"Hurry up, we can still make it through the hospital district, you know!" Naruto waved at his teammates.
"I don't know, we've spent a couple of minutes fighting those Hoshigakure guys, trying to still move through our original destination feels like pushing it…" Kiyomi stroke her chin.
"Either way, we've made a lot of noise, if we stay here – we're bound to run into more hunters." Meiko convinced Kiyomi to follow Naruto ahead through the north-western district of Konohagakure known mostly for housing the hospital.
A pair of violet eyes blinked on top of a remote building rooftop. The crooked shape of a fit man in a white bodysuit with black patterns, wearing the Amegakure headband grunted as it straightened its spine. The bones of the green-haired swordsman cracked and his very flesh churned with each motion, he turned his head to his side to address something more than just the hilt of his sword sticking out from behind him.
"I don't get it. Why did you call off the attack?" he asked with a hint of vexation to his grumbling.
A storm of white chakra flames erupted from behind the suffering ninja swordsman, taking a vague shape of a humanoid wearing a long, white cloak and hair that extended in a wavy spike, like a horn. The figure manifested from somewhere on the swordsman's back, an area covered by the swordsman's clothes.
"You are a pathetic vessel. Then again, so is this brat, but, at the very least, he'd be able to get me from point A to point B. Though after seeing his power, I have doubts that a whiny weakling like you could defeat him."
"Heh…" the swordsman smiled. It was a defiant smirk of a man who had little to lose so he offered mockery to the parasite that promised power but only brought excruciating suffering in every moment of Aoi's existence. "Modesty, how unlike you…"
"I am not being modest, I am being real. One thing that Isshin Ootsutsuki despises more than weaklings is losing to them, even if only because he is forced to hitch a ride on a defective vessel." The spirit declared before dissolving into dying white flames.
Aoi sighed and flickered away. He felt like his best odds laid with following the trio. If the hitchhiker celestial being he hosted inside his body found even a modicum of interest in this Naruto Uzumaki boy, there was a speck of possibility he'd take the boy's body next. It doesn't matter what kind of power this blazing bastard could offer, if the cost was another second of hosting him in one's body, if it left Aoi alone in a second, it'd be two seconds too late.
"Something's wrong…" Meiko pouted her lips. "We've been raising some decent ruckus in the hospital district, it would take a snap of fingers for the hunters to follow up on that noise… How come there's nobody trying to capitalize on the opportunity?"
"Who cares if we're a little lucky, you know. Isn't it about time universe cuts some slack?" Naruto shrugged.
"What Meiko is saying is that we've certainly been found already," Kiyomi explained it to the thick-minded. Rather, to a young man who hadn't figured so much out because he didn't really want to. "That means that the hunter or hunters after us would rather stalk us and wait for an opportune chance to strike…"
"Man, it would be a real shame getting our asses kicked two blocks away from the hospital area, you know." Naruto's teeth gleamed in a smile.
"Maybe they're trying to figure out why we're taking a detour. If we took it through the hospital, we'd be able to cut some corners under the cover of a roof over our heads." Meiko pointed out.
"True, if we crossed the hospital, we might end up on the alleyways and residential blocks leading to the Hot Springs but it's too close to where Naruto last saw the fungal men army." Kiyomi shook her head.
"Careful, don't scare off the pigeons!" Meiko warned Naruto who looked like he was daydreaming.
"Wait, those aren't pigeons…" Kiyomi noticed the unbelievable whiteness of the street birds around her. It seemed as if those birds had been just sculpted out of white clay and not lived their days on the street, hustling for a peck of breadcrumbs.
A chain of blasts littered the street of the hospital district that served almost like an artery to the village on the outside world when it was bustling with action like a lively circulation pathway pulsing with blood. Once the rubble settled down and the smoke cleared, only scattered craters that the chain of explosions left behind remained. There was not a single sign of a dead body or even ashes of one.
"A trap…" Kiyomi thought to herself, her back pressed to an alleyway wall, pounding off of her chest. "Figures it'd be a trap, there's no way to track the man or men that left it this way." She relayed on the mental link.
