"Shit, we've got no time to mess with you, you know!" Naruto growled at the small party of ninja blocking Team Hokage's path. If they took too much time messing around here and allowed White Zetsu the time that it needed to regroup his army, they'd be back on square one.
"You've met this man before, Naruto?" Kiyomi asked.
"Yeah, he's using some stupid rock in his chest to power himself up, you know," Naruto replied.
"The meteor? In my chest?" Akahoshi dragged his hand over his shoulder-long hair brimming with curiosity. "No, I do not think I am this desperate for power just yet. Then again, perhaps battling a ninja from a village as famous as Konoha will push the battle up to that point…"
"So that's your interest here? Fighting someone from a famous village?" Kiyomi wondered if she could somehow defuse the situation without fighting. She would have had no problem beating this guy as he didn't seem all that to her at that moment but she'd have rather got through the hospital district in time before the enemy Naruto reported of regrouped.
"Of course." Akahoshi spread his hands out wide. "Only by slaying ninja from established and respected villages can Hoshigakure share their place in the spotlight. Once we show everyone back home this power, when we use it to kill ninja from Konoha, Kumogakure, Kirigakure and the rest, Hoshigakure will too become a Great Village."
"You can become a Great Village without standing in our way, you know!" Naruto shook his fist out in the air, losing more and more composure as time went on. With the passage of time, the opportunity of talking their way out of this scuffle grew exceedingly slim and talking was beginning to feel like an additional waste of precious seconds on the clock.
"What nonsense, there are only Five Great Ninja villages, after all…" Akahoshi shrugged. Together with his comrades they clapped their hands together and initiated their Mysterious Peacock Method technique, forming ethereal shapes of a massive feather-formation behind them.
"The Mysterious Peacock Method, we've also seen this technique…" Kiyomi mumbled to her group, her tone was as grim as it was befitting the memory of what happened to the last user of the technique they've met.
"What a madman, he knows of what this jutsu does to the body and he uses it alongside his own goons." Meiko grit her teeth and placed her hand over her chest, unleashing the seal of the gadget she had just finished crafting back during the first stage challenges. Metallic harness locked on over Meiko's arms while bony protrusions in the shape of claw-like weaponry shot out from her wrist aimed outward and rough leather-covered up the more intricate bits and pieces of the armor. "Just the right kind of a nutjob to test out my Reactor Gauntlets on."
Without thinking too long of a plan or waiting for Kiyomi to formulate a plan of attack and let them all in on it, Naruto charged on ahead with a kunai blade in hand. He wasn't thinking straight, the idea of breaking through the lines and moving on ahead was all that burned in his mind and unless the entire oven kicked over or the idea provided no more fuel for the flame, he'd be the same way.
A broad-shouldered, thick and well-conditioned Hoshigakure ninja stepped out to confront Naruto, blocking his kick and then his following solebutt. Due to the fact that the ninja was only keeping his eyes on Naruto's feet, he didn't notice the orange ninja slinging his kunai up and performing a hand seal with his arms. A Shadow Clone poofed into existence and spun Naruto around in mid-air, providing the unpredictable brawler ample momentum for some follow-up kicks. Naruto then caught his kunai on its way down and kicked off his own clone for a thrusting dive down.
Just when Naruto had thought he'd nailed the strong-style ninja with a thrust of a kunai knife to the chest, the foreigner revitalized himself, smacking Naruto with arm-hammer strikes coming from the sides. Naruto ducked under the attack and retreated his arm back, letting the clone he had made move in and rapidly thrust his hands just a few inches over where Naruto's extended hand was. Kiyomi had seen this move before – it was the move Naruto favored in combat and placed significant emphasis on.
"Mysterious Peacock Method!" the other ninja assisting Akahoshi put his hands together in the form of a hand seal as his chakra feather formation extended in the shape of thick ropes, heading straight for Naruto and aiming to ensnare him. Adopting an appearance of an azure blitz, Meiko flew in for the assist, throwing out her gauntlets in a barrage of mad swipes while they glowed with chakra coating.
