Training With Orochimaru Before Diplomatic Mission to Suna - Interlude Part 3
Naruto sat alone in the clearing he used as an unofficial training ground. Where he first tested his chakra forged weapons with Masamune-Jiji and Jiraiya. The same place he most often used to do his solo training, work on his more theoretical, and the first place he got his metallic body armor to work without burning him, in other words, it's like his home away from his home away from home.
The trees in this area seemed to sway a bit more with the wind than in Konoha's designated training grounds. Probably because they've been destroyed by training shinobi less, so they haven't needed to grow back bigger and stronger. The grass underneath him was lush, significantly more so than in other training grounds he's utilized. Overall, it was a serene slice of nature that hadn't yet been completely altered by man.
While talking with his teammates a few days ago Naruto had what he thought to be a breakthrough in solving Orochimaru's 'riddle'. Thinking that he would be able to somehow use his connection with his environment to overcome her own technique. It turns out, that was much easier said than done.
For one, he had very little idea of exactly what he was trying to accomplish. Normally when he was trying to do something seemingly impossible like this, he at least had some theoretical framework to start from or move towards. But in this case, it was all guesswork.
His Naginata lay on the ground a few feet in front of him. He spent a lot of his time just meditating and focusing on the weapon across from him. He could feel it, almost like one would feel another shinobi with a lot of chakra nearby. It was a weird feeling because it wasn't like his other chakra smithed weapons or steel. He wasn't feeling his own altered and tempered chakra within the weapon, it was something entirely different.
Something inside of him wanted to open up to that feeling. But it sadly wasn't as simple as just 'going with that feeling'. It's almost like sculpting something out of clay without knowing the final intended product. He was just molding chakra and feeling out his own network's pathways in seemingly random attempts to capture the feeling.
To be perfectly honest, Naruto wasn't even certain exactly how his Naginata actually worked. Unlike his Jishaku, which manipulates magnetic fields using a specifically generated chakra field that interferes with ferromagnetic principles, allowing him to control magnetic fields to a degree. But he didn't fully understand his Naginata.
The original principle behind it was that it worked by separating chakra, 'reverse-balancing' the difference between Yin and Yang chakra in a technique. But after further study and talks with Orochimaru, he's proven that can't be the case because it would make channeling chakra through the weapon basically pointless.
When he let his overabundant chakra seep into the environment around him he could feel the Naginata. Or more specifically, he could feel the absence of the Naginata. Like his own energy was just bouncing off of it. But that made even less sense because when he touched it to pick it up it was thrumming with energy like it always.
The deeper he allowed himself to slip into his meditative state of mind, the more he felt it. Like someone knocking on your front door, it was loud and he could feel it throughout his body. But he couldn't answer the door.
'Perhaps? No-' Naruto started to think inwardly, but then cut his own train of thought short as he tried to work his way through the problem. 'It feels similar to when I create the connection with my chakra to begin chakra smithing. Maybe being able to create that connection of such varied forms of chakra is what allows me to feel this other energy while Orochimaru-sensei cannot?'
He had spent hours upon hours the last three days attempting this. Searching for the knocking, because something deep down called for him to answer it, telling him that it was important. So he continued to follow that feeling. Ignoring everything else as he dove deeper, thirst and hunger meant little to him, the position of the sun in the sky shifted without him even noticing.
Until he found it.
His chakra had permeated everything within sight by this point. But suddenly he felt the doorknob, the knocking still reverberating within his senses. Without hesitation Naruto opened the door, and his awareness suddenly exploded outward. It felt like he had been blind his entire life, but now he could suddenly see like a mighty Hyuuga.
The feeling was indescribable, to say the least. His eyes shot open and he half expected his vision to be in black and white, like how the Hyuuga described their own. But everything looked normal, he could just feel everything around him.
A family of mice was burrowing a new home in the largest tree opposite the clearing from Naruto. There was a hawk harassing a smaller sparrow within its territory overhead, small enough to barely be flecks of dust in the sky to Naruto. But he felt them. Felt their feelings, the hints of their chakra, where they were.
Naruto locked in on a snake, with far too much chakra, wrapped around a branch high up behind him as well. The serpent felt like a genin for Kami's sake. It was focused intently on him as well. With a tiny amount of focus, Naruto sent a spike of chakra metal flying from exposed skin on his body towards the snake. The surprise attack did not hit the animal, but it certainly startled it. "Let Orochimaru know that if she wishes to observe me, she can come herself."
The now-identified summons simply let out a hiss as it disappeared in a poof of smoke. Further confirming Naruto's suspicions about his not-yet sensei's spying. Well, he couldn't be too annoyed at the moment. Shinobi spy, that was just a fact, it would be ridiculous to be mad about it. Besides, he was far too happy about this apparent breakthrough.
All of a sudden the energy seemed to force its way out of his system. As it rebounded out of his control his body spasmed shortly, forcing a pained gasp to break Naruto's previously calm demeaner.
"FUCK that hurt!" It took him a moment to gather himself and realize he had ended up flat on his back on the ground. The pain, and the energy, having left his body in an instant. But even after the experience, Naruto couldn't help but smile bright.
Obviously it would take some work, but he had done it. Whatever that source of power was, he could still feel it. The knocking at the nape of his neck was still there. He almost reached out again to feel its warmth, but decided not to at the moment.
He realized that he could actually feel his Naginata still sitting across from him when he still had control. The energy thrumming within it seemed to match his own in that moment. The smile on Naruto's face only seemed to widen.
"Let's see the white snake block my senses now."
