Tsunade's Advice
Chapter 4: a/n note at the end of the chapter.
After a few hours, with much deserved and needed rest especially for Naruto, team 7 started to head out for their mission, with an addition of Temari, who insisted that she should come and help them in retrieving her now-not-psychotic-little brother. As soon as reached some distance from the village where they could not see the walls of Suna, Naruto made 3 shadow clone hawks which were much bigger, since they wanted to keep their presence much more inconspicuous.
They started their airborne travel with three hawks and with Naruto and Temari on one, while Sakura and Kakashi shared another with Yamato having the entire hawk to himself.
"Naruto? Why did you only create 3 hawks this time?" Naruto turned to Temari to answer her question.
"Well with less number of Hawks, I don't need to split my concentration that much and I can mask our movements much more effectively." Which got an understanding nod from her. "Don't worry Temari, we'll save Gaara. I won't let Akatsuki take him away." Naruto reassured her with a hand on her shoulder.
"Thank you….Naruto. I can't thank you enough, without you, I would have lost my little brother forever during the chunin exams, Even though you've enough reasons to kill us or imprison us after you beat us, you let us go. I don't know how managed to change Gaara, but Kankuro and I will be forever grateful for your help, even now."
"It's nothing Temari, Gaara and I very similar." Looking at her confused expression he continued. "Yes, we both are Jinchuriki. I have Kyuubi sealed inside me. Without the people who were there for me from the start, I would have turned into what Gaara used to be. That's why I wanted Gaara to realize the importance of the bonds."
Now Temari understood how her brother and Naruto were able to connect much more deeply even in just a handful of meetings. They understood each other because they were very similar to each other. 'he seems different from the loudmouth he used to be from the chunin exams, I guess he grew up in these recent years. Not to mention attractive.' As soon as that thought occurred, she shook her head to get rid of them. 'NO! Now Gaara is the priority. Not some handsome-err, cute….NOO! why am I thinking like this? I need to concentrate. Gaara is the priority. Gaara, Gaara, Gaara.'
Naruto obvious to her inner thoughts, asked a question. "Hey Temari, can you use your fan to fly? I saw you using the fan as a platform to land during chunin exams."
Silently thanking for the question to have a distraction from her traitorous thoughts, Temari answered him. "Yes, I can use it to fly, but unlike you, I can neither maintain it for longer periods nor I can reach higher altitudes with that." To which he nodded his head in understanding.
"Kakashi, where is the trail leading us to now?" Naruto questioned him as they flanked beside Kakashi's Hawk.
"This is leading us back to Tanigakure (hidden valley village), which we've passed on our way to Suna. Pakkun was sure of it"
"Okay then, we'll get on the ground as soon as we enter Tanigakure. To get the accurate lead."
"Good enough, From there on we can travel by foot," Kakashi said but Naruto had another plan.
"No, sensei, we won't. I'll create some clones and transform them into us. And let Pakkun lead them there and we'll follow them from the sky. We don't know if they have anyone waiting to ambush us or there to stall us from disrupting the extraction." Naruto added his thoughts.
"Very good Naruto, we'll follow your plan for now, and if there's any obstacle we'll change it accordingly." Kakashi agreed to the plan. Sakura was surprised, the old Naruto would have wanted to bullrush into the fight, but this Naruto was different and more mature. She never would have guessed him having a plan beforehand for encountering the enemy, he sure has grown in these recent years. While Yamato is carefully observing the young ward. He too expected to find the 12-year-old loudmouth and knucklehead that is mentioned in the file given to him about Naruto, but it seems this grown-up Naruto is easy to work with and he's thinking about recommending Naruto for his Special Jounin promotion, it would be a waste if the person with this many unique skills and smarts just remained as a Genin, though that would have to wait.
Soon Naruto made his clones and transformed them into Team Gai instead of Team 7, to have a surprise element on their side. Pakkun got the instructions to split from the clone team if they ran into an enemy. Team 7 plus Temari soared into the sky once again, and with Kakashi's Sharingan they could track Pakkun directly who would lead them to Gaara.
With Akatsuki
In a dark cave, there what seems to be a huge humanoid figure, and standing on each of its 10 fingers were 8 figures. They now were joined by another figure who was half black and half white with a Venus trap around its head.
"What is it Zetsu?" questioned the figure with with purple eyes with rings in them.
"It seems there's a team of shinobi that's here to retrieve the Kazekage, they seem to be the Team Gai from Konoha led by Might Gai, Leader-sama." Answered Zetsu.
"No problem. Kisame you deal with them, you know what to do." The shark-like man chuckled and disappeared from the astral form. Another figure with Red eyes narrowed his eyes a faction before schooling his features.
"Zetsu, you take Kisame's place. The extraction should not be stopped or slowed." Zetsu nodded his agreement and joined them with his astral form.
The transformed shadow clones were running on the land led by Pakkun to locate the exact location of Gaara, but soon they were interrupted by what seemed to be a huge wave of water that soon turned into a lake. In the meantime, Pakkun, split off from them to run directly towards Gaara.
Each Clone raised a platform of rock to stand above the water, which seemed to be the best action as there seemed to be a group of sharks that were waiting for them in the shallow waters.
"My, my, I would have liked it if you had just stood on water, my sharks seemed to be hungry for some blood." The clones looked at Kisame who stood on the water without Samehada which is odd, but that's beside the point. The Tenten clone started throwing weapons such as kunai and shuriken which Kisame easily evaded. "Come on, I expected a bit more from the team that is here to retrieve the Kazekage."
What Kisame didn't notice was the kunai and shuriken that the Tenten clone threw were also the shadow clone that transformed back and used Raiton: Jibashi(electro-magnetic murder) inside the water and made the water deadly for anyone who stood on the water and that unfortunate person happened to be Kisame, even though he tried to evade the technique by jumping into the air, the Gai and Lee clones kicked him into the water and Kisame can't evade the Raiton chakra onslaught in the water, when the clones went and checked on the body, instead of what they expected as Kisame's body with electric burns, there is another body of a Suna shinobi.
The clones dispelled and the Original received the events of the fight who was almost at the Place that seemed to be the Akatsuki hideout.
I Thank you all for reading, reviewing, and following the story so far. Please give your thoughts on this chapter.
How do you like the encounter with Kisame? I know, the Kisame in the anime has Samehada in this fight, but I want to make it a bit easy for the Shadow clone team to defeat the Kisame clone, if he has Samehada, whatever jutsu they tried wouldn't have worked on him. Remember, this Naruto's fighting revolves around the surprise aspect and unpredictability. So Kisame wouldn't have known that the kunai were the transformed clones. If it's with Itachi he would've known that's why I've only planned Kisame to fight.
And Zetsu is not there to observe the fight. So yeah, they won't know that Naruto can shapeshift his clones.
: I'll try to write the romance, but it won't be the main aspect of this fic. Yeah, let's go with Naruto x Temari as a pairing.