Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto and any reference to any other thing owned by someone else.

Claimer: The OCs are mine. If any are sue-ish, well…they're still my sues.

Warning: Characters may sometimes be OOC. You have been warned.

Lost

Chapter 2

Arriving at the port town at the designated time was very problematic for the legendary master, especially when he had to fight his way into it.

After hearing of the pirate-bandit team up, some rogue ninjas decided to get in on the action, they would stop any outside help from getting into the town and helping. These rogues were from the country which they had deserted so long or not so long ago. Most of which were semi-masters in their own right of the element of lightning.

Passing Kumo-nins attracted by the sounds of battle, the smell of blood, and the sight of smoke rushed to the scene engaging their former comrades in battle. At the same time Jiraiya too joined in the fray.

Kumo-nin versus Kumo-nuke-nin, Gama-sennin versus kumo-nuke-nin. The Kumo-nin and the Sennin were out numbered six to one.

The Kumo-nins flew into action engaging six opponents each, throwing out balls of lightning, spears, clones, weapons laced with it, and a bunch of other things, their counterparts letting loose a barrage of weapons and techniques of their own.

The Sennin didn't both with his toads, he just entered the fray, quickly spewing a swamp to trap his foes. The swamp was mixed with some oil, so following the swamp he blew out fireball after fireball ranging in size from big to small. His first six opponents were to slow to act or react. Although their classes ranged from D to A, they were no match for someone who has the power, ability and experience in leveling villages, especially if the fight started as quickly and suddenly as it did.

The Kumo-nins weren't faring any better than their nuke-nin counter parts. Of the original fifteen that had come to help, only seven remained, but through the sacrifice of their brethren they were able to lower the ratio from six to one, to merely two to one, better odds for the Kumo-nins.

But even if the odds were better, they were still losing, they were no longer at maximum capacity, they were battered, bruised, bleeding, and tired. Another round with the rogues would surely end their lives.

Before the fourteen finishing blows could land on their targets, a wall of mud stopped the attacks from landing.

The startled nuke-nin had forgotten their other foe, Jiraiya. Acting quickly the fourteen sprang into action, were like a cohesive unit, half concentrated on defending, while the other half concentrated on attacking. The sennin, noticing this, fired off fire dragons and wind bullets in the direction of the rogues, the rogues dodged the attacks, but were unable to completely avoid the attacks.

They retaliated by attacked of their own, Lightning dragons arched through the air scorching the earth, rocks and trees in the area, but missing the sennin. One of the nuke-nin decided to rush the toad hermit sparks visible on his fist, his attack connecting with a log. Due to the force of his punch and his momentum he was unable to dodge the sennin's counter attack, a swift kick to the torso, which promptly knocked out the nuke-nin.

'One down, thirteen to go' thought the sennin.

After dodging several projectiles, the sennin sent several earth spikes at the nuke-nins that were focusing on defense.

Jumping out of the way, the nuke-nins created water walls to stop the sennin's attacks before they could hit, but one nin was too slow and was down for the count.

Four of the rogues jumped high into the air and formed a net of lightning chakra as they dropped down around the sennin.

Realizing what the rogues were attempting to do the sennin substituted himself with one of the other remaining nuke-nin. After switching places he swiftly knocked out another two nuke-nins with a split kick to their guts.

Dusk was nearly upon the battling nins, and the port town looked like it needed more help, more screams and shouts could be heard from beyond the wall around the town.

Since he needed to take out the trash faster he quickly, summoned some toads, now that his opponents were slower than when the battle began, he could afford to let them rest and regroup for a few seconds.

But at the arrival of some battle toads the nuke-nin stood no chance, all of them dropping like flies one after the other.

The battle against the nuke-nin had been won, but at the cost of the lives of eight kumo-nins, a loss that was felt by the remaining seven.

Picking themselves off the floor they readied themselves to enter the town, and do battle with the forces that lay within.

