Author's note – Kishimoto Masashi owns Naruto while Guyver is written by Yoshiki Takaya.
I make no claim to either, I am merely playing in their sandboxes.

Note - This chapter has been edited to change 1 line. The explanation is in the afternote.

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Chapter Thirteen

Journey

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"Tanzuka Quarters." Aoi exclaimed as he indicated the town that was illuminated in the deepening dusk. Behind him, his three genin stumbled out of the treeline and staggered up to join him.

"Uuuurgh… I thought I had stamina…" Naruto gasped.

"My legs… I can't feel my legs..." Idate moaned while Yagura chose instead to simply drop onto his knees, gasping for air.

"I did push you harder than I planned." Aoi admitted. "I hadn't acually expected to arrive here until tomorrow, but now that we are, let's get a couple of rooms and use one of the onsens to relax.

Yagura pushed himself back to his feet and started to stagger forwards, Idate and Naruto following him.

"Most. Evil. Sensei. Ever." Naruto grumbled and Aoi chuckled briefly before turning to follow his team.

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Aoi slipped out of the hotel after sending his three genin to get changed and relax in the heated pool. Walking down the main street, he ducked into a bar and stopped at the counter.

"One bottle of sake." He said to the bartender. "I need some memory poison."

"Interesting weather outside." The barkeep noted and Aoi shrugged.

"I always carry an umbrella in case it hails."

The barkeeper nodded and then gave a significant glance at one of the booths where a cloaked figure was sipping. Aoi walked over to him and the figure glanced up, his glasses catching the light.

"Rokushu."

"Yakushi." Aoi replied as he sat down and the cloaked figure briefly caressed the underside of the table.

"Privacy seals active." Yakushi Kabuto said. "Do you have the information?"

"All the details of the most recent graduating class and the other requested documents." Aoi confirmed, rolling a small scroll across the table. Kabuto palmed it and slipped it into his sleeve.

"Anything interesting?"

"I have team four, including Ibiki's brother and the Kyuubi Jinchuuriki." Aoi said quietly and Kabuto's brows rose.

"You have Uzumaki Naruto as one of your genin? Interesting… Have you met his great-uncle yet, or seen the armour?"

"No to both." Aoi sighed. "The Hokage has all the information under a level-ten classification and since I'm not the Hokage…"

"True." Kabuto agreed. "Hokage level classification… well, that tells me where to look, at least. This is worth another thousand ryo in your escape account."

"Good." Aoi said before sipping his sake. "Have you heard from Yumiko?"

"She sends her love and eagerly awaits the day you can join her." Kabuto smiled.

"As I look forwards to leaving Konoha and joining her." Aoi agreed. "To Amegakure!"

"To Ame." Kabuto replied, raising his sake dish in salute.

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Naruto sighed with pleasure as he lowered himself into the hot pool. Opposite him, Idate was so relaxed that he was almost boneless while Yagura was finishing rinsing himself off. A noise distracted Naruto and he turned to see a towel-clad white-haired man crouched by the fence that separated the male and female bathing areas. Although Naruto couldn't quite make out his face, he spotted the notepad in the man's hand.

"What the…?" Naruto whispered in confusion, then realization dawned on him. "He's spying on the women!"

"Hush!" The pervert shot at him before putting his eye back to the knothole in the fence. "Oooooh, the breasts on her are so magnificent…!"

Glancing round, Naruto grabbed an abandoned towel and, remembering one trick that a bully at the orphanage took great delight in inflicting on him, he dunked it in the water before spinning it into a whip. Pulling himself onto the surface of the pool, he checked his grip, then lunged forwards, the towel whistling as he swung it at the pervert's backside.

"Hey!" The man yelped as he leapt sideways, the notepad flying from his hand and Naruto blinked as the pad arced up and over the fence. "No! My research!"

"What is this?" A voice asked and the pervert turned so pale that the red lines under his eyes almost seemed to leap from his skin. "Hey, I recognize this handwriting! Kure-chan!"

