Hello :)

Thank you to everyone that's reading this. I'm truly grateful.

I'm going to be completely open and honest with you all on why I've been inconsistently uploading these few months. For anyone interested, I'll put it at the end.

Note: Zabuza's Head Cleaver sword is with Kakashi, and Samehada (Kisame's sword) is still with Rin. I couldn't find a good way to slide this info into the story.

CHAPTER 22

Naruto knelt there on the ground, cradling his father as the man spasmed.

The boy stared at the man with wide, horrified eyes, frozen still at the vulnerability of his father as the man grit his teeth painfully and wept tears of blood.

Minato's chest vibrated and shuddered.

As chaos ensued around Naruto and the village's alarms blared deafeningly, he couldn't hear or feel anything else but the stark terror that filled every corner of his body.

He had only seen his father this vulnerable once before.

Flashback: Thirteen Years Ago

Naruto stared emptily as his father hunched over his late wife's tombstone, weeping inconsolably and clawing at the soft earth, pleading to be woken up from his nightmare.

Rin was at her father's side, clinging onto the man as hard as a four-year-old could muster, doing her best to keep her father's spirit in one piece. The man turned to his young daughter and cried into her chest, and the girl held him while her father was at his weakest.

But Naruto stood back, rooted to the ground.

Horrified and afraid.

The man that could move mountains.

The man that could reshape the planet.

The man that reinvigorated the Will of Fire.

The man openly mourned the loss of his wife, crying into his daughter and resembling a dishevelled heap more than anything that was ever previously imposing.

It was less about his father's weakness and more about Naruto's shattered perception.

Flashback End

A hard hand clasped his cheek, bringing out of his perilous thoughts.

Minato, with his eyes rimmed red and his teeth gritting, looked up at his son and patted his cheek again, fighting back the convulsion that rattled through his body. Naruto grabbed his father's hand, the one on his cheek, and he held it. Naruto's stoic face broke as his lips turned down, but Minato fought a grin onto his lips and winked.

That was when the real world pushed back into Naruto's ears.

People fleeing and ninjas herding them to strategic bunkers around the village, the emergency alarms setting fire to the airwaves, and Tsunade pulling him away from his father.

"We're surrounded," she said and pointed at the glowering salamander casually raking its tongue over the village walls. "Kiri ninjas at our south," she jutted her thumb over her shoulder, to the ocean the aforementioned ninjas were crossing over, battering Konoha's seal defence. "And we've got reports of undead coming at us from Waterfall country."

Shizune was kneeling over the Hokage, forcing a long strip of leather between the man's gnashing teeth and pushing a syringe into his neck, forcing a clear liquid into the man's system. Half a minute later, the man's convulsions stopped and he was unconscious.

Rasa's body was lifted onto a stretcher and draped with a white blanket. He couldn't be saved.

"What's the plan?" Tsunade snapped, yanking Naruto's attention back to his grandmother.

Naruto didn't answer.

Rather, despite the alarms and the looming salamander destabilizing the northern seal barrier with its poisonous tongue, he turned around and realized that his sister was waiting expectantly for him.

She and some thirty shinobi crowding him. Those medics that weren't helping to transport the Hokage to a safe location and those that weren't guiding the civilians to safety joined the crowd, looking in either on the ground or bearing down from rooftops and elevated platforms. Gatekeepers stayed at their posts, fuelling the barrier with their chakra and genin kept to safe houses.

The seal barrier sizzled, but they waited.

Naruto wasn't the highest-ranking shinobi, as that went to Tsunade and Shikaku Nara, but Minato had explicitly laid out contingencies on the occasion he was incapacitated, and the primary one was that Naruto would take command as his father's replacement.

He had been training his son to succeed him as Hokage from the day he entered the Academy.

For the time being, Naruto was now the Fifth Hokage.

Naruto's eyes hardened and he got to work.

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Hiashi landed beside a tree at the southernmost border of Konoha, placing his left hand on the tree trunk and looking out past the tumultuous water to the Kiri ninjas throwing Water Dragons at Konoha's seal barrier, balancing on the water and bellowing jutsu after jutsu. He adjusted his communication headset and activated his byakugan.

The Fifth Hokage's orders reverberated in his head, and he forced down a sneer.

