"Oh my god, that giant toad has a sasumata! And that one has two katanas just hanging on its back!" Meiko cheered like a little girl, admiring the summoned amphibians that dwarfed entire buildings and stuck out like a sore thumb from the Konoha panorama around them. There was to be no doubt in mind that these three just with their sheer presence would call for every hunter with a functional pair of eyes to come over for some action, where before the roof of the hospital provided the genin with some precious solitude and downtime to settle their matters.

"You knew he could do that?" Meiko turned to Neji and Tenten.

"No. This is new to us…" Neji shook his head and bit his lip in frustration. "These are ninja toads, the summon of choice of Jiraiya of the Legendary Sannin and the Fourth Hokage. How on earth could a loser like Naruto sign up with them?"

"So he never mentioned this to you guys either?" Tenten wondered, looking at the two current teammates of Naruto.

"He never did it during our team training…" Meiko admitted.

"I loathe to call out for your power, you never viewed me as anything more than your underling too, you know." Naruto looked down at Gamabunta atop of whose head he stared down at his enemies from.

"Is that any way to talk to your boss, punk?" the central, dusty red colored toad grabbed the handle of its dosu blade and let the beginning of its blade enjoy a glimmer of setting sun reflecting off of it with a red shine. "I let you stand atop of my head without gobbling you up already, like hell will I fight for a disrespectful little zit without even a sprout of a milky mustache!"

"I'm afraid I will also be unable to assist you, Naruto-kun," the magenta-colored toad with a shield and sasumata declared. "These enemies seem formidable and I am too clumsy! My ungracefulness will lead to the downfall of the entire village if I fight!"

"What the…!?" Dark Naruto freaked out over two of his Dark Toads refusing to fight outright. He turned for the third toad with the paired katanas who, as of yet, had not uttered a word. "What about you? Are you gonna be a useless deadweight too, you know!?"

The colossal, aquamarine toad stared at a blank point in space with a bemused and apathetic, even a bit silly expression. Unlike his quite sentient comrades who felt a sense of great pride in their social skills and ability to speak like humans, Gamahiro just acted and stared like an actual toad would if let out of a box to roam about free.

"I think those toads didn't work out for Evil Naruto…" Meiko tapped her finger at the side of her head, rolling a strand of her red hair around it. "Too bad, they looked kinda cool!"

"I guess now we see why Naruto never uses those guys…" Neji shrugged. Still, even if Gamabunta refused to fight outright due to the disrespect Dark Naruto showed him, Gamaken won't fight because of some odd inferiority complex he had about his skills and Gamahiro would continue to stare at one point in place like an imbecile and not respond to outside stimuli, engaging Dark Naruto from up there would be tremendously difficult.

"I see!" Rock Lee threw a hammer fist at his extended palm. "Just like this Negative Naruto possesses his worst qualities, namely, his insecurities about the way he is perceived by the others, so do the Negative Toads!"

"So those toads possess all of the worst qualities of their original selves, just like Dark Naruto embodies his angst about the hatred he received from the other villagers for being such an insufferable twit?" Neji humored his teammate with an affirmative stare. Lee always had a way of reading his own heart because that was the way in which one best improved themselves. Improvement was key for Team Guy and Lee might have been the very best at reading both his physical and mental states which helped a great deal with relating to people that had similar insecurities or flaws as he did.

"An insufferable twit!?" Dark Naruto yelled out after turning at Neji. "Is that what you think I'm mad about, you know!? No, that's not why everybody hates me, it's because they're all afraid of me, you know! They're afraid of us! Sure, the Nine-Tails has caused a great deal of harm but it's not like they've ever given either of us a chance, is it, you know!?"

"The Nine Tails?" Neji took a step back.

"It makes sense that this Dark Naruto can manifest Nine-Tails' power just like Naruto…" Meiko grabbed to her Reactor Gauntlets tighter.

"Come on now, you would be a fool to attack me with those pathetic pieces of junk, you know!" Dark Naruto teased Meiko. He was luring her in to attack, maybe he was counting on Gamabunta not taking a fight erupting atop of his head lightly and engaging the Konoha genin but Meiko didn't quite care either way. An azure ripple spread across the battlefield from her boots, the chakra flares that formed the jets which let her soar through the air lit up but then died out.