"Oh crap." The white-haired man whimpered. "I gotta go."

"JIRAIYA!" A massed chorus rose from the other side. "DIE!"

Naruto flung himself backwards, landing on the water as a section of the fence was flattened and a half-dozen towel-clad kunoichi of various ages charged through, kunai or other weapons gripped in their hands. One was even holding a sword, causing Naruto to mentally question where it could have been kept.

"Senjutsu Shūjuku: Nigeru!" the old pervert yelped before vanishing in a blur of motion, all but one of the kunoichi following him with screams of rage. The only one that didn't glanced round as she brushed back her dark hair back, the lanterns catching it to make it seem like it had blue highlights. Her gaze fell on the towel-whip that Naruto was holding and she smirked at him.

"So, you're the one we can thank for exposing the old pervert." She grinned. "You have guts to take on one of the Sannin, kid… wait, I've seen you before. Uzumaki Naruto?"

Naruto almost straightened up before realizing that his wrap was loose. Instead, he simply stopped channeling chakra and dropped into the pool as the woman laughed.

"Don't worry, you've got nothing I haven't seen before. I'm Mitarashi Anko, newly promoted tobesku jonin. If you're here then there should be two more brats… hey, Idate-kun!"

"Anko-san." Idate replied, looking anywhere but at her while blushing furiously.

"Still shy, are you?" Anko laughed. "You really should get over that."

"Hey, kids, I… Anko?" Aoi came to a halt in the doorway, staring at her, then his gaze traveled past her to where a section of the fence was shattered. "What the…?"

"You missed all the fun." Anko giggled. "Foxy-kun here helped us chase away a perverted moron. Well, time to see if they caught him."

"Who did what now?" Aoi muttered as Anko sauntered off.

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"Good morning." Aoi said from the door, his smile turning into a grin as his three genin started to pull themselves out of bed. "Good news, we're still ahead of schedule. Bad news, we're heading out after breakfast, so you have five minutes to get dressed."

The three genin sat up and started to pull on their clothes as Aoi closed the door.

"I'm not sore." Yagura noted in surprise. "That hot soak did wonders."

"I came across some heating seals a while ago." Naruto mused as he picked up his trousers and shook them out. "I can dig out an outdoors onsen and re-direct the spring into it once we finish this mission."

"Good idea." Yagura agreed. "I'll help, it'll be good exercise."

"Actually, I was thinking of… oof!"

Idate shook his head as Naruto rolled onto his back and pulled on his trousers before standing up again.

"I'm ready." Idate announced and the other two stared at him. "What? My brother trained me in how to get dressed fast, he said that slow ninja were dead ninja."

Naruto and Yagura exchanged glances before resuming donning their clothes.

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"Alright, we'll go slower this time." Aoi said with a smile as they began leaping through the treetops. "By pacing ourselves, we should make it to the first border ahead of schedule, but not too early. So, what was all that fuss about yesterday?"

"Naruto attacked a pervert." Yagura supplied. "Someone called Jiraiya."

"Jiraiya?" Aoi repeated, his eyes wide. "You don't mean the white-haired Sage of Toad Mountain? One of the three who managed to survive in combat against Hanzo the Salamander?"

"Yep." Idate confirmed. "I've seen his picture before. Big brother insists that I know all of the important shinobi in Konoha on sight."

Idate glanced to his left, where Naruto had just launched himself off a branch. "Who are you again?"

Naruto gaped at him for a moment, then started to laugh. "Okay, you got me."

Yagura snorted with laughter for a moment, the Aoi coughed to get their attention.

"Since this is going to be a long journey, I think I could help it along by telling you about the team that Jiraiya was on. The team itself was Team seven, led by Sarutobi Hiruzen before he became the Hokage and the three genin were Orochimaru, Jiraiya and Senju Tsunade, two orphans and a clan princess. Orochimaru was noted as being a genius even when he was at the academy while Jiraiya was known for his willingness to work hard and his observational skills…"

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"Halt!"