He would have to put aside Hinata's predicament till things subsided.

The seal barrier thrummed at the rocky shoreline of Konoha's border and Hiashi signed to his right, and a flurry of jounin shinobi rushed in that direction in a muffled blur. They skirted the shade behind and beneath the trees, suppressing their chakra and hardly making a sound as they sped into position.

Then—

A massive Akimichi paw reached out from the forest, bypassing the interior of the seal barrier and punching through a hail of water bullets, smacking down on a shocked Kiri ninja. Chouza Akimichi withdrew his hand back to the safety behind the barrier, holding in his clenched fist a mangled Kiri ninja and grating his teeth as Water Bullets and Water Dragons bombarded the back of his hand.

Bull-headed but effective, Hiashi hummed to himself. He felt a tap on his shoulder and, without looking, Hiashi gestured twice to his left, and two chunin Hyuuga clan mates sped away. Those two were going to stabilize and readjust the barrier.

Ever since the fall of Hidden Rain, Minato Namikaze, his oldest children, Tsunade Senju and Hana Inuzuka, and the Shinobi Council had been very active.

Hiashi stayed crouched, keeping low to the bushes and observing with his byakugan the brief disorganization of the Kiri forces before there was a call among their ranks and they regrouped aboard a ship floating roughly twenty kilometres off the shore, one of three warships.

Hiashi spoke into his headpiece, telling the Logistics and Intelligence Department exactly what he was seeing, "I see three ships. By my estimation, there could be about five hundred ninjas inside each. I assume them to be of Kiri affiliation." A series of clicks and snaps sounded quietly by his side, and he spied a Hyuuga chunin taking steady pictures, zooming in as best as the camera could but never once venturing out of the seal barrier. Someone tapped his shoulder again and the man bobbed his head, narrowing his dojutsu and peering into the warships. The two Hyuuga chunin had returned from their quick assignment, and Hiashi relayed this, "Seals are still functional."

"Can you confirm if those are the only ships posted there?" Inoichi asked, undoubtedly taking notes. "No reinforcements?"

"I see no reinforcements."

"Casualties?"

A third tap on his shoulder and Hiashi nodded his head. "Four sentry posts were destroyed. No survivors." Logistics and Intelligence were a department of ANBU and had been in operation since the Second Hokage's time. Their department was among the most well-funded and well-run in the village, followed by Torture and Interrogation department. Every Hokage from the Second to Fourth spread money and resources into Logistics and Intelligence, and it had been delivering at every turn. The clan head scratched his chin. "I wonder how Kiri was able to blindside us."

"My guess is as good as yours. At least our barriers are holding."

"Any more orders from Naruto?"

"He wants you and your teams to watch the southern border in case Kiri has any more surprises. He's cooking up a retaliatory strike, but we need to know our current position first…" Hiashi's byakugan tracked a smaller boat as it burst away from one of the large ships, skipping on the water in the direction of Whirlpool country. Inoichi's words tapered down at the focused silence on Hiashi's side. "You're seeing something. What are you seeing?"

"A boat disembarked from one of the ships and…is moving towards Whirlpool country…"

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Rin deftly weaved through the trees to her target, her form resembling a brief trail of yellow lights until she planted the sole of her left foot into Zabuza's face, bringing the undead man down to the ground with a thud.

Alarmed at the girl's speed, Zabuza's eyes widened but he only caught a fleeting smirk from the girl as she stood over him, raising her right leg straight up in an impressive display of flexibility and balance, bringing her heel down on the bridge of Zabuza's nose and nearly crushing his head to dust.

This happened in a matter of seconds.

Four out-of-breath shinobi and a wheezing ninken finally caught up to her, panting as they scampered to their team's assigned muscle. They were each carrying heavy-looking backpacks.

Two of them, an Aburame and an Inuzuka went to their knees at Zabuza's sides before he could begin struggling, already shaken off the lights dancing in his vision. The Aburame placed a seal on Zabuza's chest as he gagged Zabuza with a rag, and the Inuzuka laced her fingers into a Ram seal.

"Fuinjutsu: Seal."

Zabuza's body suddenly became taunt, abruptly relaxing as his chakra was sealed.

It was a seal used on unruly patients at Konoha psychiatric ward, but it would have to do for now.

