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.
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Chapter Twenty-Three
Wave Cresting
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The dawn illuminated the Kiri ship anchored in one of the many bays around the Land of Waves, its deck populated by the sailors preparing the ship for departure. A mile inland, Gato smirked as over a dozen masked ninja knelt before him.
"Gato." The lead ninja said. "You have the location of the Konoha team and the nuke-nin Zabuza?"
"The Konoha team are staying at the house of the bridge builder." Gato sneered, motioning for one of his bodyguards to hand over a small sheaf of papers. "Zabuza was still at his hideout last night, the location is on the top sheet."
The lead ninja took the sheet, handed it to one of the ninja behind him and made a hand-signal. The ninja holding the sheet and five others vanished in a mass mizu shunshin.
"We shall take out the Konoha team." The lead ninja stated. "By noon, this will all be over."
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"You packed yet?" Zabuza growled and Kimimaru nodded as he tucked a scroll into his sleeveless jacket.
"I am, Zabuza-sama."
"Good." Zabuza growled as he stepped out of the doorway, then he froze, unslinging his sword.
"I can sense… five?" Kimimaru whispered from behind him.
"Six." Zabuza corrected. "Most likely hunter-nin. We'll need to fight.
Kimimaru nodded and raised his hands to his uncovered shoulders. Two bones emerged from his skin and he pulled at them, revealing them to be katanas made out of bone. As the tips emerged, the skin they had appeared through healed seamlessly.
"I am ready, Zabuza-sama."
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"Oh fuck." One of the ninja in the trees surrounding the nuke-nin growled. "That's a Kaguya! I thought they were all dead!"
"This could be a problem." A second hunter-nin noted.
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Naruto looked round.
"You sensed it too?" Asuma stated and Naruto nodded. "Then you'd better armour up. Tsunami! Wake my genin up and tell them that we're under attack!"
Tsunami dropped the pan that she was holding and dashed for the stairs while Asuma strolled out of the front door, lighting his cigarette as he did so. Naruto followed him, moving to one side to get enough room to don his armour without injuring anyone.
#Naruto?# Ino's mind-voice echoed, #what's going on?#
#You need to get outside and armour up.# Naruto replied, glancing round to see if he could see where the enemy ninja were hiding. #Without my belt-sphere, I can't fly or use that gravity attack I used against the Suna Jinchuuriki. You'll need to cover that weakness.#
#Damn.# Ino responded, then she dropped the link as Naruto caught a flicker of motion.
"Armour on!" He shouted and the sphere of energy formed around him. Through the distortion of the energy and the materialising armour, Naruto saw several waves of shuriken, kunai and senbon hitting the energy sphere and bouncing off, half-melted, then his armour was settled around him and he landed in a defensive posture, ready to fight.
"An interesting technique." A voice said and Asuma cursed under his breath.
"Tsurugi." He stated. "The leader of the Kiri Hunter-nin. Shouldn't you be kissing your master's feet?"
"Your attempts to anger me won't work, Fire Guardian." Tsurugi replied calmly. "I give you this chance. Let us take the one in the armour and leave. Return to Konoha while you still can."
"And my mission?" Asuma growled, then the upper storey of the house behind them exploded, three bodies cartwheeling through the air, leaving trails of smoke.
"Nice try, you bastards." Ino shouted from the hole, "But you won't kill the old man while I can help it!"
"You… you've duplicated the armour?" Tsurugi gasped. "Then we'll take them both for the glory of Kiri!"
"Like hell!" Ino shouted, then a kunai stabbed into her chest, lodging in her breastplate. Ino grabbed at the kunai, then paused.
"That's odd, these plates feel like they can move…"
Taking a firm grip, Ino pulled open her chestplate, revealing two semi-gelatinous discs that started to glow. The glow rapidly increased, sparkles of energy forming around it before being drawn in, then the lenses unleashed a horizontal torrent of energy that slashed into the woods, vaporising everything that it hit for almost a mile. As the beam ended, Ino released the plates, letting them swing closed, then the vents on her neck opened to emit a cloud of steam.
