Shin Ikeda

by Kassien

COMPLETE! Quasi-Self Insert into Orphaned Shin of the Leaf. Becomes Heir of Ikeda Clan through random circumstances during the Kyuubi attack, and forges his own path through the Naruto world with Fuinjutsu, hard work, and his hero the Second Hokage in mind. Until Orochimaru throws in the biggest curveball, that leaves him fighting like never before. COMPLETE!

5. Chapter 5: Konoha Crush

Shin Ikeda

By Kassien

Written: 10/28/22 - 7/30/23

Chapter 5: Konoha Crush

I wasn't asked to be among the Chunin involved in putting on the Konoha Chunin Exams, nor was there a way to get involved without being even more suspicious, and most likely getting myself in trouble, so I trained and planned for contingencies on my own. If I couldn't do anything about Orochimaru and Kabuto specifically, I could at least prepare for the invasion and work on protecting my properties and friends, and hopefully help from there. I contemplated different ideas for how to help combat against the large snake summons I thought were coming, and wondered if there was any way to stop the barrier jutsu of the Sound Four from trapping the Hokage, but couldn't come up with anything that I could get away with beforehand, without a lot of questions I couldn't answer being asked.

I did work out a few possible ideas for disrupting the Sound Four Barrier once it was already up, but I wasn't sure if I would be close enough to do anything, or even be let near during the invasion. I spent some time training with Sensei Doto, when he returned to the village briefly, but he was back doing non stop border missions with his team, and very happy to be out fighting against the occasional Rock ninja. He offered me a permanent position with his team if I was interested in seeing some more action in the future, as both Xian and Gaku were already very friendly and knowledgeable about my skills, but I put him off for a bit wanting to get stronger before I put myself in that kind of position, and also needing to stay around through the invasion.

The week before the exams began, most Chunin were given orders to help with village security as Genin teams from all over the Elemental Nations were descending upon our village, to compete, and we were responsible for keeping the peace. I was responsible for several blocks that included my own apartment and properties, and also contained several other more populated residences and a commercial district near the western edge of Konoha, not too far from the outer walls. Luckily, my area was quiet during the lead up to the exams, and I was able to learn after the fact that Orochimaru infiltrated the second stage on the other side of the village, and all Chunin and others were put on high alert, as the Hokage ramped up our defenses for the month build up to the Finals.

The day of the Finals, the whole of Konoha was ramped up with excitement over the Chunin Exams coming to an end, with the influx of many wealthy clients that came to see the festivities, to the extra security around every important landmark as it seemed we were preparing for something to happen, and maybe they suspected one of Konoha's most notorious missing nin. I had tried to get permission to Fuinjutsu tag each box in the stadium, so I would have a way to get around the Sound Four's barrier, but was rejected as unnecessary, and I couldn't convince anyone why it was important. In fact, I was given an assignment away from the Stadium itself, so I wasn't even going to be nearby when the fighting began, as I was asked to help with the barrier team on wall security, and knew I was in for a rough time.

Fuck, I hate being right. Rough didn't quite cut it, as a monstrously large snake summon crashed right through the village walls feet away from me, killing the Senior most member of the Barrier team I was assigned to along with a dozen others, and we were left the unenviable task of tackling the enormous beast in the chaos and confusion. I barely registered the Sound and Sand ninja coming streaming through the gaping hole left in our village walls, as the snake summons was bearing down on the last remaining member of the barrier squad, and I had to act now or we were in trouble.

Performing a quick replacement with the frozen kunoichi I only met an hour ago, I only had one shot to throw the kunai with the largest explosive tag I possessed, directly into the open mouth of the snake before body flickering away as fast as I could. I still got slammed in the side by the enormous beast and thrown away to the side landing painfully, seconds before we all felt an impossibly large and muffled explosion that impossibly took out the large summons, who disappeared in a flash of chakra and light. Most of the shocked Konoha ninja around, were quick to realize and take in the new, slightly better circumstances they now found themselves in, and quickly started engaging with the first wave of Sound and Sand invaders.

Kiko, the kunoichi from the barrier team I saved, was quick to find and help me recover from getting knocked around by the large snake summons, and stayed with me as I shook off the cobwebs and began engaging in fighting the enemy, and providing barriers for my fellow Leaf ninja. It was fast and brutal fighting, and you were just as likely to get hit by a stray shot from another fight, as you were to get taken down by the almost one hundred different ninjas seemingly invading through the gap in the wall. We worked well together as she used localized genjutsu to disrupt the balance and vision of those before us, giving me time to cut them down quickly, before they could recover or realize I was two feet to the left.