But before they started moving, the sennin spoke to them.

"You guys rest, I'll go on ahead."

"B-but, we c-can s-still f-fight." One of the survivors managed to stutter out.

"You're too tired to even talk straight, much more fight. I'll deal with this."

One of the survivors took a step forward then collapsed from exhaustion.

"See," the sennin said, while motioning at the fallen man, "Just rest up. Take out any that try to leave."

"F-fine. We'll rest." Another man answered for the rest. He promptly plopped down on the ground, the others falling on their ass.

The sennin moved onwards and inwards into the town, worrying for the safety of his student that he knew was inside, and for the people that were still battling within the walls.

A few minutes of hopping on the roof tops the sennin saw some monsters devouring the remains of some of the fallen locals, and some of the still living ones.

Jumping down to rid the world of these evils he took note of their appearances. There were three of them, three hulking masses of muscle, blood, and bone. They were about seven to eight feet tall, with scars and stitches crisscrossing their bodies. They had metal objects, ranging from steel pipes to swords and spears, impaled in their bodies, but they didn't seem to pay them any mind.

One of the monsters turned around and saw him. Its face did not sport anything other than a mouth, a mouth filled with bloody teeth that could give a shark a run for its money. The sennin then noticed that its hands were clawed, and that it was running straight for him, its purplish skin glistening in the moonlight.

Trying to jump over the rushing behemoth, a clawed hand found its way through his leg, tearing through muscle and tendons, luckily not breaking the bone.

Landing in a crouch ignoring the pain brought on by the surprise attack, he realized with horror, that even with their size these things were fast.

The second of the monsters joined in on the attack, rushed Jiraiya with a clawed hand held high in an attempt to take out the crouching sennin with a downward slash.

Rolling to the side the sennin avoided certain doom, then rushing through a seal sequence he pushed the second monster away from him, his hands in a pushing motion, he utilized a technique that manipulated the wind. The monster slammed hard into a nearby building.

The third monster seeing its ally being blown back started throwing corpses at the injured sennin. One of which hit its mark and sent the sennin flying into his own building, in the process shattering his right shoulder blade.

Injured as he was, he picked himself out of the ruined building wall and a defensive stance, good thing too since the three monsters came at him, the first one attempting to flatten him under its foot. The second tried to impale him with its clawed hands. The third one moved to the side avoiding the sennin's wind push, which flung its two accomplices into another building, the building falling in on itself crushing the two abominations whose bodies could not handle tons of concrete slamming into their forms.

The remaining monster attacked Jiraiya seeing that he was panting from his most recent attack. It swung one clawed hand at the sennin's head but missed as Jiraiya ducked at the last second, he then punched the monster in the gut as hard as he could, and it was pushed back only a few feet. Before it could recover, the sennin powered up a rasengan which he slammed into the still aching gut of the monster. Which resulted in its being blasted backwards, spinning as it hurtled and hit another building.

Jiraiya took a breather, sat down and healed his wounds, the one that he knew how anyway. He would need a medic to fix his shoulder, but his leg was patched up but still hurt, at least it was no longer bleeding. His arms hurt from the shoulder down to the palms of his hands, from using his wind push technique. Swirling winds traveled down his arms starting from his shoulders, and moving outwards from his open palms when he does a pushing motion. Even as experienced in battle as he was the injury to his leg and shoulder caused a slight slip in his control of the winds which caused cuts to appear on his arms. But he was able to heal those as well, yet the pain still lingered. After using the technique the first time, his arms started to numb. His training as a fighter is what allowed him to continue with the battle.

He knew that the battle for the town was far from over so after the quick rest, he continued on his way through the town every now and then having to take on another monster or three.

After toppling another building on top of his latest monster kill, he felt it, power without equal. Or so he thought until not a second later after the power had stopped increasing, he felt another wave of power, just as strong as the previous one, but this one feeling different from the first, this one was slightly more controlled.