Chapter 12: Sobering Up The Drunk One
Jiraiya had gone off somewhere after lunch, probably to find his teammates, leaving Naruto alone with Shizune in what was now the shared suite of rooms for the three Sannin and apprentices. The suite of rooms, which was really more like an apartment, was actually relatively luxurious, with one main 'living room' that connected to four other rooms in a rectangle. Two doors on the left side, Naruto and Jiraiya's shared room, next door was the still relatively large shared bathroom for guests not in the master suite. And on the right was the door to Orochimaru's room, Naruto hadn't seen the inside but he assumed it looked a lot like his own. A stock-standard two-bed room at any inn in Fire Country, only decorated much better, and most likely a lot cleaner.
Bigger, ornately carved, double doors denoted the master bedroom and accompanying bathroom that Shizune and Tsunade occupied. The doors were currently open to show Shizune reading at a table nearby her own bed which was just noticeably smaller than Tsunade's. Behind her was an open window that showed a rather beautiful view of the city that Naruto hated. To be fair, he would probably like it more if he hadn't been staring at it for three days.
The other two Sannin had either gone to a bar to get smashed again, or off to gamble sometime earlier that morning while Naruto had been doing some light 'non-destructive' training with Jiraiya on the hotel's large and lush grounds, as ordered by both his sensei. Who oddly enough, only seemed to truly get along when they were torturing him.
It had been three days since 'the incident' at the casino, the hole in the wall shaped like him had been covered up at least. But the trio of old drunks who called themselves 'The Legendary Sannin' had spent almost every minute they were here either actively drunk or actively getting drunk. Leaving Naruto with a lot of free time he couldn't use, as well as being annoyed and confused by the parameters and objectives of the mission.
Weren't they supposed to be convincing Tsunade to come home? And if not, the exact words his Hokage gave to all three of them were to "Drag her back by her pigtails, kicking and screaming like a child if you have to." Naruto would have never previously believed the Hokage to be serious about such a thing until he began hearing stories from both Jiraiya and Orochimaru about when Hiruzen had been their sensei. Apparently, the man was less 'task-driver' and more 'slave-driver'.
It didn't help that Jiraiya kept asking him for gambling funds, "an investment" the pervert called it. Then he would say something mostly incoherent about how the blonde should have more than enough petty cash to bankroll his gambling "from all that fancy metalwork". As if he didn't already know that Naruto would never sell any of his Chakra Forged weapons. Most of them only existed as his own supply of semi-liquid metal, and really only existed as a blueprint within his mind. Albeit a very detailed blueprint. But he would never sell something with that much power or emotional attachment.
Truth be told, Naruto had never really cared about monetizing most of his weaponsmithing, chakra related or otherwise. He had mostly made ends meet early on by working for Masamune-Jiji, forging kunai and stock blades for military orders, very rarely did he sell anything he put genuine effort into. He was far too sentimental and emotional with his creations, which is probably also why he rarely let clones work on anything important. He just took so much care in everything he did when forging that it felt like it was a part of him. Selling them would feel like chopping off his right hand.
Then once he had finally gotten his own shop, he mostly just filled out shuriken and kunai orders en masse for the village. It's wonderful what a perfectionist can do when given liberal amounts of operating funds, his own workshop, and enough clones to staff Konoha's walls.
He personally supplies slightly over half of Konoha's Operational Weapon Efficiency, or K.O.W.E. Which is the acronym given to the stockpile of weapons Konoha keeps on hand for a variety of different things. Its main purpose is to stockpile arms for wars and invasions, but it is also used to supply various ninja for a variety of things, most of them either being Anbu operatives or others doing missions specifically for Konoha. And boy do they go through a lot of kunai and shuriken in the Anbu, talk about a kill-happy bunch of nutjobs.
But he mostly just did all of that to have enough money on hand to consistently fund his work. He does occasionally give Masamune-Jiji items to sell in his shop, but at least half of those are often more decorative pieces that required a level of precision and detail that would be impossible for most smiths, a level of craftsmanship that Naruto had actually become quite well known for. Although the customers had no idea who actually made those swords, let alone that he used a very primitive form of Chakra Smithing to create them. He's pretty sure some important elders from the Hyuuga clan have even purchased one or two of his decorative works.
See the trick was, while most smiths needed to etch designs into weapons using some form of media, like various acids or chiseling tools, or by welding prefabricated sculptures onto the weapon. He could just make it all in one piece, details and etchings included. They were still mostly decorative, but were also probably much stronger than-
Naruto was aroused from his reverie by a heavy knocking on their door. He looked down at the scroll in his lap that he had been staring at, but not reading, for nearly half an hour now, "Technical Chakra Theory: Interacting Forces", and sighed. The hint of the sun in the sky from the window let him know that it was late afternoon, he had actually been staring at the scroll for two hours and not just a few minutes.
Two more knocks in quick succession reminded him once again that someone was at the door. Someone with a heavy hand, Naruto noticed in the back of his head, probably Jiraiya coming back to pass out or weasel money out of him.
The blonde stood to open the door, pausing to stretch and relieve the pressure in his back, the chairs looked pretty but certainly did not make for great back support. He also noted that Shizune had somehow not moved an inch from her previous position almost two hours ago. 'Must be some medic thing to relieve stress,' he thought to himself.
He opened the heavy wooden door that separated their room from the hallway in the hotel, words for his perverted sensei already coming to his lips. "Listen hear ya shitty pervert. If you think you're gonna get a single kami damned-".
On the other side of the door stood a massive mountain of a man that Naruto immediately recognized as the wielder of Samehada, Kisame Hoshigaki. Standing next to the real number one most wanted criminal from Konoha, Itachi Uchiha.