"Do you want me to carry him?" Rin offered, watching as the Logistics and Intelligence ninjas whispered among themselves, marvelling at the reincarnated man they had restrained.

"I can take it from here," the Inuzuka answered, tossing a chakra pill into her mouth and gnashing down on it, swallowing and exhaling from her nose as her chakra network became rejuvenated. She picked Zabuza up and tossed him over her shoulder.

Then suddenly, Rin felt the air charged with tension. The other ninjas felt the shift as well, and the Inuzuka girl, with Zabuza still on her shoulder, lowered her stance and placed a hand on the ground in her deep crouch.

"If only it were that easy," a cool voice said in the stillness. Rin wrinkled her nose and rolled her wrists, catching a pair of kunai as they spiralled into her palms, using the flat side of the blade in her left hand to block a katana slicing toward her left shoulder and throwing her other kunai in the direction of the voice. "Interesting…"

The person materialized from thin air, allowing the genjutsu to melt off his body as he dipped to the left. The blade barely missed his throat.

Meanwhile, Rin wound around to the attacker at her back, slamming a kick into the person's katana and throwing a handful of shuriken after him, which impacted the ground as he retreated.

Within the blink of an eye, Zabuza writhed back awake and the Inuzuka girl was forced to drop him. Her Aburame teammate sent a volley of beetles that whacked the undead swordsman aside, though Zabuza righted himself in the air and landed with a hard crunch on his hands and feet. The ink of his seal restraints dissolved off his body like steam, hissing and crackling from being overloaded with chakra. He removed a fake Head Cleaver sword from a seal on his neck, expressionlessly holding the false blade in his right hand.

Rin and her teammates were now effectively surrounded.

The first person chuckled amicably and clapped his hands, even as Rin levelled him with a stern look, flicking a single kunai to her left hand and cautiously watching both attackers in her low stance.

"I told you, Tobirama, you cannot ambush a Namikaze," the first person said, visibly impressed. He was a tall man with black eyes and blonde hair that was combed back, having a small tuft of a beard on his chin and a thin moustache above his upper lip. Gengetsu Hozuki stroked his chin. "Truly a remarkable clan, are they not?"

The team took defensive positions, facing outwards.

The person that had ambushed them was a man with shaggy, grey hair that was hardly contained in a helmet-like forehead protector that proudly displayed the Hidden Leaf's symbol.

Rin had heard many legends about Tobirama Senju from Hiruzen Sarutobi.

Currently, the Second Hokage flicked his katana down and smoothly sheathed it.

He observed Rin and her jounin vest, as the girl cautiously observed him before he hummed and crossed his arms. "Namikaze standards have improved."

The girl fought the smile from appearing on her face at the compliment, switching the kunai to a reverse grip. "Lord Second, I don't want to do this."

A short haze of regret filmed Tobirama's eyes as he exhaled, unfolding his arms and clasping his fingers together. "And yet, you must, child." The dead Hokage sent a baleful look at the dead Mizukage, and the Mizukage chortled, not intimidated. "As much as I have free thoughts and I can speak as I want, my actions are involuntary. That boy is not nearly strong enough to fully control me." He twisted his fingers to the Ram seal, saying to the reluctant girl and her team, "Go for the head. You'll see why after you do."

And with that piece of advice, Tobirama inhaled a little and exhaled, blowing out a typhoon of sharp water at the Konoha ninjas.

Instead, the water slammed into the former Mizukage, blasting him off his feet and smashing into a cluster of trees. The sharingan illusion fell apart with the thunderous crash of trees and shrubs, revealing the real Konoha team to be in the Mizukage's former position.

Tobirama's eyes bugged wide, and then he scoffed. "Uchiha."

Itachi rose out of the ground and immediately raced to Gengetsu Hozuki, while Rin blazed to Tobirama in a flurry of popping yellow lights, appearing at his front in less than the blink of an eye.

Tobirama gritted his teeth and crossed his arms in front of his chest, a whisper of a grin lifting his pallid expression at the chakra loaded into Rin's punch, blinded by the prolonged explosion of light from her blow. Her fist fractured Tobirama's forearm guards and the ground reverberated vengefully.

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Fire-Grass Country border

The procession around Hinata's medical carriage halted at who they saw standing on Fire country's side of the border.