A shockwave boomed through the battlefield, further damaging the edges of the hospital building where the emerging Dark Toads had demolished the rooftop, Dark Naruto flew away spinning and slammed into a nearby building with enough force to total it with explosive effects. Despite him just bashing into it at high speed, the pent up force was sufficient to make it appear as if the building was brought down by a violent explosion.

"There are no fools amongst the people I care about!" Naruto, the real Naruto Meiko knew, declared while pointing his thumb at himself with the arm he had just used to deliver a Rasengan at the side of his unaware self. Naruto looked damaged by the battle he had just gone through, his clothes were torn up and he had dried up blood all over his forehead. His headband was missing outright but his eyes were the good old ones, ones full of life, hope, and exuberance.

"You're back!" Meiko gave her teammate a thumb up. "Good, that will save us the time to go pick you up."

"I'm surprised to see you back to normal, back when we left you, you seemed feral." Neji addressed Naruto, now knowing the exact reason for his booming, crimson power of boiling rage earlier.

"Yeah, I was in a real pinch back there…" Naruto stroke his head with an ecstatic grin on his face. "Luckily, my mom showed up to me in a dream, just before things got real bad, just like my pops did back when I fought Pain, and she helped me get things back on the control. Meeting her got me all fired up, feel like I can take on the world now, you know!"

"Get off my head, you little runt!" Dark Gamabunta yelled out and began thrashing about. The rampaging gigantic dosu blade and the resulting debris caught Meiko and Neji unaware, luckily enough, it seemed like Tenten had been preparing for the giant battle all along for she pulled on some steel wire and set off an entire net of it which prevented the falling debris from crushing the ninja inside.

"Hey, calm down, you know!" Naruto shook on his feet, doing his best to maintain control over the rampaging Dark Gamabunta. He realized that the only way to do that would have been to take off of his head. Naruto did just that and landed on the shakier but intact parts of the hospital roof but it didn't appear as if though Gamabunta was going to let this fly. He kept on rampaging and slashed right at Naruto with the dosu blade coming dangerously close to smashing him to a stain.

Something that came to a great surprise to the entire group was when Naruto raised his hands up and stopped the blade. Once the burning force within Naruto allowed him to push the blade up and begin to overpower Dark Gamabunta slowly, the orange markings around his eyes became apparent and the more perceptive might have even laid eyes onto his changed, toad-like irises.

"Damn, forced me to spend a clone this early, huh?" Naruto chuckled to himself while kicking at the dosu blade and forcing it to slam right back at Dark Gamabunta's face. The dull side of his blade forced the giant toad to stumble back stunned. When the Dark Gamabunta had recovered, the glorious sight that his eyes would have feasted on, had it been of any favor to him, was Naruto with a gigantic Rasengan sphere raised over his head.

"Super-Giant Rasengan!" Naruto chanted out before taking off and driving the sphere into Gamabunta. The impact had forced the already massive Rasengan to expand in size to where it enveloped the entire epic-sized toad and completely overwhelmed it, sending it in a horizontal pathway through multiple buildings. The exact location of its final resting position remained unclear for the toad chose to return back to wherever Dark Naruto had called it from instead of continuing this hopeless battle.

With a grumpy look, Naruto turned to Gamaken and Gamahiro.

"I am too clumsy to be of any use or a hindrance to the enemy. This is not a battle where I can be useful, I am afraid!" Gamaken bowed his head and disappeared in a giant cloud of smoke just like Gamabunta did without any need for violence on his part.

Gamahiro showed the first signs of life when he turned his head to see the fact that his comrades had all returned home. Without telegraphing the fact that he acknowledged that fact in any way, the toad just dispersed into a burst of brown clouds of smoke and just like that there was nothing but a devastated district of Konoha and the genin left standing to smell the ashes.

Tenten pulled her net of steel wire back and let the total weight of the rubble atop of it to fall down in a controlled manner, away from Team Guy. Meiko and Team Guy could then reconnect with Naruto at long last. Meiko bumped fists with Naruto who just rubbed his itchy nose and chuckled. His face had no more signs of the orange markings and toad-like irises nor was he any longer booming with the odd, golden and orange shimmers of mysterious, natural aura.

"What was that!?" Meiko wondered. This transformation that Naruto had undergone looked like nothing that she had seen before, the curious abilities of the ninja monks in the Fire Temple perhaps being the closest comparison.