"Pervert?" Kisame started, a terrifyingly toothy grin filling his face, like a shark on the hunt. "I'll have you know that I am quite the gentleman with the ladies. Ne Itachi?" But Naruto didn't wait for what was sure to be a very witty reply from quite possibly the most famous mass slaughterer on the continent. Slamming the door hard, he turned and yelled to Shizune who had just now stood up from her spot, still uncertain of what was happening. "Out the window!-" But his words were cut short.
An explosion of wood splinters cleared to reveal an oddly large blue hand slamming through the door and grabbing Naruto by his face. The blonde's body stiffened but he didn't do much other than grab at his captor's hand. The rest of the door was quickly destroyed in an efficient and pants-soiling display of force, seemingly just by flexing the arm currently speared through it. Leaving only a pile of splintered wood and dust.
Shizune yelled, terror and surprise evident in her voice, but a barrage of senbon still left her sleeves in a deadly display of her kunoichi training. Sadly, Kisame simply used Naruto's body like a shield, blocking all thirty-six senbon using his captive's back.
Naruto knew it was thirty-six because he could feel every impact as this S-ranked swordsman literally lifted him into the air to use him as a shield against Shizune's first barrage of weaponry. She would not get a second opportunity to strike though, Itachi's own appearance from behind the cloud of the destroyed door let him get a quick and easy glance into her eyes, dropping her like a puppet with its strings cut.
Naruto raised his hands up once again to grab onto Kisame's own, who mostly just allowed the blonde Jinchuriki to do as he pleased. The loud sound of Naruto's muffled words filled the suite as he attempted to speak into Kisame's hand. The massive blue man seemed to find this funny for a moment before a sideways glance from his stone-faced partner set him back on track.
With the blonde's hands still gripping his own, Kisame simply shifted his hand upon the boy's relatively smaller head, allowing him to speak. Naruto let out a few short gasps for breath and a cough before he spoke again, repeating the words he had muffled into the semi-insane nuke-nin's hands. "You fuckin asshole. You're gonna regret that."
Kisame laughed at this, "Little shits got some spunk Itachi. You sure we can't play with him? I hear he's getting pretty good with a blade." Kisame glanced back at his teammate, a wicked smile revealing rows of sharpened teeth adorned his blue face, who only stared back at him with the same dull look.
"Kisame, we both know there is little time for your games. We need to alert the others to retreat now that we have the package."
"But it will be really fun." The same toothy grin he had shined earlier reappeared on his face. Not that the blonde could see that, still busy wriggling in his grip. "Even if his friend's senbon softened him up a bit."
Itachi actually quirked his head at his partner's words, eyes suddenly darting about to take in every detail of the room. "What senbon?"
That was the moment Naruto chose to strike. Latching his hands on both of Kisame's as molten metal flowed seemingly from his sleeves and skin and poured over most of Kisame's hands and arms. It happened before Kisame could even hear Itachi's question, and another beat passed where Kisame's mouth was wide open in a silent scream before one finally began to tear its way out of his body and throat.
Eventually the searing pain caused the sharklike swordsman to open his hands and let the blonde drop. As soon as the blonde broke from the massive man's grip, the metal began to rapidly harden and cool, leaving Kisame's hands and forearms stuck in poorly formed fists. Bubbles of liquid metal still forming and popping as it all hardens.
A sickening display of Chakra Smithing that neither rogue ninja had properly anticipated. It even stunned Itachi, if only for the briefest of moments.
Naruto landed in a sweeping crouch below the guard of the blue giant. "I did say you'd regret it." The snark in Naruto's tone couldn't be fully appreciated over the sound of Kisame's continued deep bass scream. The molten metal, only now beginning to truly cool and harden against his skin. He lifted both hands up and behind himself in an attempt to grab Samehada, only to find himself unable to actually grab it. Both hands stuck in mangled molten casts of themselves.
Hell, the fact that his hands didn't melt down or deform more was actually astounding to the blonde. Perhaps a natural healing factor, or something to do with his odd appearance? Or maybe due to Naruto's lack of available metal to melt down, having to use the senbon in lieu of his normal molten armor which still resided in seals along his body.
Itachi seemed to move past his partner in slow motion, having gotten over his previous surprise, slipping past Kisame who was now moving wildly in an attempt to get any sort of control over his hands, his latent chakra not-so-slowly pouring out and filling the surrounding environment. The blue man's left hand was very slowly gaining some mobility, his dominant hand still very much encased in the reforged senbon.
But the wayward Uchiha seemed to care little for his partner's suffering, now having brushed by him to move within striking range of the Uzumaki. Naruto's chakra joined Kisame's own, in that he had started to expend, flex, and mold as much of it as he could in as short a time as possible.
Time seemed to slow down as he watched Itachi's hand extending towards him ever so slowly in a deadly jab, he was almost done, once more flattening his chakra out and wrapping it over itself again. The Uchiha's hand grew even closer, only a few inches left before he was too close, but Naruto needed this to be timed perfectly or he wouldn't have the time to grab Shizune.
Centimeters separated Itachi's reach and Naruto's throat, this was it, the last possible moment. The intense buildup in chakra had been so omnipresent in the less-than-a-second that passed since Itachi made a move on him, that even Kisame felt oddly cold when it abruptly disappeared. Like stepping out of the ocean onto a cold windy beach, chills ran down their collective spines.
