took a deep breath, trying to calm himself. Ah, shit. We're screwed. What I'd give to have that bastard fox help me out for once.
Naruto looked to his teammates. "I'm going in with the clones. You should stay here for as long as possible. Either that or henge into me, but it'll be kinda obvious since we fight so differently." With that, Naruto charged into the fray.
"Good luck..." Sakura whispered, assuming a defensive position around Tazuna, who looked appropriately terrified. Beside her, Sasuke took the second option, and charged in behind his teammate, blending into the massive crowd. Sakura took Naruto's form, for deception's sake, but did not move from her guardian position. She knew how little use she was in a fight at the moment.
It was a fray of chaos and blood. Sasuke and Naruto fought with considerably less recklessness than the clones, jumping away rather than taking injuries, dodging rather than blocking. They made sure to mingle as much as possible, lest Zabuza discover where they were. All the while they were on lookout for the second enemy, hidden somewhere in the undergrowth.
Quickly, the number of clones dwindled. Naruto paused occasionally to make another, but couldn't do it too often in case he was caught. With a growl of frustration, Zabuza suddenly decided to bypass the clones altogether, and rushed for Tazuna. Sakura, quick as a flash, thre up several explosive noted kunai, forcing Zabuza to change his course mid-air.
He landed on the water, literally on its surface.
"What the hell?! How's he doing that?!" One clone yelled in shock.
"No fucking idea!" Another replied. "He must be doing something, though. Chakra towards the feet, maybe?"
"Worth a shot!" Others agreed, and shot forward once more. Meanwhile, Sakura ushered Tazuna to a more secure location, away from Zabuza but not too close to the trees. A few clones broke off to assist her in guarding, apparently the ones which had been running for miles already.
Each clone either put too much, or much too little chakra into their attempts at waterwalking. Some shot off the surface, making the water explode into droplets, and others simply sunk and lost their footing. Some remained afloat for a while, but quickly made a fatal mistake. Zabuza was obviously in his element, and was picking them off with ease. The original Naruto pulled Sasuke to the back of the remaining clones, urgently whispering a hasty plan to him, then rushed to carry out the first steps.
Sasuke quickly followed the instructions, and brandished his poisoned fuuma shuriken. The clones cleared a path in alarm as he let it fly, and Zabuza almost scornfully dodged it, stepping to the side. Then his eyes widened at a second one, and realized he'd have to jump to avoid it. So he did, easily landing again on the surface. The clones continued their assault.
Behind him, Naruto the 'fuuma shuriken' assumed his original form, and pushed a ridiculous amount of chakra to his feet just as he hit the water. He exploded upwards, just as planned, and tilted himself. He let loose another foot-blast of chakra, and rocketed towards Zabuza like a lightningbolt.
Impressively, he'd definitely taken the jounin off guard. And that was all Naruto needed to gouge a deep hole into his enemy with the poisoned gauntlets. Zaubuza sunk partially into the water, cursing and swinging round in an attempt to hit Naruto.
Naruto dodged, and escaped his gambit with his life, but sustained a minor wound to his arm, which was already closing up. He streamed back to the shore via chakra, and inspected his injury. It would be gone soon.
"That was a good move." Sasuke allowed. "Sloppy, but good."
Naruto grinned. "Thanks, bastard. I think a lot of that poison got in. It should start working soon."
Indeed, the clones didn't have to hold out for much longer. Zabuza's movements began getting sluggish, and the missing-nin realized what had happened. With a profane curse, he shoved his way onto dry ground and ran like a drunken man to the trees, pursued by clones. Some reached him, and beat him to the ground, ripping him with their own gauntlets, presumably poisoned as well.
Then it all stopped.
A figure hurtled from the undergrowth, fighting off the ones surrounding Zabuza with all the speed of a striking cobra. The person grabbed the fallen jounin, made a handseal, and disappeared.
"Shit! We were so close!" Naruto cursed. Then he brightened, realizing what had happened. "We fucking survived! We fucking nearly beat a jounin!"
As Naruto and his clones cheered, Sakura and Sasuke sagged in relief.
It was over.
For now.
xxxx
So, how was that? I'm quite pleased with it, really. I think I did okay with the fight scene. What do you think?