It was a pale man with long black hair that cascaded straight, untangled to his lower back. His royal purple, short-sleeved kimono was casually open at the front to show his bandaged torso, and those bandages rippled out from underneath the kimono and covered his arms and fingers, winding down and wrapping around his ankles and toes, which were clad in a pair of black sandals.

His temple was exposed to show the Caged Bird Seal imprinted above his brow.

His pupilless lavender eyes vacantly fixed on the Leaf procession, and his byakugan activated without so much as him lifting a finger.

Hizashi Hyuuga looked at each person till his eyes stopped on Neij, his son.

The boy looked as if all the blood had drained from his face. As if he was seeing a ghost.

Tears steadily leaked from Hizashi's eyes and a thin crack broke down from his temple to his chin, yet his emotionless expression didn't shatter. A chill ushered over the assembled shinobi.

Then Asuma broke the chilling tension, barrelling to them with an unconscious Sasuke on his shoulder. The boy had bloody tears tracking down his eyes.

"We need to hurry," he barked and everyone shook the daze out of their heads. Asuma set Sasuke inside Hinata's medical carriage, still unaware of the rising danger that waited for them on Fire country's side of the border. He exited the carriage, leaving Sasuke in Sakura's care, and looked around when he wasn't getting an answer. "What?"

Kurenai shakily pointed to the border and Asuma turned.

Instead of looking surprised, Asuma's face became grim. He took out his trench knives and clenched them in his fists. "The mission continues."

That was when the Sand siblings and the Sand shinobi hurriedly reached them. They had been following from a short distance from the grieving Konoha ninjas. They were to see the Konoha procession close to their village before splitting off to Suna, where the Sand siblings were going to serve their punishment.

Gaara's wrists were bound together by a seal and his sand gourd was gone. Kankuro's warpaint was washed off his face, and his eyes were sunken yet frantically alert. Temari's short blonde hair was tied into a simple pigtail. The three of them were wearing the simple white shirt, white shorts and black sandals of condemned shinobi.

Temari said, calling for their attention and looking to the sky, "We have more problems."

As if on cue, there was a shrill whistle far above them and a clay bird swept down from the clouds, circling above them.

An emotionless blonde man with black eyes stared down at them. Beside him was an equally emotionless man with a mask on his lower face.

"Kushina-sensei!"

True to Gai's exclamation, a woman with long red hair and twinkling purple eyes nonchalantly walked to them from the west. Her shinobi clothing consisted of a long-sleeved black shirt and black pants, with blue sandals on her feet. On her back was an impersonation of Kushina's prized Whirlpool blade; a dual-wielding sword with a purple and blue handle, a circular guard and a black metal blade.

Her smile was silent and sorrowful, not nearly as emotionless as Deidara and Kakuzu, but unable to speak.

"The hell…" Shikamaru murmured, looking between Neij's father and Mikoto Namikaze's mother, who both were supposed to be long dead.

"Asuma-sensei…what's going on?" Choji voiced the question the other genin and jounin had on their minds.

"Trouble," Asuma simply said. "Gai, get Hizashi out of the way. I'll…I'll take Kushina-sensei." Even after saying that, Asuma felt dread fill his being, and Kushina quietly scoffed. "Kurenai, distract Deidara and Kakuzu. Genin, you're escorting Hinata back to Konoha. Quickly."

"We can help," Gaara said, injecting himself into the discussion when all of them realized they were severely outgunned.

This got more than a few heckles raised among the genin.

Yet, Gaara was right.

Even with three Konoha jounin, two Suna jounin and four Konoha genin teams, they couldn't hope to outnumber any of the ninjas surrounding them, not to talk of Kushina and Hizashi alone. Deidara and Kakuzu were deservedly S rank, but the undead Konoha ninjas were another dimension of power.

Adding the Jinchuriki of the One Tails, a puppeteer and a wind jutsu user could tip the scale, but only a little.

"Give us Deidara and Kakuzu," Gaara insisted, strongly looking at Asuma as the man glowered down at him with grating teeth. "We'll give you time to take Hinata back to Konoha…. I swear."

Indecision warred on Asuma's face, but Gaara stood steady with resolve.

"Let's make this right," Temari said with weary shoulders, pleading. "Please."