And then the heat returned. Only now instead of nice warm water it was like standing on the sun, a searing heat that promised consequences for those who offended. Itachi's hand had now reached the blonde jinchuriki's throat, Naruto could feel the chakra pouring through it in an attempt to disable him. But it mattered little now.
A different type of metal than the one he impromptu used against Kisame now poured out from Naruto's form. Slipping from his sleeves and neckline, emerging from seals all over his body, some even seemed to fall out of his hair. Itachi's fingers met Naruto's semi-fluid chakra armor, which absorbed the impact of the S-ranked blow on his trachea and began to stick to Itachi's fingers.
Itachi, having learned from Kisame's mistakes, was in no rush to lose his own hand and withdrew it lightning-fast. As soon as his opponent's hand retreated, Naruto once again let his chakra loose, only this time with no intention of reigning it in. A smile lit up his face as he yelled "Boom!"
The metal that had been accumulating on his body sprang out as if it had been propelled by a high-powered explosive tag. Large ferromagnetic spikes of chakra forged metal expanded rapidly from the Uzumaki smith's body, who took this opportunity to turn and run for the window. Most of the metal spikes still connected to him, but enough of them had launched themselves from his body to become deadly projectiles for the two ninja attacking him.
Grabbing Shizune by the waist and slinging her over his shoulder as he dashed for freedom he reached the window and didn't hesitate to launch himself out their fourth-story window and into a free fall. 'Thank Kami she's not as heavy as her master.' He thought to himself briefly. He hit the ground hard, unable to dissipate as much force as he normally could without dropping Shizune.
Twelve exact copies of the blonde, some carrying an identical Shizune, appeared in small poofs of smoke around him. Immediately scattering and making noise. Both to distract his attackers and to find the only people who could help him survive an extended engagement with these monsters. He was already in motion, no time to recover his joints from the landing, he dashed towards the casinos nearer the edge of town.
Either they were at those crummy casinos or he could at least minimize civilian casualties and get outside the town. That was when he felt rumbling and saw smoke in the direction he was heading. "Kami, for once I hope that's Tsunade losing her temper again."
"Hmmm, Tsunade's presence was not something we had anticipated." A lean man with long dark hair spoke from the inside of a dingy casino. The gambling floors had long since emptied once he had made his presence known. He raised a hand, allowing a fist to simply bounce off of it like pebbles off a stone statue. "A rare error on Sasori's part. It matters little, more bounties for me to claim I suppose." He continued speaking to himself as if he was getting prepared for the day in front of his bathroom mirror, and not on the opposing end of two S-ranked ninja's attacks.
Really, as long as he stayed out of the healing Sannin's reach he would have little problem with her. Her strength could almost certainly negate his armor, but her speed, or lack thereof, made that strength negligible. It was the White Snake he needed to worry about. She was a crafty one, and she had information on him. Not a lot, but any information is dangerous, and like an opponents hidden dagger, it should never be ignored.
He blocked three more quick strikes from the legendary blonde before a slab of earth combined with black tendrils from Kakuzu's body sent her soaring through another wall. As he thought, she was out of practice. She would be easy to neglect. Without slowing down to build up more chakra, she would struggle to break his armor.
Through the smoke caused by Kakuzu's earth technique and Tsunade's body being sent through a wall came the voice of the opponent who had been giving him more trouble in this engagement. "Kukuku Kakuzu-San, I had no idea Leader-sama had so much love for me. To think, he would send a whole team just to kill me." She pretended to swoon, like a schoolgirl in love, only to pull on a spool of wire connected to her hand.
The slight reflection of light off the wire as she pulled it allowed her opponent the time to erect an earth wall behind himself, blocking a barrage of kunai set to pierce his seemingly unguarded flank.
Not one to waste an opportunity, the Kusanagi emerged from her throat as she made another dash into Kakuzu who brought a kunai out to meet her deadly strikes. He did not want to risk his earth grudge fear armor against her legendary blade, as she only needed a few good nicks to start doing some very real damage.
He met each strike with a hard glancing blow, her blade taking large nicks and chips out of the kunai on each strike, as soon as one was worn down too much for his liking a second one would slide into his other hand and the fight would continue without pause.
She was obviously the better combatant with a blade, her grace and fluidity making her evasive and difficult to read, while her strikes were random and brutal. But he wasn't deadly for his ability with a blade, he lived this long because he was a strategically minded tank with a plethora of elemental techniques and a deadly kinjutsu.
"To think someone as young as you would try to dominate me up close." Flames as hot as any forge she has ever seen her student use ripped their way from Kakuzu's mouth. Her proximity to his body and the technique made traditional dodging, not an option to say the least. But as the flames reached her, her body seemingly fell apart into mud instead of burning to ash, leaving Kakuzu searching.
Not in front, not behind, nothing side to side, 'shit, she's below me'. Black oily threads sprang from throughout his body and stabbed into the ground. Hopefully turning anyone below him into a very dead pincushion. "Ah, I hope their's enough left intact to claim her bounty…"
He pulled the oily black tendrils back from the earth slowly. Now with only two Sannin left, this retrieval operation gets a lot smoother. That was the exact moment Kakuzu realized his life-altering mistake. He forgot about the dagger.
Crashing came from above him, but before he could even truly register the sound. An irate blonde-haired woman crashed through the wooden floor above him, fist already cocked back, and landed on him as she released the entirety of her strength and momentum upon her unlucky target.
Her fist hit his skull first and continued to pick up speed as it traveled its way down to the floor. A dust cloud practically just popped into existence around them as her fist met the ground. The sounds of the building collapsing and literal earth-shattering surrounded them. As it settled and silence finally reigned, it revealed the two female Sannin standing in a crater nearly twenty feet deep and wider than the building had been when it was still standing. Now it was mostly a pile of rubble and dust.