At that point he knew that his student was in for the ride of his life, a fight that he knew that he would be hard pressed not to roll over and just die.

After dispatching yet another group of monstrosities, these ones having no legs but serpent like tails, they resembled naga, but were huge and they had four arms instead of just two. The fight had injured him further another group battle could take him out for good, so he took a seat on the street by the corpses of his foes, and rested, but when he looked towards the docks, he was amazed at what he saw.

Dragons flew in the sky battling each other for dominance, dragons of different colors, of different elements were clawing at one another, scratching, biting, ripping into one another, all of them fighting as if they were alive.

Sometime later, on the same street as he was resting, the remaining kumo-nin he was with earlier landed near him panting. After resting for a while, and taking some soldier pills and other cures, they traveled through the town taking out what enemies they could find. More bodies littered the street, all of which looked to have been brought down by a blade of wind all the wounds that they took a look at were clean cuts.

As they were traveling on the rooftops they too saw the clash of the mystical titans. By the time they reached Jiraiya the battle seemed to be coming to a close. The group then decided to move towards the center of the town, to regroup with whoever would be there.

Moving towards the center of the town they met up with other groups of nin that had been passing by and decided to help in the fight. These other nin seemed to have come from other villages aside from Kumogakure no Sato. Surprisingly or not, Jiraiya was the only one from Konohagakure no Sato. It seemed they all had the same idea, that was to go to the center of town.

Upon arriving at their destination, they were greeted by the sight of other injured, and some uninjured who were acting as impromptu medics. They were bandaging the injured, and treating their wounds. The center of town was packed with injured and uninjured were moving around, like bees each with a task to complete. There were even some people in the street leading in and out of the center of town.

Noticing that more injured had arrived some of the people took the more severely injured ninjas somewhere that they could be treated, the rest were told to just find a place to sit and rest.

Not long after some of the ninjas, including Jiraiya had drifted off to sleep, too tired from battling the inhuman and human foes.

After a while the people were greeted by the sight of a man clad in all black, his clothes were in pristine condition, nothing was out of place, he did not look like he was part of the battle to defend the port town.

After speaking a few words he left the port town.

The resting people were left to sleep where they were. But the ninjas that were sleeping were awoken by their comrades, some of whom left the town to return home and report what had happened. Some left to complete their missions. Not all the teams that arrived left complete, there were some that had lost a comrade or two, others that only had just one member left, and there were others that just couldn't stand the sight of people helping them. Jiraiya was awoken from his slumber by the kumo-nins that fought alongside him, they told him about what he had missed, and wished him luck with whatever it was that he was going to do. Then they left him alone in a town of strangers that he had helped.

He was given room and board in the remaining hotel in the town, the others had collapsed due to the fighting. He decided to rest a while, the fact that his student was the one to end the lives of the leaders of the attack, and that said student was no where in the town had yet to set in. It had been three days after the battle that he realized that he had no clue as to where his student was. He knew they were supposed to meet up at around the time of the battle, but forgot about it after all the commotion.

That was when the information from the Kumo-nin sank in, the whereabouts of his student was lost to him, he had no idea where his student could be, what condition he was in, and where or how to start looking, the only clue he had was that the a man in black attire had taken him away to recuperate.

He also realized then and there that his formerly flat-chested teammate was going to kill him when she found out that he had lost his student.

He knew it was cowardly of him not to immediately inform his village leader of his irresponsibility, but he cared for the young man, and after some more days, left in search of his student as well as keeping up with his research.

As important as his student was to him, his village also depended on him to monitor the movements of other nations, villages, and certain organizations.

He would from that moment on, until he found his student or his student found him, which ever came first, spend half his time searching for his student and spend the other half doing research.

A month later on another continent a young man's eyes were fluttering open, the first thing he noticed was the white ceiling, what followed was the smell of disinfectant.

The first thought that passed through his mind was that he was at a hospital.

'I hate hospitals' he thought.