Within fifteen minutes, the fighting in our direct area seemed to be winding down as the now overwhelming number of leaf ninja had finally turned the tides and turned the invaders away at this section of the wall, just in time to see the arrival of Jiraiya himself, on the back of an enormous battle toad. He had come to check on us, having already turned the other two large snake summons away, and bringing news that all the summons had now been dealt with, though there was still fighting in several parts of the village and stadium, and that Orochimaru was fighting the Hokage, and he was heading there next. We were left under an unknown Jounin, who had a few non combatants start gathering and treating the wounded, while he sent teams out to different parts of the village to help with the fighting.

I gave Kiko a thankful nod, as she was staying behind with the non-combatants, and followed my small group of six that was heading south, while another group of six went north, and the remaining ten went east towards the center of the village, and the stadium. Sometimes, being one of the younger Chunins has its drawbacks, as you often get overlooked and weren't able to go towards the stadium, but knew that I had to follow orders. Unfortunately, we quickly ran into resistance as several Sound ninjas were looting a weapons store, while a small group of dead Konoha Chunin were already lying in puddles of bloody messes out front, and our commander for this operation jumped in before we could set up any defenses, and knew this was going to be another difficult fight.

Today has just not been my day, and I hated being right, as I was the last standing man from my small group of six. Luckily, three of them were only injured, but weren't much help otherwise when it fell to me to finish off the formidable Sound team. By that point, they were on their last legs anyway, and I was able to finish the last two off before returning to patch up my comrades and give them the bad news about the death of our squad leader and Zeka, his second. With the help of two shadow clones, I was able to help the group limp their way towards the hospital a few minutes away, constantly on the lookout for any danger, as the only able fighter left, and had to intervene twice to clear our way.

Thankfully the hospital was well secured with a perimeter, and our Konoha headbands got us inside to get the group help and treatment, while I turned back around popped a soldier pill and went back out into the streets, to try and help clear out any remaining invaders. It was only two streets away, when I again encountered more Sound ninja, this pair with weird metal contraptions on their arms and I wasted no time throwing a flash bang before they could react, and momentarily blinding them, giving me the chance to body flicker in front of them, sweeping my tanto through the air, and killing the first before trying to continue to his partner, and him just dodging in time.

"Sound Blast" he shouted, as I pivoted and brought my tanto back up directly through his midsection splitting his chest open as the powerful sound based attack clipped me and tossed me like a ragdoll down the street, disorienting and painful, it was seconds before the world stopped spinning and ringing.

"Fuck!" I groaned in pain, wobbling back to my stomach and getting to my hands and knees with an enormous amount of effort. It was another few seconds before I was able to stand and get back my balance, and then stumbling/stalking back towards the dead pair, and eventually acquisitioning myself a working pair of sound canons, I would play with later.

I had just put the metal contraptions into a sealing scroll, when an impossibly large roar echoed from miles away, and far off in the distance, but oh so fucking big even from here, was the One Tailed Shukaku, and I just hoped Naruto was their and stuck to the script, and they would all walk out of this okay. However, it also meant that the invasion was winding down, as shortly after Gaara was defeated, Orochimaru was forced to flee and abandon his invasion. I wondered what direction they would be retreating, and backtracked to the western wall where I had started, just in case they used one of the previously made openings to escape back through.

Well, I guessed right, but it hardly mattered, as me trying to stop Orochimaru, even if he didn't have arms at the time, was not happening, but I did manage to catch the Sound Four and Kabuto for a short second inside one of my barriers, but it wasn't enough to truly stop them. It took Kidomaru unleashing his Curse seal to disrupt the barrier I caught them in, and then he instantly rushed me with inky black lines covering his body, as the others didn't waste a second and fled behind their leader. I only had the briefest of moments to react and I instantly flared my water whips like an octopus around myself, in order to protect myself from his thrown webbing, shooting it off course, and just catching his ankle with one of my water whips enough to trip him up before he reached me.

His creepy multiple arms and weird center of balance kept him from falling to the ground and instead he acrobatically wheeled towards me in an absolute rage, and I had a brief moment of utter panic as his size began to double and his curse mark went to the second stage and a feeling of corrupted chakra was thick in the air. I contemplated anything I had to combat that and unfortunately came up blank, thinking it was my time and not even remotely ready to die …until a large battle toad landed directly in front of me. Squishing the creepy black spider looking thing he became, before leaping off an impossibly large distance forward and after the retreating Sound ninja and their armless leader, with Jiraiya's impossibly long white hair visible for the briefest of moments on the toad's back.

I took one glance down at the shrinking Kidomaru, as the black inky lines were quickly retreating into his curse mark now that he was completely unconscious, and quickly got out a knockout tag, and put it on him just in case before I started tying him up in ninja wire as well. It was only seconds later, that three very well known Jounin landed in the clearing following Jiraiya, and I watched with wide eyes as Kakashi Hatake, Maito Gai, and Asuma Sarutobi took one look at the knocked out Kidomaru as I tied him up, gave me nods and flickered off in the direction following the others.