Despite Meiko's best attempts, the chakra ropes remained unsevered, however, she did manage to repel or redirect them elsewhere. Meiko placed her gauntlets together, beginning the charge-up of the explosive fireball jutsu that she could use with the aid of the Reactor Gauntlets. Kiyomi's hand twitched in wait of what Akahoshi would do. She had purposefully held herself back in an attempt to try and subdue Akahoshi, the key member of the Hoshigakure hunters' squad with her clan techniques.
"Rasengan!" Naruto roared out while thrusting his arms from under the arms of the thick and bulky Hoshigakure ninja with a round face. Before the rotating chakra sphere could smash into the thick bulk of the enemy, Naruto yelled out in pain as his limbs twitched and shot to the sides as if he was a puppet being quartered by a mysterious and unstable puppet master.
It was Akahoshi, it must have been! But he didn't flare up with the radioactive meteorite chakra glow as all his comrades did, he was standing still and not doing anything. She had counted that he also was waiting for Kiyomi to move before he could counter her move. Kiyomi focused her senses on the area around Naruto's limbs. There it was, a puny glow of an ethereal thread. Since it was a chakra construct in nature, it didn't matter how narrow it was, it would have done the job of subduing Naruto just fine.
"Strike now, Yotaka!" Akahoshi smirked with a psychotic grin while his bulky comrade extended his hands out right up in Naruto's face, intending to hit him point-blank.
"Mysterious Peacock Method: Beast!" Yotaka exclaimed while the feathery formation behind him to the shape of a majestic animal aiming to maul and slash Naruto with its claws made out of nothing but radioactive chakra.
The blast of the impact zone was notable enough to send the distressed clone of Naruto's sliding back and falling back on its butt hard enough to dispel it. It sunk the battlefield in specks of dirt that were flying around wildly and muddy dust.
"Rasengan!" Naruto appeared from the cloud of dust wielding another spiraling chakra sphere in his hand, eyes wide open in aggression necessary to finish the deed he started but Akahoshi's subtle manipulations of the battlefield sent him flying to the side with his Rasengan hitting the ground far to Yotaka's right and leaving a mad crater on the abandoned main street of Konohagakure.
"Shit, that raised even more noise! Soon every hunter in the area will be here!" Kiyomi bit her lip. She had reacted in time to erect a dome of dirt around Naruto with the Earth Release: Rock Shelter technique and Naruto attempted to utilize the chance just fine. He didn't wait around or thank her for having his back, he expected that much at this point in their experience working together.
"Kiyomi, can you take the Buttcheeks-Chin guy, I'm done getting thrown around and manhandled, you know!" Naruto wiped the slobber off his face as he rose from the dirt Akahoshi slammed him into with a wild sling.
Without answering, Kiyomi went through her set of hand seals and breathed in. "Wind Release: Great Breakthrough!" she yelled out while expelling a mad blast of wind at the enemy. The howling winds bent the air they passed through and tossed around minor objects like trash cans about like nothing. Steel beams holding advertisements bent and collapsed, throwing whatever they proudly displayed to the world crashing down.
"Mysterious Peacock Method: Wings!" Yotaka yelled out, cowering before the pelting winds but once he took it to the sky he found himself significantly less subdued and open for follow-up attacks. Whatever was within those wings of radioactive chakra helped Yotaka cut through the raging wind.
Once the hulking Hoshigakure ninja looked down and prepared to attack the Yamanaka ninja who dared to disturb his battle, he realized that she had used the distraction to disappear. He was certain of it, one tended to notice an attractive and spunky young blonde missing from the battlefield. Yotaka turned for his comrades.
"Shiso, did you see the Yamanaka woman?" Yotaka yelled out.
"I was not keeping up with your battles, Yotaka, I've my own battles to fight!" Shiso replied with a harsh scold to his tone aimed at his comrade.