"You've threatened to turn someone into a bloody smear before. But I believe this is the first time I've actually seen you do it." Orochimaru said once the dust finally settled around them. She doubted Sarutobi's expense account would cover this, but that certainly wasn't her problem.
Tsunade only stood in place, fist still partially buried in the ground. "He should've learned not to ignore me then." She huffed. Did he think he was the first person who thought being faster than her would take her out of the fight? He didn't even seem to notice when she disappeared from the fight. She was just thankful the ancient man didn't seem to bleed a lot, although his guts were a different matter. The hotel staff probably wouldn't launder that out either.
Tsunade took a moment to center herself, bringing her breathing back under control. She hadn't been in a fight this high level in over a decade, and it did show. She would never admit it to her teammates, but if Orochimaru hadn't told her about Kakuzu and that she needed to destroy all of him in one blow, then she most likely would have actually been useless as a combatant in this fight. That is a line of thought she hadn't had as a ninja in a very long time, and it frazzled her more than she would like to admit, even to herself.
"Jiraiya is probably busy with Kakuzu's partner at the moment if he hasn't already dealt with him." Tsunade ticked an eye at this, she hadn't known Orochimaru to ever have much verbal respect for their male counterpart.
"I've never known you to have so much faith in the pervert. Is he really that much stronger than when we last met that he could already solo someone powerful enough to be this man's partner?"
Orochimaru actually smiled at this, sending small chills up Tsunade's spine. "Well actually yes, in lines of outright power, Jiraiya probably has us both beat hands down." Orochimaru gave her an oddly truthful and straightforward response. "But that isn't the reason he should flatten Kakuzu's partner." If Tsunade's face wasn't already in a display of surprise in confusion, Orochimaru was certain it would have contorted into one.
"As long as his partner hasn't changed, Jiraiya should have a relatively easy time cutting him to pieces." The vindictive smile that graced Orochimaru's features was much more like the woman Tsunade had grown up with. The terrifying smile, ironically, was what put her at ease.
"Fucking heathen motherfucker! Jashin-Sama will have your damned head!" Jiraiya stood in a destroyed clearing on the outskirts of the gambling town. Well, it used to be a forest, but now it was a clearing. His swamp of the underworld technique faded from the ground as the disembodied head on the ground across from him kept screaming.
"Fucking Kakuzu! Taking his sweet fucking time butchering your heathen team!" The angry head didn't even seem to stop yelling obscenities to breathe. Which his lack of torso or lungs made… moot?
"How in the hell are you still screaming?" The Sannin asked his disembodied 'opponent'.
"Because Jashin-Sama in his infinite glory and wisdom has laid before me, his most devout and bloodiest follower, his plentiful boons!" His religious reverie would almost be impressive if it wasn't heavily laden with obscenities and vulgarities.
Jiraiya's opponent had certainly been deadly. Seemingly reveling in the pain Jiraiya inflicted upon him. But compared to a Sannin he was just a slower-moving Jonin with a neat trick. He would certainly be incredibly deadly to most other opponents, or an uninformed opponent, as according to his snakelike teammate he only needed a single drop of his opponent's blood to enact some brutal ritual sacrifice.
He was just too slow to hit him outright, and too inept and angry to trick him into taking any of the blows. Which made it quick and easy for the Sannin to trap him, restrain him with seals, and then dice him to pieces. Now he just didn't know what to do with the head.
Shrugging to himself, he simply grabbed the head by his hair, shaking the man around a bit as he tried to bite his hand. "You motherfucker. I'll destroy you! I'll kill everything and everyone that's ever loved you! When I'm done-" his threats were cut off when Jiraiya finally deigned to seal him into a scroll. It shouldn't be possible to survive in that type of environment, but the sage figured the annoying Akatsuki member would find a way. Or he would be dumping the freeze-dried disembodied head on his sensei's desk when they returned, either way Jiraiya's problem was solved.
At that moment his sunny blonde-haired student rushed into the clearing. Not even pausing to admire his sensei's devastating handiwork before he began speaking.
"Itachi and Kisame found me. I'm running now, Shizune's down for the count but breathing." He gave one last tired huff before popping away into smoke to inform the original that the message had been delivered.
'Shadow Clone,' he thought to himself. Already taking off in the direction the clone came from, in desperate search of his previous student's son. He was going to need some help to do this quickly. "Kuchiyose no Jutsu!"
"Fuck, fuck, fuck… please wake up Shizune-Chan. You gotta get up, I can't outpace these fuckers with you on my back." The blonde was beginning to get worn down. His tricks earlier to create distance from his attackers had taken a large toll on his chakra reserves, leaving him on half a tank.
But he refused to leave her, he knew they were here for him but he didn't know what they would do to get him. So leaving her behind as possible leverage wasn't an option. And Itachi had viciously attacked any clones Naruto had created carrying a Shizune clone, so the blonde hadn't been willing to send her off alone.
He saw a building collapse on the outskirts of the village a few moments ago, alongside enough chakra output to set off even a terrible sensor's warning, let alone any shinobi worth their salt. He just had to hope they weren't too drunk to fight. He also had to hope that he could evade the seemingly all-seeing eyes of Itachi Uchiha.
Every turn he took, every double back, every trap he laid and trick he utilized didn't seem to give the older ninja and his seething partner more than a tiny moment of pause. Naruto was just happy that they didn't seem to be targeting civilians, mostly just letting them scatter from the streets as they made their way after their target.