As the girl's voice shouted the command, Aoi, Idate and Yagura landed on the same branch before Aoi snagged Naruto from the air, preventing him from overshooting.

"Ah, haha, errrr, thanks, sensei." Naruto mumbled as Aoi set him down.

"I assume that I am addressing a shinobi of Tanigakure?"

"You are." The voice replied.

"We are Team Four from Konohagakure on a routine message delivery mission to the Land of Wind." Aoi continued. "As per the treaty between Tanigakure and Konohagakure, I ask for permission to cross the Land of Rivers. Will you escort us?"

There was a long silence, then a teenaged girl stepped out from behind a tree. On her forehead was a hitai-ate that boasted a square beneath a chevron with two additional lines. Her face was covered with a green veil that left only her brown eyes visible while her clothing was mottled green and brown, letting her blend into the background with ease.

"She is a Tanigakure hunter-nin." Aoi said, speaking quietly, but loud enough that she could hear. "Do not ask her for her name or anything like that, while on duty she has no name, only a mission."

"You have permission, but you will be observed." The girl stated, then she seemed to fade back into the forest.

"How did she do that?" Naruto burst out. "Was it a jutsu?"

"Pure skill." Aoi corrected. "Tanigakure hunter-nin are renowned for their stealth, their ability to send complex messages across vast distances almost instantaneously and the fact that they use as little chakra as possible, making it almost impossible for sensor-nin to detect them. However, this tends to limit how much chakra they can use in battle since they don't train to expand their chakra reservoirs like we do."

"Wow." Naruto breathed. "I gotta get some clothes like those. Did you see how cool they looked? I wonder if I can get some with orange in them…"

"Come on." Aoi said, crouching and gathering chakra in preparation. "We need to get going. And since we're now in another nation, we remain alert."

"But they're allies, right?" Naruto asked, but it was Idate who answered.

"Even allies keep a close eye on each other, Naruto. If you use a jutsu that they haven't seen before, they will try to copy it so that they can use it themselves if they deem it necessary. Brother says that they even have a few puppeteers amongst their number, something that they developed from observing the Suna puppet corps."

"Really?" Naruto asked as they launched themselves off the branch. "How can a puppet help in battle? Won't the strings get in the way?"

"They use chakra threads." Aoi said, glancing round. "I'll explain after the mission. Now, let's get going, we need to be at the rendez-vous in two days."

Behind them, the hunter-nin watched them depart, then ran up to the top of the tree. Pulling out a small mirror, she angled it to send a series of flashes, sending her message faster than any ninja could hope to move.

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The desert spread beyond the line of trees and Naruto frowned.

"Sensei, I know I've never actually seen a desert before, but… shouldn't there be more sand?"

"Quite a bit of the desert is sand, but almost as much is rocky plains which is where much of the sand comes from." Aoi said, motioning to the broken ground. "The Suna shinobi encourage the proliferation of sand because it slows down any shinobi that doesn't know the sand-walking exercise. Before you ask, Naruto, it's similar to water-walking but uses a lot less chakra.
"Suna also has the highest number of wind-users of the elemental nations, both as a fraction of their forces and in total and the sand helps to make wind attacks do more damage, either through abrasion or by blasting sand into enemy eyes, thus blinding them temporarily."

"An excellent summary." A new voice stated and four shapes appeared in front of them within a swirl of sand.

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Author's afternote – I used Google Translate for the original version of Jiraiya's technique, Kyūkyoku no seijitekunikku: Shōjo no yō ni jikkō shimasu.
Translated, it means "Ultimate Sage Technique: Run like a little girl".

I have since replaced it with the far superior Senjutsu Shūjuku: Nigeru (Sage Magic Mastery/Proficiency: Run Away) as provided by Trace Reading. Thanks, TR.