Meiko didn't take long to finish charging up her fireball, even though Shiso was not about to just stand and let her finish. He clapped his hands together and used the Mysterious Peacock Method to conjure up a pair of ethereal beasts charging up at Meiko but before they could devote themselves to their attack, he clapped his hands once more after a tight hop, slamming his heels to the floor.
"Mysterious Peacock Method: Fuse!" he yelled out. The pair of beasts then clashed their heads one at another and began whirling in a pink vortex, exuding ground-shaking radioactive bursts of energy from it. The combined chimera of radioactive chakra lunged right at Meiko before the blacksmith opened her gauntlets and slung the charged-up fireball right at the lunging combined beast.
"Reactor Breath!" she yelled out, coining a name for the function of her combination of Sealing Jutsu and skill in blacksmithing. A jar-sized ball of glowing yellow and orange with jets of flames whirling around it like rings of space-dust around a planet, the completed fireball collided with the chimera and blew up in its face as Meiko intended it to. It was a pity that it did not stop the charging beast.
Meiko crossed her gauntlets in front of her body and let the remaining force still lingering within the beast hit her. She rode the diminished force on a slide back, absorbing as much of the force as she could and just weathering what parts of it still pained her. It was not a bad attempt at all, the weapon was still just a prototype and while it used Meiko's own chakra nature to conjure up the fireball, making it almost as potent as if Meiko learned a puny Fire Release technique, she had managed to greatly weaken an attack of such magnitude with it already.
"That all you got?" Meiko smacked her shoulder pads with her gauntlets as a taunt. While the blast did reach her, she didn't feel like she'd suffered any damage that'd be staying with her any longer than a few minutes after this brawl.
"Tsk, why you!" Shiso grit his teeth.
"Multi-Shadow Clone Jutsu!" Naruto growled, creating an entire army of his duplicates. His clones were so numerous that they had no space on the ground, forcing them to manifest on top of the surrounding buildings, electric poles and wires and just about everywhere where there was a free inch of space for them to appear in.
The clones all leaped at Akahoshi with their sleeves rolled back. Naruto intended to finish this fight quick, which was why he used this many of his clones and he intended to let out all of the pent up rage and just irritation on Akahoshi which was why he used such a brutish method of attack this time. The first wave raining down from the sky maneuvered around Akahoshi's Mysterious Peacock Method threads and delivered a flurry of diving punches, wearing the enemy down and forcing him to stagger on his feet while he propelled a colossal quantity of his chakra threads to skewer the landing clones.
"Mysterious Peacock Method: Destroy!" he yelled out while his chakra feathers enlarged and attacked with long-range extending jets of pink chakra. The extending feathers penetrated the continuous downpour of clones and the continuous swipes of the chakra feather jets threw all the rest that were willing to outmaneuver the self-damaging jutsu and wear down the enemy some more.
The feathers split off into four separate, smaller strings that subdued as many clones as they could by catching them by their throats in mid-air and hanging them that way. While it was an effective method of attack, it left Akahoshi open for another wave of Naruto clones that rushed in from down below and piled down on top of him.
A restrained muffle came out from down under the pile while streams of pink light came through the few spaces between the piling clones. A signal of the devastation to come, another "Destroy!" command blew up the pile in its entirety while the falling clones that were being strangled in mid-air dispelled at the same time as their scattered peers. Akahoshi crawled out from the smoke of the dispelled clones clutching a tiny stone with glowing, violet ridges in unintelligible patterns covering it.
"You have to see it now! Your comrades too, you know. This jutsu is killing you and it will kill you by the end of this fight." Naruto declared with a strict glare at Akahoshi. "I can wage war against you here the whole day, I don't have that kind of time though so move aside, you know!"
A wave of crimson chakra burst forth together with the usual bland blue, the oddly malicious nature of the leaking chakra alarmed Meiko, forcing the blacksmith to direct her glare momentarily at the enraged comrade of hers.
"You're right, your power is enough to inconvenience me, which is why I need more power! If Hoshigakure is to be a Great Ninja Village, the lowly children of the other Great Villages have no right inconveniencing us!" Akahoshi clutched the rock tightly in his hand and plunged it right into his chest, just like Naruto had told the rest he might do. The odd patterns that were present on the mysterious meteorite rock extended over Akahoshi's body, down from under his clothes and all over his body while his hair dyed rose-pink.