The Uzumaki turned a corner from an alleyway onto a larger street, only to stop and double back. Black flames scorched the ground in front of him. Only to turn and see Kisame blocking the other exit from the alleyway. His left hand held onto his weapon, both hands were still somewhat covered in the once-molten metal Naruto had used to disable him, but he obviously regained some use from at least one of them.
"Too bad, I had hoped I would get to tell people I crippled the wielder of Samehada." The grin he wore was wiped off his face with one blow from the flat side of the legendary weapon. He could feel it shaving away at his face, even through its wrappings.
Naruto followed the momentum of the blow, allowing his body to roll with it as he tried to gently drop Shizune to the ground. A sword materialized up from his hand, its edge wasn't very sharp, but it was sturdy enough that it should help block the large wrapped blade.
He only had a moment to grasp it in both hands before he needed every ounce of his strength to block a one-handed overhead strike from Kisame. "Don't worry kid, I'll make sure to leave you alive…"
Naruto spun in a quick pirouette, his blade darting out toward the blue man's grip. His only real hope was to break his grip and slip past his stance, engage them enough that they ignore Shizune and focus on taking him down. Two seal-less clones popped up behind him, kunai and shuriken already leaving their hands thrown at Kisame and Itachi at opposing ends of the alley.
Two more popped up next to them, seemingly from within the first two clones' shadows, rushing forward toward Itachi in a kamikaze dash. Engaging him in an obviously fruitless display of taijutsu. While the real Naruto focused on trying to do anything to offset Kisame's stance but seemed to only bounce off the much older kenjutsu specialists guard.
The only reason he was still conscious was Kisame's own injuries, but even then it was a fight he was steadily losing. Every strike from the man felt like a mountain dropping on him, he had certainly broken most of his fingers trying to keep the sword from making contact with his body. And the blue mountain only seemed to gather more ferocity and energy with every swing.
'He's stealing my chakra through my sword.' He realized this, but there wasn't anything he could do about it. He made more clones every time one of the sets guarding his back dispersed. Anything to keep Itachi's attention.
Another large swing accompanied by a ferocious growl from Kisame barreled in towards Naruto's chest. He brought his own sword in to meet it, shifting his weight to dissipate the force, before the swing suddenly picked up speed in the middle of the contact.
A sickening crack resounded in the alley as Naruto's right hand finally gave out. Bending backward in a way that promised pain in the future. The adrenaline dulled the pain but did little to help him block Kisame's next strike. This one swept right through his one-handed block. Catching him in the shoulder and body, causing him to crumple to the street below him with a grunt as he blacked out.
"He returns…" an ominous voice boomed out over him. The ground around him was covered in a few inches of water, but he oddly didn't feel wet.
Massive bars as big as Konoha's gates sat in front of him. 'Am I in a cage?' He thought for a moment. But further inspection of his surroundings showed that no, he was not the one within the cage. He was in some mostly empty black void, and was just outside the massive bars.
"Are you here to make your demands like the rest? Go ahead, I'm waiting." The voice echoed outward from the cage again, only Naruto still could not identify the source. Until that is, he looked up. Two massive eyes as big as himself seemed to float in the darkness much higher in the cage. Indicating the owner of the eyes to be absolutely massive.
'What demands?' He thought briefly to himself. That's when he realized he should still be in a fight in some shitty casino vacation town, not here. "Where am I? Is Shizune ok?"
"She… is breathing. But I am not the captor here." The eyes gazed down at him, full of anger and resentment, hatred.
"I need to see her. She needs help. I don't know what Itachi did to her, but she can't die for me." She had been nothing but polite and kind to him. If he was honest she was the only positive thing about this mission so far, as for whatever reason she had begun to gravitate to him as some form of older sister. Even doting over him after Jiraiya and Orochimaru trained him into the ground, and then used his body to mine for minerals as they continued training him.
"You have failed her then. As I'm sure you'll do for everyone else in your miserable excuse of a life." The blonde was still quite groggy from Kisame's blow to his head, but he was awake enough to know that wasn't a very nice thing to say.
"Yeah well fuck you too. I won't stop till I'm dead. And even then I'll take those bastards with me to make sure they don't touch her." This caused the eyes to seemingly grin. Before a genuine smile slowly became visible underneath the eyes. Full of teeth, almost like a muzzle.
'Wait no, that was definitely a muzzle. What in the hell? Oh-' he stopped himself mid-thought.
"You're the Kyuubi then?" He asked. Raucous laughter echoed from within the cage and bounced off walls that had only just now started to become solid and visible, surrounding Naruto in the derisive sound. Before the beast moved forward allowing light to bathe his front half. Displaying the massive chakra entity that ruined his life.
"No, I'm your mother." The sarcasm was heavy and obvious, but Naruto supposed it was a pretty stupid question. What else would the fifty-foot fox be? "The jailer has finally deigned himself low enough to visit me?"
"So I'm in the seal then. Do you know what's happening outside?" The fox just stared back at him.
"Stupid child, you are not within the seal. That giant sword wielder just hit you so hard you are quite close to dying, only my presence has already certainly prevented that. But in this state your consciousness gravitated towards my own. You are within my mind."
Well that didn't make any sense. "If I'm in your head, then why are you still in a cage?"
"Because the fourth Hokage was no fool. And neither is the Shinigami. I am bound to you as prisoner, you are bound to me as the prison. Wherever we interact it shall be so."