Kushina pursed her lips, stifling her grief at what was going to transpire, and what she was being made to do. She involuntarily reached over her shoulders and drew the imitation of her precious sword, splitting it in two and sliding into her favoured stance.

Asuma swore, "Don't make me regret this."

He cut the seal bindings on Gaara's wrists and a rush of chakra pulled into the boy, who inhaled deeply with his eyes closed and nearly standing up on his toes as the blockage preventing him from accessing his chakra was removed.

"You're not allowed to die." Kurenai tore off Temari and Kankuro's bindings, breathing hotly at the trio. "You hear me?"

Kankuro and Temari reacted similarly as they were also freed from the restraints and given their weapons by the two Suna jounin accompanying them; Kankuro a scroll with his puppets inside and Temari got her battle fan.

They nodded to Kurenai's warning.

Wasting no more time, Temari whipped open her fan and swung it over her head, throwing the clay bird's downward dive in disarray as it was pierced by wispy wind scythes and forcing it away. She and Kankuro took off running in the direction of the careening bird, hopping onto the girl's battle fan and taking off into the sky. Kakuzu leapt off the clay bird before it could crash into the earth, though Deidara simply fashioned another bird and bound onto it, allowing the discarded bird to explode with a deafening boom.

Meanwhile, Gaara's lower jaw widened and he clambered onto Hinata's medical carriage, much to Asuma's alarm.

The boy raised his arms and a flood of sand rushed out of his enlarged mouth, climbing up in an arc around the procession as a wall and protecting them from the shockwaves of the explosion, absorbing it when it rippled across the landscape.

Hastily, the boy swung the barrier around and it shifted to form a fist, smashing against Kushina's crossed blades, stopping her blazing charge from reaching the group.

The woman shuffled back a few inches, fixing her chakra to the ground and shoving against the sand fist, though it dissolved into watery sand and swallowed the woman entirely.

A quarter of a second later, the sand burst outwards with a shuddering thud of chakra, but Asuma and Kurenai were already on an irate, dirtied Kushina. Asuma sliced both of his trench knives down on the woman, powering sharp wind chakra on his weapons and pushing down hard on the Uzumaki's crossed blades.

The woman nimbly shifted Asuma's attack to her right, sliding to his back and spinning around with a kick to his lower back, but the deadly blow only met a mirage. Kushina followed through with the kick, rolling underneath Asuma's swipe for the nape of her neck and flipping to her feet, only to meet Kurenai's fist.

The blow didn't so much as shake Kushina, who swung the sword in her right hand and decapitated Kurenai, but this one too turned out to be an illusion. The real Kurenai stumbled to the ground, exiting a shimmering haze of air and grasping her throat, where a thin line of blood leaked from her neck.

Kushina froze at the sight of Kurenai fighting for air, and Asuma capitalized on that, running into the woman's guard and plunging his knives deep into Kushina's eyes. The whistling chakra burst out from the back of her head in a shower of dust and skull fragments. Finally, Asuma dragged the blades down, splitting the woman's face apart, and planting a straight kick into Kushina's stomach.

Asuma counted his lucky stars that Kushina wasn't willingly attacking her comrades.

The kick carried Kushina half a yard away, separating her from her swords and laid spreadeagle on the ground. Her eyes were gone and her face was broken into three pieces.

Gaara jumped off the carriage, covering himself in the sand he had used to shade them from shockwaves, lumbering to Kakuzu with a heavy but unwavering pace. The Suna jounin split off, one going to Temari and Kankuro, and the other rushed after Gaara. Tenten took the reins of the horse pulling the medical carriage snapping it and driving the horse into a frenzied dash. The genin teams ran after it.

Lee had to grip Neji under the arm and speed alongside the carriage when the Hyuuga had not yet snapped out of his mournful anguish.

Gai separated from the group, removing the weights on his ankles and wrists. He dashed to Hizashi, and the genin team skirted around their battle.

Asuma hurried to Kurenai, kneeling at her side and gently prying her hand away from her bleeding throat.

A relieved sigh left his mouth when he saw that the sword stroke was deliberately shallow.

Kushina didn't want to kill her comrades, pulling back on decapitating Kurenai, and so much as harming Kurenai had petrified her. As a highly skilled sensor, Kushina wasn't deceived by Kurenai's invisibility genjutsu, yet couldn't follow through with the killing blow.