He tried to sit up but found that he was too weak to do so. So he just moved his head trying to take a look at his surroundings.

On one side of his bed were a number of medical contraptions, some of which were attacked to him, some monitoring his breathing, others monitoring his heart rate, others his brain for some reason, and other his chakra.

On the other side of his bed was a chair with a sleeping nine-tailed-fox curled up in it. Leaning on the chair was a sheathed katana with a plain handle and cross guard, on a table also beside his bed was a kunai, slightly longer than a normal one, but a kunai nonetheless. Hanging on the backrest of the chair were some clothes, clothes that resembled the ones the man he recalled fighting was wore.

Then another struck him, the town, the battle, did he win, were the people okay, and lastly where was he.

In his panicked state he tried to get up once more, but like his previous attempt he found that he couldn't sit up. He wasn't going anywhere.

But his attempts had awakened the sleeping kitsune on the chair.

"Yo! Glad to see you're awake!" stated the kitsune.

The young man's head snapped to where he heard the voice.

"Who said that? Show yourself!"

"Yo," the kitsune said once more while waving a paw, "Over here."

"You?"

"Me."

"I thought there was only one of you."

"Well, that is still true."

"How'd you get out?!" he paused thinking, "We're dead! I'm dead!" he continued to panic even more, while still being unable to move anything other than his head.

"We're not dead. I was just freed. Any other questions?"

"So…are you gonna eat me?"

"Why would I do that?"

"Well, you're free."

"Sorry to burst your bubble, but you wouldn't taste good."

"What do you mean I wouldn't taste good? I would taste great! Stop insulting me!"

"For your information I haven't insulted you yet. But are you saying I should eat you?"

"Well, no. But.."

"I don't like ramen."

"How can you not like ramen! The food of the gods! The…" his rant was cut short by the door to the infirmary opening, and someone entering.

The person who entered the room was wearing back pants, boots, and a white long sleeved shirt. His hair was in a lose pony-tail.

"Ah, good, you're finally awake. I was beginning to think you were in a coma or something," the man said, "I almost fed your recovering body to Touken."

"Who?"

"Me, luckily I don't want to eat you."

"Imagine that. Also sad to say I have to disagree with you, ramen is not the food of the gods."

"Then what is? Huh? Huh? Huh?"

"I wouldn't know! Do I look like a god?"

"Could've fooled me…" the kitsune mumbled.

"Shut it you," he said to the kitsune, "Do you have any questions for me?"

"Yeah, who are you? Where am I?" then pointing at the kitsune, "How'd he get out?"

"In order, I," pointing to himself, "am Kyonshi."

"Your name means 'reanimated corpse'."

"I know. Don't worry I'm not."

"Could've fooled me…" the kitsune mumbled again.

Instead of saying anything, Kyonshi just kicked the kitsune through a wall or five, and continued.

"Don't mind him, where was I?"

Visibly shaken at the display of power, the young man answered, "Uh…where I am?"

"Ah yes, you are currently in my home."

"Where is that then?"

"Can't remember."

"Its your home, but you don't know where it is?"

"Yup. I haven't a clue."

"Then how'd you get here, bring me here if you don't know where we are?"

"Ah, hmm…" scratching the back of his head, Kyonshi nervously laughed for a bit, "Ah, well, you see…I'll tell you when you're older."

"Eh? Tch, whatever, I'll figure it out. So how'd the fox get out?"

"I pulled him out." Kyonshi simply stated.

"That's it?"

"Yup. That's it, why is that a problem?"

"Yes that's a problem I could have died!" the youth shouted.

"Could have, past tense. You aren't dead."

"…"

"Now then, if you have no more questions, I shall continue with what I was going to tell you in the first place."

He moved to sit on the chair, which he did, once he was comfortable he snapped his fingers which made the youth comfortable somehow.

"Touken told me that you are named Uzumaki Naruto, is this correct?" he asked.

"Yes." Naruto answered.