Naruto somehow inherently understood the nature and truth of the information the ancient fox was giving him, yet it still seemed like an impossibility to him. No matter, there are more pressing issues. "Where is-"
"Cease your whining, I can feel enough to know your precious Shizune is still alive, probably. At least she is doing better than you." The giant bijuu seemed to shrug, but Naruto could only guess. He hasn't exactly spent a lot of time judging the non-verbal cues of giant foxes.
"Look I know you're unhappy, but I wasn't exactly a willing participant in this arrangement either. And neither was Shizune, which is why I need to get back up and help her." He was lost and still a little confused, but he knew he needed to get out.
"Then leave, human."
Naruto just looked around, he seemed to be standing on a floor he could not see, surrounding by complete and utter black. "How?" He asked.
The fox only shrugged at him. "Why would the prisoner know? Is it not enough that I repel that twice cursed Uchiha chakra from your body?" Fair question, but still not helpful to his current goal. "The Uchiha has a hold of her now."
Damnit, it's like he was a stone statue sinking in the ocean. The water rises above him as the light grows dimmer, the pressure surrounding him only building. He needed to get out, he needed to help her. "She can't die for me," he whispered. "No one can die for me."
"Fine, if you are so adamant. Try not to bleed out, not that your death changes much for me." He sounded, tired. But Naruto didn't have the time to ponder it much before he felt an absolutely searing pain. As if every nerve in his body had been shoved through a pinhole at once.
Naruto awoke in the same place he had crumpled to the ground before he met his prisoner. The pain was everywhere and terrible. A quick glance down at his right hand still showed it shattered and bent in unnatural ways. It was hard to tell, but he didn't think a single one of his fingers were pointing in the correct direction.
But standing next to him was the still unscathed Itachi Uchiha, who currently held the object of Naruto's worries in the air by her throat. He struggled to raise an arm or mold his chakra, but everything was so sluggish.
"You will make certain he lives, or he'll do the same to you." The man said as he gestured to his shark-like partner, who sent an oddly apologetic glance towards his Uchiha partner. Shizune's face was beginning to turn red from the pressure he was applying to her throat. Not enough to completely restrict oxygen flow, but enough that he certainly made his point.
Naruto raged internally. His legs strained and struggled to pick himself up, his left arm tried to gain the leverage to lift himself from the small indent his body made in the street. "F-fuck you" he whispered hoarsely at Itachi.
"Hn, it seems your job will be even easier than we thought." Itachi was as emotionless as he had been the entire time, like a machine. "Or perhaps more difficult," he said glancing at the Uzumaki's current physical condition.
The blonde kept struggling until his upper body was off the ground. Liquid metal sluggishly gathered around him, gathering in his left hand, but far too slow and his control too weak to do anything useful.
"No, but it seems that my job will be easier though." A voice Naruto would have hated any other time echoed out over the alleyway. Itachi's head cocked to the side, one eye moving to try and catch this newcomer unprepared. Only for his gaze to be met by an open-eyed Jiraiya of the Sannin in front of Tsunade, looking like some man with a toad fetish. The look was complete with warts and two old-looking toads attached to his shoulders.
The effort was visible as Itachi attempted to catch him in a genjutsu, only for each attempt to immediately fail. It was the most Naruto had seen the Uchiha's facial expression change since they knocked on his door. He could tell the amount of mental effort the man was putting into his techniques, only for the older shinobi to brush them off like they were insects.
'Nature chakra,' Naruto thought to himself. But he had no idea why the man looked like this. Could it be his surroundings, like a ramped-up version of his own detection technique? But that wouldn't make any sense. His thoughts were a jumbled mess.
"Put her down Itachi, and I won't have to put you down." The paint that decorated his face in conjunction with warts and toad-like features would probably have been a lot funnier if Naruto wasn't in agonizing pain.
"Jiraiya." He said with a nod at Konoha's spymaster. "I'm surprised to see the trio complete, let alone that both of you are… standing." The rogue Konoha ninja spoke. "But you can't sincerely believe you can stop me before I kill her. I'll leave her alive if you let us take the container." He said it as if he was purchasing fruit from a vendor.
Brutal and pragmatic, nothing out of the ordinary for a man like Itachi Uchiha. As if he was at the market in Konoha, 'Yes I would like a basket of these and a few of those, oh, and also I'll butcher your entire family if you don't give me an eight percent discount.' If Naruto could shudder, he probably would.
The two terrorist seemed a little skeptical at Jiraiya's words, but Jiraiya's own face showed that he did indeed believe he could stop Itachi before he snapped her neck. Hell, he looked so serious and lethal that even Naruto believed him, and he was barely still following what was happening around him.
Itachi kept his gaze locked with the Sannin, perhaps calculating his odds, perhaps contemplating lighting the man on fire, no one could really tell. But after a few moments, he turned to his partner. "Kisame the mission has failed. We will cut our losses and retreat." His grip loosened on Shizune's throat, she began gasping for air before he even fully let go. Her face went from a light blue pack to her more natural less suffocated skin tone, tears welling up in and around her eyes.
For his part, Kisame seemed disappointed. He looked absolutely ravenously at Jiraiya. "Samehada wants a taste of him Itachi-kun. Can't we stay and play a little bit?" He said, literally chomping his teeth like a predator as he spoke.
"If we stay a moment longer we will both certainly be dead. With the addition of the third Sannin, and whatever this is." He said gesturing with Shizune's body towards Jiraiya. "We've been outplayed." At this, they both took a moment to nod before disappearing. A flock of crows left the alley in a swirl as a pillar of water appeared and then spread out, soaking the ground around them.