"There was a howling noise before the birds detonated. It's definitely a long-range detonating ninjutsu technique of sorts." Meiko noted.
"Shit, I've met this guy, you know. He's from the Akatsuki. He uses long-range explosives, you know. He hangs around with some scorpion-hunchback guy as a partner too." Naruto relayed.
"It's really useful to have a younger version of the guy who helped put the exams together on our team, given how much of a role nostalgia seems to have played in these challenges," Kiyomi noted. Regardless of if they knew some more information about what they were dealing with, they still had no idea where the enemy was or if he truly did hang around with a partner.
"Don't worry, he's set off his traps, he'll need to attack us now. That means we can flush him out, you know!" Naruto pressed his fingers together in the clone jutsu hand seal while he split into multiple duplicates that scattered on both sides of the alleyway he turned to during the explosive devastation.
"That's… Actually pretty smart." Kiyomi admitted.
Naruto's clones ran out and began making crude facial gestures, flipping birds and smacking his own butt out in the open. He might not have known what he was doing or where he was meant to attribute the offensive gestures but Naruto hit the nail on the head when he picked the strategy of trying to psyche the enemy out.
A whizzing handful of white, clay swallows homed in on Naruto's crude duplicates, blowing them up almost momentarily after they exposed themselves. A humanoid shape in a black cloak with red clouds reared more than half of its body from a nearby rooftop, placing its boot over the edge of the roof and shaking its fist into the sky.
"Nine-Tails' Jinchuuriki! I couldn't have asked for a better prey, too bad we can't take your Tailed Beast right now, guess I'll have to settle for blowing you up, hmm…" the blonde yelled out, possibly aware of the fact he might have blown clones up as he did unleash his homing explosive birds at a whole handful of Naruto.
"She's kinda cute…" Kiyomi smiled, taking a small peek from the house corner. Blinding flashes in her eyes and shrieking in her ears. The pressure in her lungs suggested that Kiyomi was grunting her lungs out but she couldn't hear herself – that bastard detonated something almost right at her face when she peeked.
"It's a dude, you know!" Naruto relayed. At least Kiyomi could still hear thoughts just fine in her compromised state. The Yamanaka crawled through the damp alleyway filled to the brim with fallen leaves that the cleaners just shoved there instead of dumping into a container somewhere. She wasn't sure that more explosives weren't coming.
"He got me. I need some cover, if he fires at me, I won't be able to see or hear him coming!" Kiyomi relayed on the mental link.
"On it!" Meiko replied in an instant. The blacksmith touched the armor piece on her chest too unseal some more armor pieces and then pressed on a seal by her elbow, dragging the emerging light patterns all the way down to her hand where she drew a sealing glyph with the glowing chakra shine. "Reactor Gauntlets!" she chanted.
"Huh? At least your friend made me work for my kill, you're just gonna attack me out in the open? Hmm…" Deidara smirked, bending his arms over both his shoulders and then swinging them outward.
"Multi-Shuriken Jutsu!" Meiko chanted after moving her hands down to the multiple tool pouches by her belt. The handful of shuriken she flung at the flock of white, explosive birds detonated the white avians in mid-air by having them flop onto the ground like a lifeless mush of clay it truly was.
"Chakra coating, hmm…" Deidara mumbled to himself. "Guess I'll have to switch to C2 just for you."
An orange blur resonated with a furious roar of battle while it appeared behind Deidara with a Rasengan in hand. Naruto wasted little time after notifying the enemy of his position and scaring the living shit out of him, together with a clone by his side, the future Seventh Hokage drove his signature technique right into Deidara's gut, letting it unleash all of its stormy fury. Seeing the Rasengan unfurl and work its magic truly made it seem like the spiraling chakra sphere was an actual typhoon compressed into the side of a ball that could fit into one's wrist.
"Rasengan!" Naruto growled while pushing the overwhelmed enemy further away from himself. Like a spiraling missile, the Rasengan took Deidara to the air before detonating to its full extent into a whirling sphere of Wind Release chakra capable of tearing a lesser man apart outright.