A protective layer of radioactive mass concentrated around Akahoshi, this radiating aura was different from the Mysterious Peacock Method that the trio used this whole time, it was more powerful but also more like a burst of energy emerging from one's body than mere feather formation appearing behind them. It was also much less transcendental in nature and ethereal in appearance and looked much more immediate and dangerous.
"You're a different kind of scumbag, you know," Naruto mumbled as he clenched his fists. "You're not like the rest, liars and cheaters that sacrifice people they are responsible for or their own comrades for their own gain. You really bought your own story about that stupid rock, didn't you!?"
Once the unpredictable orange ninja turned his gaze up, the whisker marks on his face had become more defined and sharper, his irises had become completely red while the dark-red chakra, filled to the brim with inner malice, continued to leak out from his body while he formed the hand seal that created a pair of clones behind him. Naruto extended his hand out to them and they worked their magic on helping him mold the chakra for his next jutsu.
"Mysterious Peacock Method: Dragon!" Akahoshi chanted out while the mass of radioactive chakra around him formed a dragon-shaped construct that coiled around him before taking it to the sky and then turning its snout back down, pointing it at Naruto. The airborne dragon took a diagonal dive down, attempting to crash into Naruto and finish the young man off.
"Great Ball Rasengan!" Naruto yelled out while he dashed to meet the rushing dragon with his clones behind him, assisting him in guiding the massive version of his signature Rasengan technique right into the dragon's snout. The clones roared out while the tension of the clash became too hard for them to take in their forms and they popped in clouds of dust. Naruto, meanwhile, pushed on.
"Go! Right through!" Naruto roared out with a hint of something deeper, something far worse and tainted in his voice as the abnormally large Rasengan tore through the dragon, the construct resonated in a cascade of explosions as it collapsed but Naruto pushed onward and drove the remains of the sphere into Akahoshi's chest. Despite hitting an object from outer space, something outside their understanding and something possessing great status in Hoshigakure, it offered little to no resistance before being reduced to crumbling pebbles.
"A-Akahoshi-san!" Yotoko yelled out in mid-air while his own body twitched and jerked as if he was not in control of it. His head turned sideways, just because the new mistress of his body allowed him to do so and his eyes fell on familiar and missed golden locks and hands extended outward in the position of the Yamanaka hijutsu hand seal.
"Mind Body Disturbance: Harakiri!" Kiyomi chanted while the airborne enemy flipped over, pointing his head down and took a plunge down hard enough to leave nothing but shards out of the neck area of his spine.
"Y-Yotaka!" Shiso took a couple of wary steps back having just seen two of his comrades likely killed right in front of him. The frightened ninja trembled and switched his attention for a second between Meiko who was still eager to keep swinging, Naruto who still let out leaks of red chakra, looking where to let off his remaining steam and Kiyomi who looked right back at him with eyes that looked so differently from how a child looked a person. At that moment in time – there was just absolute death for him in those eyes.
And so Shiso let his Mysterious Peacock Method go out and took to running away. His movements no longer even looking professional, he was not retreating, he was fleeing for his life drowned in an absolute panic for his survival. This outcome must not been what he was promised when he came to this universe.
Kiyomi turned her hand seal aiming at Shiso but Naruto looked at her and shook his head.
"Kill. Evil. Now," Kiyomi chanted while clashing with Naruto's stare and, at moments, overpowering it.
"He's not a rogue ninja, you know. Technically he still works for Hoshigakure." Naruto replied. At that point, Kiyomi couldn't be bothered to look into if he was lying or not. Those guys did wear Hoshigakure headbands without any damage disgracing them and did spout some mad ramblings about their nation deserving recognition matching or surpassing that of the Five Great Villages. Maybe Naruto was right…
Maybe just moving on ahead and hoping they didn't waste too much time already was the better option than to kill this running man from behind.