"Nice to meet you Naruto-kun, I am Toukou Kyonshi, and am very interested in you."

"Err, you too, but what do you mean you are interested in me?"

"Well, you killed one of my students."

"I did," slight panic, "I'm sorry, I didn't know, uhm…"

"Yes?"

"Who was your student?"

"The person that got you injured enough to need a month's worth of bed rest."

"Him! That guy was your student," he received a nod, "Then I'm not sorry I killed him."

Smiling, Kyonshi asked, "Why is that?"

"Because if I didn't then he would continue to kill innocent people."

"Au contraire, if you didn't kill him, I would have."

Naruto stared at him incredulously, "Why would you kill your own student??"

Leaning back on the backrest to make himself more comfortable, he said, "Because he, and four others, left me without my permission. They," he paused thinking of the best word to use, "broke their promise to me."

"Just cause they broke a promise to you, you'd kill them?"

"Well it was a special promise, so yes, I would, and did." Kyonshi said calmly like it was an everyday thing, killing one's own students.

"B-b-but…"

"There are no 'buts'. Another question, are you happy about what you have done?"

"Huh? Do what?" he asked confused.

"Are you happy that you saved me the trouble of killing my student? Are you happy that you killed someone? That you killed another human being? Someone with his own dreams? Someone with his own ambitions? Someone with his own goals? Are you happy that you took someone else's life? I know you aren't stupid," he growled out the last part, his voice growing a menacing edge.

"I..wha..?" then images, memories of that day turned night over a month ago surfaced to the front of his mind. Images to the things he had done as he fought his foe, in their battle of life and death.

He recalled the men he had beaten up, before heading off towards the docks, the docks where he battled that red clad man.

He remembered that after a sudden increase in his speed he shoved his kunai through the heart of his foe.

"I-I-I-I…" he started to stutter.

"Now you realize what you have done. Are you happy?"

"N-n-no." he answered shakily.

"Good. If you were, I would have killed you too."

"…"

"I believe that he was your first kill, correct?" he looked at Naruto.

"…"

Not receiving an answer, "You may nod if yes, or shake your head if no."

Naruto nodded feeling guilty from what he had done, even if the man he had killed was another person, another human being, he was someone that needed to be killed.

Continuing the line of thought that Naruto was thinking, Kyonshi continued, "I believe that you are now realizing that sometimes there are times that you must do things that you do not like, or will not like, or even will regret doing. This is something that you must learn if you are to continue with your profession," he paused to see if his companion understood what he was saying, "There are times when things such as what you have done become necessary. Should he have lived, and had I not been present, all the people in that port would most likely no longer be counted among the living, and those that still would be alive would be living a meaningless existence."

"I think I get what you're saying. Its just that, well, wasn't there any other way?" Naruto tried to console himself by asking.

"Do you think my deceased bloodthirsty student would have listened to reason? Reasons that were not his own?"

"Well…no. I guess not," he paused, "But why did it have to be me?"

"There is a time and place for everything, just as there is a time and place for everyone. It just so happened that you were the one to confront him, you were given a choice, and you chose."

"What do you mean I was given a choice, he was killing people, he would have killed more people if I didn't act."

"Precisely, had you chosen not to attack, had you chosen not to call on the power of Touken, had you not decided to stand between him and the town, you would not have ended his life." He explained.

"But I killed him."

"Yes you did. But I'm sure you had a good reason to. I mean, would you rather he killed more? I think not. You did the right thing. You took a life, deal with it," he paused thinking, as if trying to remember something, "I once read somewhere that stated: Kill one, save a thousand."

"Ok, I think I really understand now," he paused again, "But I don't think I can accept what I did, yet."

"In time, you will," clasping his hands together, Kyonshi straightened his back, "Now onto business," snapping his fingers again, a rolled up scroll appeared on the table by the bed, "In this scroll," he pointed to the scroll, "Are maps of my home, as well as some instructions, ending with a question. I expect an answer by the end of the month."