Instead of letting the jutsu kill him, Deidara twitched and bloated out, making Naruto's decision to push the enemy off of himself seem quite smart in retrospect as the long-range hunter detonated not too long after being taken out.
"What's going on?" Kiyomi wondered on the link.
"I guess he uses some sort of… Explosive clones?" Meiko reported. "Can you tell light from the dark? Come out into the open so he doesn't sneak up on you!"
"So you're talking mentally, hmm?" Deidara appeared from the alleyway with a right hand that had almost been reduced to white clay drooping all over subdued Kiyomi who had bruises all over her face from the shrapnel that robbed her of her sight for a time and subtle yet relentless trickles of blood coming out from her ears. "I figured you guys seemed a bit too coordinated for the quiet bunch you acted like…"
"He's got Kiyomi, you know!" Naruto yelled out the obvious, his irises turned red while his pupils became more feline and sharpened, mirroring his fangs.
"And we still don't know where the real one is, look at that arm, this one's clearly a clone…" Meiko replied on the mental link. "Calm down, if you attack it, it'll blow up and hurt Kiyomi."
"Yamanaka… What a troublesome bunch, hmm… If I don't take you out now, you guys will keep whispering on me the whole time. Worst of all, it will make you feel like you're actually in control…" Deidara smiled, realizing he held all the aces at that moment. Seeing that face and hearing those words, both Naruto and Meiko knew that the clone was going to detonate to kill Kiyomi off. She was too useful for the genin team to let her stay in action.
"It was a mistake, grabbing me from the back, that is!" Kiyomi shouted out, clearly, she was still struggling to realize just how loud she was talking even though the constant shrieking in her head was beginning to calm down already.
"What are you talking about? An artist makes no mistakes with perfect art and the perfect art is that which makes a blast!" Deidara exclaimed, emphasizing the last part as if intending to detonate the clone and kill the hostage he had captured but something must have been off as the clone just stood in place without going off, almost as if the signal it was meant to receive to do so was intercepted.
Kiyomi's hand shot for her pouch, pulling out a kunai knife and driving it through the pressure on her chest where she felt the explosive clay holding her down. With a little bit of luck and a yank of the white mass, she managed to free herself and then turn her head, so that her ponytail landed over her left shoulder in a showy manner.
"A Yamanaka is capable of subduing a person with their hair. Usually, it requires some effort like creating a channel of the hair on the floor or planting a hair on the enemy but you were stupid enough to touch the hair by grabbing me from behind yourself." Kiyomi explained, not looking too pleased about her current condition but feeling quite relieved about being able to continue her participation in the exams, needless to say – to live as well.
"That should have only paralyzed the clone, how come it didn't detonate?" Deidara hissed, the original owner appearing quite vexed by the fact that he had lost another C2 clone.
"Oh, it would seem that your detonation comes as a chakra transmission, almost like a signal. If there is a different signal coming out from another viable source and affecting your clone – it jams your own signal." Kiyomi replied. She was glad to stand and explain how excellent she was – every passing second was a moment her vision and hearing had to recover and now she was out in the open where Meiko could have supported her too.
The droopy, white, clay clone collapsed into chunks of white goop while the wind carried powder of white dirt from it about in the street. Just like that, Kiyomi's minor victory planning over her opponent was transformed into a loss once more with her nobody having any idea where the enemy was.
"What are you three doing!?" a condescending, masculine voice interrupted the dance that Team Hokage had danced with their hunter twice already. Naruto took a leap off of the rooftop to land on the ground, closer to the trio of genin that was emerging from the alleyway behind them. "All this noise is going to attract more hunters. Some of us actually need to use the hospital!"
"Forgive me, friends, it was my fault for tearing my body up with the Five Gates!" Rock Lee yelled out from the shoulders of his comrades, his green jumpsuit had tears in multiple places and his body was sweating profusely while the boy's eyelids seemed to be hanging heavy over his eyes, seeking for the closest opportunity to shut closed for a longer period of time.
"What are you talking about, Lee? If it weren't for you, Shadabada's Mercenaries would have destroyed the hospital and the supplies inside." Tenten tried to cheer her worn-out comrade up.