Kurenai too was shaken up, having come so close to losing her head at the hands of her idol, but overall, she would recover.

A great gasp shook Asuma out of his thoughts as he mechanically applied a large Band-Aid to his girlfriend's throat, consoling her by rubbing her back.

"…Is she ok?" Kushina groaned, snappishly sitting up and turning her eyeless, broken face to Asuma and Kurenai, who was still catatonically on her knees. Her face mended itself, albeit with thin cracks running down her eyes to her chin. Her purple eyes returned and she flicked them to Kurenai. Whatever had stopped her from speaking was now damaged, and it was located in her head.

Asuma's eyes became wide, whispering in a weak voice as peril slowly set in, "Y-Yeah…"

"Please tell me you have reinforcements on the way," Kushina pleaded earnestly, creaking to her feet and rolling her shoulders. "I don't know how much longer I can hold back."

"Y-Y-Yeah," Asuma lied and Kushina frowned, seeing the man steadily get to his feet and hold up his trench knives, thrumming sharp wind chakra to them.

Kushina sighed, cracking her fist. "You've always been a terrible liar, Asuma."

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Konoha

"What about us?" Yugao pressed Naruto.

The Fifth Hokage turned to them, looking away from Ebisu as the man updated him on the condition of the civilians.

Every other ninja moved about with purpose.

Naruto's purple stare levelled with the two jounin, expressionlessly taking in their battered state. Medics had declared them free from poison, but that still didn't assure Naruto of their state of mind.

After all, they had watched the Fourth Hokage being carted off, possibly dead from poison.

Putting aside himself being their junior age-wise, the Hokage addressed them with intense eyes, "Do you still want to fight?"

Kakashi and Yugao caught the message underneath the question.

It wasn't a question of if they could still fight, but if they still wanted to.

The jounin replied with curt nods.

"Catch up to Team Inuzuka," reinforcements meant to support Hinata's return to the village, consisting of Tsume Inuzuka, Tayuya, Kidomaru, Sakon-Ukon, and Jirobo. "Bring the Suna ninjas with you. I want everyone back and in one piece. No exceptions."

The former members of Orochimaru's Sound Four were being rehabilitated in Konoha and had been under the village's probationary/reserve shinobi list. Bringing them into active service was desperately needed to protect the village. Since their team sensei, Tsume Inuzuka, had deemed them ready for fieldwork, Naruto had to trust her assessment.

Kimimaro, Karin Uzumaki, and the other Sound victims on probation had to remain behind.

"Dismissed."

"Yes, Lord Hokage," Kakashi and Yugao saluted, flickering away to catch up to the reinforcement team.

The buzz of the village gradually lowered.

Everyone was doing what they were told.

Guards were posted around bunkers and the L&I Department were in contact with Konoha ninjas outside of the village, laying low till they received orders that told them otherwise. Naruto wanted Konoha to be in a good position before it could reach out to allies that needed help.

Selfish, yes, but the Hokage didn't care about that.

Protecting the village was his main priority.

The streets cleared out and ANBU evacuated more civilians from their homes.

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

The red-haired boy stared down Hanzo, and the impassive Amekage raised an eyebrow at the unintimidated teenager that had been issuing commands to his seniors not too long ago.

The boy closed his eyes and took in a slow breath, puffing up his chest and gently exhaling from his mouth. Then he opened his eyes and a pair of sharingan spiralled sluggishly.

A masked man dropped down to Naruto's right, falling to a knee when the boy flicked his doujutsu at him. The boy muttered something, muffling his lips so Hanzo couldn't read his words.

The man nodded again and rose to his feet, clapping his hands and lacing them into the Dragon hand seal.

The boy lowered into a runner's starting position, pressing his fingers into the ground and eliciting a tremor.

Hanzo's eyebrows lifted higher at the amount of chakra building up in the boy's core, bracing himself for what was to come.

Red mist ebbed off the boy's form and the boy's form vibrated.

Then he was gone.

Hanzo bared his teeth painfully and was lurched backwards, clean off his feet and into the sky when the boy's shoulder tackled him, closing the distance in less than the blink of an eye and clearing him off his salamander's head.