"Ok."

"Good," Kyonshi stood up from the seat, and started towards the door, "I will see you in a month, should you have any additional questions, just ask Touken," with that he left Naruto alone in the infirmary.

Back with Naruto, after Kyonshi left the infirmary the medical equipment just vanished, as if they weren't there in the first place.

So Naruto got off the bed and just attributed the vanished equipment with the weirdness of Kyonshi.

He then took the clothes that were hanging on the backrest of the chair, and put them on. They fit perfectly, he liked the feeling, and the clothes, even though they were similar to the ones the his first kill wore. He took the katana and strapped it to his waist, and placed the kunai in a sheath on his arm.

He looked for a mirror, and after finding one, took a look at himself.

He wore a hooded trench coat the outside was dark red in color, the inside was white. Underneath the coat he wore a dark red shirt with an orange spiral over where his heart would be. His pants were also dark red, with white clouds embroidered on the sides of the pant legs. Shielding his feet from the elements were a pair of boots the color of dried blood. As for his hands, he had a pair of dirty white colored gloves that sported a some red splotches here and their, as if he had bloodied his gloves killing someone with his bare hands.

After admiring himself in the mirror, he walked back to his bed, and unfurled the scroll on the bed. The instructions written on the scroll were directions to the room he would be staying in, as well as the rules to be observed in Kyonshi's home.

The rules were quite a lot, there were rules like 'no killing other sentient life-forms found in the fortress' this rules having a footnote which just said, 'if it can talk don't kill it'. Then there were rules like, 'if you have no other choice, but to kill something, go ahead, just don't come running to me when you realize that you have bitten off more than you can chew'. There were even rules like, 'don't jump off the cliffs' and 'finders keepers losers weepers, but if you claim something of mine, I'll hang your body above a pit of the most poisonous things I can think up'. Then there were also rules like, 'jump up and down three times if you find yourself stuck in a white space'. The rules were filled with such stuff, but of course there were sensible rules.

The maps were not ordinary maps, they were not sketches of the layout of the fortress, each map had artistic paintings on them surrounding the detailed map of each floor, the layout of each floor depicted were very detailed, down to what piece of furniture was found where.

The instructions, rules, and the map weren't the only things in the scroll, there was also a short note stating that there were more clothes identical to the ones he was wearing in the wardrobe of his room.

Aside from those things there was also a small black leather bound book, it was the length and width of two playing cards placed side by side. On the first few pages there were instructions, on how to use it. It was a mini-library of sorts, complete with a search function. There was even a small pen or marker inserted into the spine of the book.

He placed the note in a pocket on his person, same thing with the notebook, then he rolled up the scroll.

"Kage Bushin no Jutsu" he said, then seven clones popped up, six of whom took one map, the seventh taking the scroll, and Naruto the original took the remaining map.

"Time to look around then," once leaving the infirmary with his clones he said, "Here's hoping I don't get lost."

He along with his clones thus began their first adventure in a new place, which consisted of them finding their way around the fortress, then after finding his room and resting, he would explore the outside.

At the end of the day, instead of finding his room, he and his clones found themselves on top of one of the roofs of the fortress, looking out at the view, and boy what a view it was, he realized that he was really high up in a place he had no idea where it was, he was in a fortress that was on top of a mountain, surrounded by a jungle, surrounded by a desert, surrounded by a forest, surrounded by a fog.

Placing the scroll it was holding, one clone leaned over the edge of the roof to see how far up they were.

Another clone nearest to the one leaning over the edge made to grab the clone by the edge, but accidentally pushed the clone over the edge.

"Kage Bushin no Jutsu" the remaining Naruto's said, further dividing their chakra. The original clones and their creator handed the new arrivals the maps, and the scroll. They then went to the edge and peered over to watch the single clone fall to its doom.