Then it was another several moments until more ninja started arriving, and finally another familiar Jounin, Ibiki Morino arrived and quickly took possession of my prisoner after several questions of what happened, and who I was, even asking me to write him a report of everything I saw at my next opportunity. He sent me off with two other Chunin to patrol the outside of the village walls going south, and to collect all injured to bring to the hospital, and to mark all the deceased, so we can start doing counts. It was slow going over the next several hours as we worked south along the outside of the village walls, marking more than two dozen dead bodies, treating and bringing three injured Konoha shinobi with us, and capturing and knocking out another six injured Sound or Sand shinobi.

Hakei Jin, one of my fellow Chunin had a beaver summon that was large enough to carry all six prisoners we tied up, using his large flat tail as a sled, and it was truly remarkable how versatile and helpful his summons was. Not to mention how weird it was to have an intelligent conversation with an animal larger than us, and reminded me just how different this world was and how useful a summoning contract would be. I asked Hakei a bit about them as we worked, and he was friendly enough to explain about his summons, which had been a part of his Clan for generations.

The beavers had many versatile members, some for transport, some spies, some fighters, they covered them all, and had been involved with the Jin Clan for generations, though he himself only worked with a small group that he got to know over the years. Many of his family members had similar small groups of summons they tended to work with, and trained together, and it helped them with familiarity just like a ninja team, and I was obviously pretty impressed. He must have realized my thinking though, because he came out and told me he didn't recommend reverse summoning without a contract, as some of the animal Clans were just not happy about being a summons or happy with humans or shinobi in general, and if you got one of them, you would be in some real trouble.

Damn …there went that plan.

When we reached the south gate, and showed them our orders from Jounin Ibiki, they quickly arranged the transport of our injured and prisoners, and asked us to continue around the outer wall if we were able, signing the mission extension and sending us on another several hour trip towards the east gate now. This side was quieter, as we only found a single injured Konoha kunoichi, and a pair of crippled Sound shinobi with no pants, that we took pleasure in dragging around in the most uncomfortable of ways until we reached the east gate and turned them over to the guards. By this time, it was getting late and evening was approaching, so the guards asked us to report back to the mission desk, and get another assignment, as it didn't look like any of us were going to get to sleep tonight.

I miss sleep, sleeping in on weekends the most, and can't even remember if I've ever done that since arriving in this world. I was right, and spent the entire night doing cleanup missions throughout the village, pulling out the dead and injured, and trying to get them out of the way so we could have the genin teams come behind us and clean up all the weapons and blood stains. I acquired a few other interesting looking weapons we encountered, including a very expensive trench knife that I had to pull out of a kid that I went to the Academy with, but mostly it was rough going just cleaning up all the dead bodies into black striped storage scrolls that were a Konoha standard, and trying to remove signs of the invasion.

It was nearing dawn, when the rumors started about the Hokage dying during the fighting reached me and the small team of Chunin I was working with, causing all three of us to stiffen and glance at each other, none of us knowing what to do about it. We finished up the section we were in, knowing skipping out on a mission wasn't the answer, and then returned to the Mission desk to turn in our assignment. Unfortunately, the Mission desk was information central and we confirmed the rumors that the Hokage was indeed dead, and we numbly turned in our signed mission scroll and picked up another, knowing we weren't going to be getting any rest anytime soon.

Three and a half days I spent working straight, with a single break to write up my invasion report for Ibiki, but not to sleep, and when I did finally get a single eight hour shift off, I went back to my apartment, and crashed for the entirety of that time. My alarm waking me up, and the absolutely stiff and exhausted feeling I still felt, was a sign that I was nowhere near fully recovered from the invasion and all the subsequent work since then, and wondered how I was going to get through another long day of multiple missions before I could get more rest. My body and chakra coils felt burnt out, and no amount of cycling my chakra fully removed the soreness or tiredness, but I didn't really have much of a choice other than to keep pushing and getting things done.

My luck finally changed, and upon reaching the Mission desk, I was given a mission to report to T & I, to meet with Ibiki Morino about a follow up with my report, as the Jounin leader of T & I requested me specifically and I hoped it meant a little break from all the cleanup. Having met Kabuto at my own Chunin exam, I was easily able to identify him and provide descriptions of each of the Sound Four who came with Orochimaru, and described my actions and thoughts in trying to capture or slow them down in any way I could. He actually thanked me after the pretty long interview, glad to have at least captured one member of the group before signing off on my mission scroll and dismissing me.

I stopped by Takao and Ito's weapon shop, to make sure they were both still doing okay, and dropped off one of the Sound Canons I retrieved, as Takao had taken up tinkering with things, and I knew I wouldn't have the time right now, before checking in on Gui the Gyoza cook, picking up a quick snack and returning to the Mission desk. It stayed that way for several weeks, as I barely had time to sleep between the countless extra missions they wanted everyone pitching in with, and when I heard a rumor of Jiraiya and Tsunade returning to the village, I almost collapsed in relief, hoping things might go back to a more normal pace soon.