The force of the tackle broke two of the Amekage's lower ribs.

Still, the man gathered himself again, racing through the sky further and further away from Konoha, and clobbering hard fists into the boy's back. The boy didn't budge or release him, clasping his hands together at Hanzo's back and pushing his shoulder deep into the undead man's gut.

On what felt like the sixth blow, and now considerably far from Konoha's walls, Hanzo witnessed a giant tree burst out from underneath his startled salamander summons, engulfing the frenzied creature with its branches and impaling it in many places with several smaller trees, dispelling it when it realized it couldn't wriggle out of the chakra draining trees and it could no longer endure being stabbed by branches.

The plume of smoke covered Konoha's northern wall.

The boy unwrapped his arms from Hanzo's middle and pushed away with his feet, using Hanzo's chest to further the distance. They were now coasting over a rocky, dusty plain. The wind whistled angrily in their ears and the air heated up around them as they began their arcing descent.

Naruto flickered his fingers through four hand seals and exhaled the sun.

"Fire style: Great Fireball Annihilation."

Hanzo had to give the boy credit; he certainly wasn't going easy on him.

The man shielded his face as he was swallowed up by the flames, crashing into the side of a mountain with a rumble that reverberated across the continent.

Naruto didn't relax, smashing down on Hanzo as the flames still sizzled on the man's charred skin and pulled the man into a sharingan illusion.

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

The Hokage breathed out, calming his ragged heart and deactivating his doujutsu when he saw that the Amekage was frozen.

He ignored the errant flames lapping at the air and turned around, looking to the sun to get his bearings.

His calculations before tackling Hanzo had been right; he was in Waterfall country, an allied nation. The noise of water bellowing down waterfalls far in the distance entered his ears as he finally cooled down, stepping away from Hanzo and looking around carefully. They were close to Waterfall and Earth country's border if the rocky ground was any indication.

He scratched his head and wiped away the blood dribbling down the corners of his mouth; Hanzo's blows hurt more than he was allowing himself to reveal. The teen looked a bit to his right. "Konoha should be…this way."

Hanzo groaned and snapped upright, and Naruto shut his eyes with exasperation.

"Of course, they're invulnerable to genjutsu." He noted that the invulnerability to illusions wasn't immediate, as it had taken Hanzo about fifteen seconds to shake off the illusion. Also, Hanzo was invulnerable to falling hundreds of kilometres to the earth and being encased in fire, though with the same time-lapse between healing and being invulnerable to illusions. Naruto filed those small titbits for later, seeing the man wheeze back to his feet and his features gradually repaired, yet with visible cracks in his face and body. "You won't happen to know how to properly end this, would you?"

He didn't get any response.

Rather, the man cracked his neck and rolled his shoulders.

"Wonderful. I have some research to do." Naruto's shoulders sagged at the prospect. One should never mistake Naruto, as remarkable as he was, for someone that enjoyed studying. He smirked invisibly at the ragged man, giving the Amekage a two-finger salute. "I'll be seeing you."

Naruto was gone in a burst of red mist, and out of the mist exploded a blizzard of ravenous praying mantis.

Authors note

Now, onto why I've not been consistent with my uploads :/

I was fortunate enough to get a job at the start of February, this year. A really good job. A teaching job. I'm also studying to get my master's, and that's been since December of last year. Right now, I'm pushing through the second semester and very soon I'll be working on my dissertation. My WIP is also coming along nicely. I've been having doubts, but I've learnt that doubts are natural. There have also been some issues with my computer, but that's ignorable. Juggling everything has been stressful but I'm managing.

But before I got my job and before I started my master's program, I wanted to properly close the chapter on writing fanfictions. My focus was on neatly and respectfully completing three fics; Red Demon, Ink Heart, and Shadow's Smirk. Those are three stories that are extremely special to me. Someday, I might return to complete other unfinished fics.

I'm not saying this to be snooty or conceited. The whole point of my rambling is that I'm determined to finish this fic, despite my inconsistencies and the wide gaps between updates. We've still got about 8 – 10 chapters remaining before this story is done, and I can move on to Shadow's Smirk.

I'll completely understand if you lose interest and I'm really sorry for the frequent delays. Still, expect the next chapter to be ready by Friday :)

Please, bear with me.

See you when I see you.

Foy.