"…what the…?" Asuma managed after several long moments of silence. "Naruto… did you know…?"
"Not a clue." Naruto admitted, staring in shock at the devastation. "I think… there are only four ninja remaining… no, they're retreating."
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"Fuck!" Tsurugi cursed as he fled from the unexpected disaster. "We need to upgrade the Bingo Book! Something like that weapon… not even the Mizukage could block it!"
"If they've duplicated it once, they could probably do it again." One of the hunter-nin noted and Tsurugi winced.
"I know!"
"You know what?" A new voice asked and the quartet of ninja halted as three new figures landed in front of them with the leader raising his hand to the hitai-ate angled to cover his left eye. Tsurugi groaned with exaspirated annoyance.
"Hatake Kakashi." He identified the leader of the trio. "As if facing two users of the Uzumaki Armour wasn't bad enough…"
"Wait." The trenchcoat-wearing kunoichi interrupted. "Two? I thought we only had one?"
"We do." Kakashi confirmed, sounding confused. "Are you sure you weren't in a genjutsu?"
"The second one fired a beam from her chest that wiped out three-quarters of my team!" Tsurugi raged and all three Konoha ninja blinked in surprise.
"Her?" Anko repeated. "Really? Her?"
"Get them!" Tsurugi shouted, trying to take advantage of their distraction and his companions lunged forwards, curved kunai glinting.
"Sen'eijashi!"/"Mokuton: Shichuro no Jutsu!"/"Suiro no Jutsu!"
All three attackers found themselves unable to move, one wrapped in snakes, the second trapped in a wooden cage and the third in a sphere of water, then Tsurugi found himself paralysed by an electric shock from behind.
"Kage Bunshin is a very useful technique." The second Kakashi commented as Tsurugi blacked out.
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Zabuza groaned as he lowered his sword, blood running down a cut on his arm that he had been just slighly too slow to avoid. On the other side of the clearing, Kimimaru pulled his bone-swords out from the hearts of the final two hunter-nin and let their bodies drop.
"You are hurt, Zabuza-sama!"
"I know." Zabuza growled as he plunged the tip of his sword into the ground and bent to start frisking the headless corpse before him. "Strip the corpses of anything useful, then we're heading out before more arrive. I don't know how they found us, but… huh?"
"Zabuza-sama?"
Zabuza stood up, looking at the unfolded piece of paper in his hand.
"I just found out how they knew where to find us." He stated in a flat voice. "That short-ass bastard Gato sold us out."
"Will we express our displeasure to him?" Kimimaro asked and Zabuza nodded with a grin visible through his face-wraps.
"You know me too well, apprentice." Zabuza smirked. "Yes, let's go and talk to him."
"Maybe make a point or two?" Kimimaru offered, idly spinning his blades and Zabuza stared at him.
"When the hell did you develop a sense of humour?"
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"Hello the house!"
"Kakashi?" Asuma asked in near-shock as a familiar grey-haired figure emerged from the treeline with two other ninja. "What are you doing here?"
"I'm assigned to mentor Naruto, so when I heard he had come here, I just had to come along to check my cute little apprentice wasn't getting into trouble." Kakashi replied with an eye-smile. "Tenzo and Anko chose to come along on this little sightseeing expedition."
The Kunoichi rolled her eyes while the ANBU slightly turned his head to look at Kakashi, then he returned his attention to the woods surrounding them.
"So, what's this I hear about a second armour?" Kakashi continued and Naruto groaned.
"Ino was dying so I did something stupid that somehow worked."
"If it's stupid and it works, it isn't stupid." Kakashi shrugged. "We cought four ninja trying to flee, they're knocked out and Tenzo's carrying them in prisoner scrolls. How many more do you think there are?"
"Only four escaped us." Asuma confirmed.
"So, how about I leave these two here to keep things secure while Naruto and I fly back…" Kakashi began, only for Naruto to interrupt.
"Slight problem, I can't fly any more. The sphere is only just starting to re-grow, it's about the size of my little fingernail."