"You…" Neji turned to Naruto with a scowl despite being almost up to Naruto's chest in his current age. "Even as a young adult, you're just as much of an incompetent buffoon as always."
"Hey, it's not like we picked the fight, you know! Deidara pinned us down!" Naruto shook his fist up in Neji's face but the Hyuuga wasn't about to have any.
"And where is this enemy of yours?" Neji squinted one of his eyes at Naruto.
"We don't know…" Naruto poked his fingers together. "That's kind of why he's handing us our asses, you know."
"Hmph… Tenten, assist me." Neji approached Meiko and handed Lee over to the confused blacksmith while Neji closed his eyes to focus for opening his Byakugan. Almost the same moment he closed his eyes, a platoon of Deidara clones emerged from windows inside the surrounding homes and burst forth through the doors, in a mad rush to overwhelm and destroy the Konoha ninja.
A metallic buzz emanating from a silver-colored blur telegraphed the attack that would pin the clones down. The clay-men twitched and stumbled back from the weight of the impact of dozens of ninja tools hitting them all at once. They considered themselves still capable of fulfilling their suicidal rush plan but once Tenten revealed the steel wire she had tied to the ends of her ninja tools and the entrapment that it has created, the clones realized the futility of their attempt to rush at the long-range scout in the shape of Neji.
"Byakugan!" Neji's eyes burst open with veins branching outwards down his cheeks from around his eyelids. "He's hiding in a house a block from here, over there. He must be using some sort of ocular device to be able to survey the battlefield with such precision while staying as safe and as far as he has been so far. He's playing you for fools, more hunters will come any time now, we must move!"
"And where exactly would all of you go?" a familiar masculine, low-pitched tone with a new tune of smugness to it forced the six Konoha ninja gathered in an important street of Konohagakure to turn back at a balcony of a nearby building where Doto Kazahana, the first introduced hunter, alongside three other lackeys stood with his massive arms crossed over his chest while his goons either just laughed behind his broad shoulders or made faces at the tired and compromised Konoha ninja.
"I think Neji's right." Kiyomi realized, staring at a blank point in space while puny drops of blood from the wounds on her face tapped on the dirt under her feet. "We can't fight these guys at this point, that's the entire point – if we get spotted and involve ourselves into these fights, all we win is more hunters on our asses. We need to disappear from their view and regroup."
One of Doto's minions weaved through an impressive collection of hand seals before forcing the water from a nearby fountain to rush at the Konoha Six all at once, expanding massively in size and taking the shape of a whale. The whale appeared to freeze completely in mid-slam but despite its colossal size, it was not to touch the ground. An arm wielding four, sharp claws at the end, comprised of a boiling, red chakra cloak reached out, grabbed and crushed the ice whale in its grip.
"Go!" Naruto roared out. "I'll keep them off your back and keep them occupied."
Whatever sense he did make in his new transformation appeared to be slowly fleeting him as a tail began emerging from his boiling chakra cloak.
"I am not sure what power this is but… It's ironic that Naruto makes the most sense when he's going wild," Neji said while approaching Meiko. He took Lee off Meiko's hands and turned for the alleyway his team had come here through, one that led to the Konoha Hospital a few blocks away.
"We're coming back for you once we take care of Kiyomi's injuries, don't pass out until then!" Meiko looked at Naruto, grabbed Kiyomi and flipped the wounded team leader over her back.
"Allow us to just watch you two dweebs leave too!" a pink-haired kunoichi from Doto's three-man squad mocked the Team Hokage duo attempting to flee while she weaved hand seals and formed ice needles from the water that her teammate had scattered all over the battlefield, forcing it to rain above the enemies present on the ground level. With a single scream, Naruto blasted the needles away, sending Meiko and Kiyomi off their balance and stumbling into the alleyway in less than favorable landing.
With the booms and slams of battle behind them, Meiko scurried with Kiyomi in her grasp to the looming image of the Konohagakure Hospital, hoping that it had some supplies there that might have helped Kiyomi's eyes recover if even a little bit faster.