After the clone died from its fall over not just the side of the roof but the side of the mountain, the roof they were on was situated beside one side of the mountain, it was a sheer drop, Naruto yelped in shock sending him over the edge, the memory of how it felt to fall over the edge and go splat were fresh in his mind. Thinking quickly he created more clones, having them form a human rope. The time it took to do this, as it took several tried, Naruto's nose was one inch away from a very pointy rock spike.

After dropping down he realized that what his clones learned he learned, why he hadn't noticed this before he didn't know, it might be due to the fact that he was mostly in the heat of battle, therefore ignored such thoughts.

He now found a new way to train, to get stronger. But before that he first had to figure out how to get back up to the fortress, and then locate his room, then go to sleep, or find some food first, or something, but his main priority was getting back to the fortress.

Looking up the rock wall he thought, 'This is gonna be a long walk.' Then he started to walk up the wall, hoping against all hope that he didn't run out of chakra before reaching the top, cause that would be very bad for his health.

The clones that were still in existence that were on the roof, then just decided that since they were still there, then their boss was still alive, and that they should find some food for him as well as his room for when he returns from wherever the hell he went. One of the clones kicking one of the roof, sending it to certain doom just for the heck of it.

Naruto had reached his hundred foot mark, at least he thought that it was already a hundred feet, though in reality it was already one hundred and one inch.

This was when he started to hearing screaming and swearing.

"Hello boss, goodbye boss," was heard as he saw one of his clones going in the opposite direction as he was.

After the clone passed Naruto, the screaming and swearing began anew.

A few minutes later, Naruto still not used to the memories of his clones suddenly popping up in his head, was caught unprepared when the memory of the last clone he saw popped joined his memory that he lost his hold on the cliff face and started to fall.

Shouts of "Kage Bushin no Jutus" rang out once again. But luckily or unluckily, the Naruto-clone rope couldn't be formed properly, so instead of relying on that Naruto flipped himself around, thinking quickly he stretched out his arm, forming a shining blue orb in he palm of his hand, he shouted "RASENGAN!" with echoes of his shout reverberating around him as his clones did the same, the blue balls destroying the stone spikes that would have impaled him and his clones.

Unfortunately a ghost of a memory of one of his clones still being impaled joined his memory. The clone nearest to the stone spike that ended the existence of one of its comrades destroyed the spike.

'This is gonna take a while,' was the thought that once again passed through his mind. Attaching himself to the cliff face he started his trek up once more.

Even though he could summon toads, that didn't mean that he could use them to help him. One of the rules said so, 'under no circumstances are summons to be summoned without my express permission, life or death situations are no exceptions, violators will be sprayed with hormones that will attract various creatures that will try and mate with the source of the smell, or odor, or signals the hormones give or send out.'

It took Naruto two hundred and eighty seven tries before he reached the fortress, it had taken him seventy two hours to do it too.

He took breaks in between tries. It had also cost him thousands of clones, some died due to the boredom of others, they seemed to have gained a mind of their own, since when ever Naruto got to either one fourth the way up or half the way up a clone would die.

The clones up top, found some food and as suggesten by Touken decided to drop several apples every now and then off of the roof that their boss had fallen off of.

After Naruto noticed the apples falling would then create clones to gather the apples, some of which were passed upwards by the falling clones to their creator. After countless trials and errors, Naruto had come up with a number of things that he and his clones could do, while at the bottom of the cliff, while walking up the cliff face, while falling off the cliff, while in mid air. He and his clones were able to kill three ten foot tall lions that had come out of the surrounding jungle, thus gaining him some battle experience.

He was also able to take down a number of other larger than normal predators that came out of the jungle, this being another reason why it took him so long to get up.

He was able to make it up on his two hundred eighty seventh try since there were several large lizards that were chasing him up the cliff face. Hundreds of clones gave their lives in attempts that eventually succeeded in killing the lizards by their fall from such heights.

But before entering the fortress with the original clones, he created around five hundred clones and sent them down the cliff to retrieve his trophies.