"…what the hell did you do?" Kakashi demanded.
"He saved my life!" Ino spat as she stormed over to them."He had to bring me into his clan to do it and we've still got to sort it all out, but I would have died if he hadn't done what he did! So don't you dare try to tell him off!"
"I like her." Anko laughed and Kakashi sighed.
"Fine. Let's do a full debriefing and then we can decide what our next course of action should be."
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The screams and sound of weapons clashing jerked Gato from his perusal of his records that showed how much using the Land of Waves as a tax-free storage and processing area was saving him. Rising from his seat, he walked over to the window and looked out, his gaze quickly homing in on the source of the disturbance…
…where Zabuza and the white-haired apprentice of his were slicing their way through his army of thugs as if they were reaping a field!
Each slash of Zabuza's gigantic sword killed at least three thugs and sometimes as many as eight while his apprentice seemed almost to dance while covering Zabuza's flanks and rear, the twin bone katanas slicing through flesh and steel with almost unnatural ease. More bone blades extended from his lower legs and forearms and they were almost as coated in blood as the blades in his hands.
"Oh shit" Gato quavered as he started to back away from the window, but he was too late and Zabuza shifted his grip on his sword so that he could grab something from his belt.
The last thing that Gato saw was a blur racing towards him, then his lifeless corpse dropped to the floor, the handle and ring of a kunai sticking out from his left eye socket.
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"…and then you arrived." Asuma finished. "Let me tell you, this has been one screwed up mission and when we get back, the political fallout will be nasty."
"Actually, as the senior Jonin here, I have permission to re-negotiate the mission." Kakashi said, half-turning to face Tazuna, who was nervously sipping from his bottle. "Tazuna-san, given that you knowlingly withheld important information from Konoha, a penalty will be applied. However, given the financial state of Wave at the moment, the penalty will be the building of two outposts for Konoha ninja, one at each end of the bridge, ten percent of the bridge tolls to be sent to Konoha until the penalty charge equal to an A-rank mission is paid, whereupon it will drop to five percent to maintain protection of the bridge and surrounding areas. In addition, Konoha shinobi on active duty and Hi no Kuni diplomatic personnel will not be charged for crossing the bridge. I assume that this sounds fair, given the circumstances?"
"More than fair." Tazuna agreed instantly. "Thank you! Thank you!"
"In the meantime, we need to discuss what we are going to do about Gato…" Kakashi started, then he stopped.
"I sense it too." Tenzo said quietly. "One person, high chunin level… no hostile intent that I can detect."
Anko rose from her chair and walked silently to the door, palming a kunai as she did so. Reaching the door, she opened it before the person approaching could knock.
"Good afternoon." The white-haired boy said politely and Kakashi's visible eyebrow rose.
"A Kaguya? I thought they they all died."
"As far as I know, I am the last of my clan." The boy said. "I am Kaguya Kimimaro, apprentice of Momochi Zabuza. I am here in peace with a message."
"We're listening." Anko said and Kimimaru raised his hand, revealing the sealing scroll he was holding.
"In here is the head of Gato. He chose to betray my master and paid the price. Zabuza-sama and I have destroyed his army of thugs and taken a quarter of his funds, the rest we leave for Wave, so that you do not have cause to pursue us."
Anko accepted the scroll almost numbly. "Thank you?"
"Zabuza-sama advises that you send some people to secure the mansion that Gato was using before it is ransacked." Kimimaro said with a bow. "Fare thee well."
Without another word, the teenager turned and walked away, leaving Anko staring at the scroll in her hands.
"Well, that was… different." Asuma finally managed. "I'll take my team and see to securing the mansion. Naruto, you stay here… can you still talk to Ino without being in your armour?"
Naruto and Ino both blinked, then a moment later they nodded.
"Good. Let's go!"
Kakashi watched them leave, then turned to the blond genin.
"Talk to Ino? What did he mean with that question?"
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Author's note – Yep, he finally knows about the Mega Smasher.