Orochimaru emerged from within the wall near where Shizune had been dropped, next to Naruto. Tsunade and Jiraiya both moved to their respective student's sides as well. The toads disappeared from his shoulders with a poof while his features returned to normal.
"Tsunade, he needs help now. I don't know how much blood he has left." Orochimaru spoke up. But Tsunade didn't seem to hear, she didn't even look up from Shizune, her eyes and hands studying the woman's body for injuries. That was when Naruto had the presence of mind to look down at his own chest, the piss-poor excuse for a weapon he managed to make to fend off Kisame sticking through his chest from behind.
"Huh… how did that…" he trailed off, the last of his strength leaving him as Jiraiya attempted to hold him in place.
"Tsunade, he needs you." Jiraiya reiterated to the woman this time. The pool of blood from the blonde only grows larger with every passing second. But the legendary medic's eyes never left her student's body.
"TSUNADE!" This time it was Orochimaru who spoke up, right beside her teammate. The woman's head lifted slightly to see Orochimaru's face as she stood above her. She laid her hand on Tsunade's shoulder. "Listen. My student is going to die if you do not get your shit together. You are going to get up, go over to him, and save his life. Because you are the only person on this entire continent who can at this point."
'She's right,' Tsunade thought to herself. 'He is going to die because I can't turn to look at him. If I do, I'll freeze up again.' She was stuck in this vicious cycle, and another person would pay because she was a coward.
Finally, while Tsunade's glowing hand crossed over Shizune, the younger woman recovered enough from her condition to ascertain the situation. She looked up at the face of her master, the woman who practically raised her, and let out a hoarse whisper "Shishou, please."
That snapped the legend. Her head rocketed up and swiveled to the blonde bleeding out in Jiraiya's arms. "Shit that's a lot of blood." She spoke, only for the first time in a very long time it wasn't a tone of fear, but of concern. Both emotional and medical.
She moved to Naruto's side and immediately started working. Her hands glowed green with healing chakra as she analyzed him.
"I'm not even going to start on his hands and arms yet, the bleeding needs to be dealt with. It's pooling internally, Jiraiya put pressure on the wound. We need to stem the flow of blood leaving his body while I remedy the internal bleeding." She moved him onto his side so that she could pull the blade from his chest. While her second hand worked much lower on the blonde's body, this one doing a technique neither of her teammates recognized but guessed probably had something to do with the internal bleeding problem.
"Kami, the wounds are closing themselves. Jiraiya keep two fingers in his chest wound so it can't close. We need to drain the internal bleeding or he'll die from blood poisoning whether or not I can fix his lung." The toad sage didn't look very enthused by her demand, but he certainly didn't argue.
She was soon proven right, the wound soon closed up to Jiraiya's fingers. Leaving very little room in the wound for the blood Tsunade was directing with one hand outside of the body, while simultaneously repairing her fellow blondes' lungs.
Orochimaru likened it to watching a team of surgeons operate on one person. Only it's one woman doing the job of five people, and she was doing all of their jobs at the same time better than any of them could individually.
It took her another few minutes to finish her work and fall back onto the ground, now sitting beside Naruto. "He'll live, I can set the breaks in a little bit, I need to settle my nerves."
A bottle of sake appeared from the folds of her coat, and she proceeded to begin drinking straight from the bottle. As if any of that was normal. She took four or five heavy pulls from the strong drink before taking a breath and offering some to her teammates.
Orochimaru took the proffered bottle from her teammate and took a single, smaller, pull from the long neck. Holding the bottle back out towards its rightful owner.
Jiraiya's hand snatched the bottle out of the air before it could reach Tsunade though. He had just been kneeling over Naruto's body, looking almost as if he was in prayer. After a few moments had passed, and a few drinks from the bottle that would put Tsunade to shame, he joined his blonde haired teammate in laying on the dirty ally. Just content to have his student alive. The entire event took less than thirty minutes in total.
"Is the kid still conscious?" Tsunade eventually asked.
Orochimaru, who was still standing above all of them, leaned over her student to study his face. "Hmmm," she muttered something while nudging him with her sandal-clad foot. "I'd say he seems mostly conscious."
"How in the hell? What's he made of?" The legendary healer asked rhetorically.
"Tougher stuff than you," Naruto muttered, his voice only barely audible. The exhaustion that pervaded him and the pain were the most likely reasons why.
"Ha, a pile of broken bones, and he still has a smart mouth." Tsunade seemed to giggle at her own words, finding them funny for some odd reason.
Naruto said something else, this time too quiet and muffled for those gathered to properly hear.
"What was that gaki?" Tsunade asked him.
"The hotel's gonna be so pissed off when they see our room." Even Jiraiya, worry only just now abating for his student and exhausted from his use of sage energy, joined in their collective laughter at that.
Well there you go. As always thank you for reading, feel free to comment or ask questions, I'm always interested in what things don't make sense in the story. Like I try to keep Naruto's chakra smithing a little mysterious to leave wiggle room but I've also tried to base a lot of it in reality with actual smithing techniques and things. So I'm balancing not giving out every piece of information, but I also have multi-page documents detailing almost exactly how these things work in universe.
And I know that the story seems a little sporadic, but I feel as though a lot of stories spend a lot of time really filling in the cracks and detailing the passage of time. Sometimes feeling like they break it down literally day by day. Which I love, but realize that like a lot of other people I would completely run out of steam to do that. So I'm trying to settle on the actually interesting and important points and building from there.
~~Edit 6/3/23~~
Oops its been a very long time, my bad. Been very busy, and I'm still writing completely scattered events of the next third of the story, so I think I'll write most of it and then release it all real quick while editing them. Thanks.