"Oh, I'd appreciate if you never told anyone I had used that, you know. The last time I used Sage Mode in the Chuunin Exams I got disqualified over some stupid old regulation, you know…" Naruto rubbed the back of his head in embarrassment.

Tenten gawked at the vastly grown version of the bratty and inexperienced Naruto she knew. When witnessing that hilarious expression, one would have been taken aback by the question if Tenten was so shocked by the strength that Naruto had managed to acquire while still remaining truthful to the familiar and boisterous self that he was, or that he somehow still managed to stay at his measly old rank of genin while surpassing many of the most amazing ninja in the world with such power.

"That was… Sage Mode?" Meiko wondered. "It seems like something that would be really useful but if it's forbidden…"

"Hmph… So your fate is in our hands, huh?" Neji smirked, when Naruto turned at him with a blank expression, however, Neji opened his eyes and after just a moment of the two sharing their glares Naruto realized that his old rival was just kidding and that he had no intention of selling Naruto out, even if the two had ever ended up facing one another in the Exams.

"That was most impressive, Naruto-kun!" Rock Lee cheered out, throwing a jab of his left fist into the sky as well, just in case he didn't seem loud and quirky enough.

"Well, and here we hoped we wouldn't be able to find you guys…" a familiar voice made the entire crew turn for the nearest corner of the hospital building while a flash of blond hair soothed the rising tension that another battle was inbound.

While Kiyomi was accompanied by a trio of unfamiliar faces, the fact that it was Kiyomi whom they were accompanying sort of lowered the red flags back down all the way since it was the Yamanaka who was the least trustful out of their entire makeshift crew, meaning that if there was any reason at all not to trust them, Kiyomi would have gone with it over any other sort of judgment.

"You can see!?" Meiko exclaimed with a joyful shock that soon left her chest as a relief. "You not only survived in there but also found the pills, jeez you're amazing!"

"Well, those three kind of helped… These guys are Team Seahorse of Kirigakure. The tough guy is Mouza, the weird guy is Toro, the girl is Guna." Kiyomi described her temporary companion in a rather vague and somewhat basic manner.

"Heh, she called you weird! The blonde's starting to grow on me…" Mouza smirked while firing flares from his eyes at his more alien-like in appearance teammate who spread out his long and thin fingers, moving his palms to the outside in a defusing manner.

"I'd like to think I'm a little bit more than just the girl, I'm F-A-B-U-L-O-U-S too!" Guna crossed her arms over her chest and turned her face with pouted lips.

"So these guys are the other ninja I've scouted with my Byakugan…" Neji mumbled to himself.

While Team Guy and Team Seahorse engaged in some small-talk to get a better sense of each other, Kiyomi ran up to Meiko and wrapped her arms around her teammate, jumping at her embrace as well, that was one of the advantages of having a teammate and a crush who was fully capable of fist-fighting the worst brawlers the world had to over while completely submerged in the molten minerals of the Earth's mantle.

"Yeah, I can see, and your goofy face is the only sight I've missed in the time I was blind!" Kiyomi rubbed her face at Meiko's own cheek who looked mostly confused by the whole thing and, after her cup began spilling the boiling water over the edge, pulled the Yamanaka off of her like wet cloth and placed her on the ground.

Kiyomi had noticed the awkward stares from Team Guy and the complete bafflement of Team Seahorse. Toru poked his long fingers against one another and they spread a weird squishy sound whenever they touched and bent so easily that it seemed they'd twist and curl right around one another but they never did. All that anatomical strangeness did nothing to distract from Kiyomi's affectionate behavior though…

That was when Kiyomi froze in shock, a chill surpassing that of a freezing morning shower passed her body up and down, unsatisfied by just completing its journey once or twice, no, again and again it went. After Naruto's arms wrapped around her waist and pressed her in closer to his own chest. She felt his cheek rubbing against hers, despite being caught completely unaware by this, she felt every tiniest detail, like the stench and stickiness of the dried out blood on his face from his brutal brawl with the Snow Country ninja trio and Deidara from before.

"I missed you too, teammate, you know!" he exclaimed. Kiyomi was about to drive a backward elbow strike into the center of his face, hoping for the best outcome of it ending up smashed like a watermelon hit by a hammer, but then she realized what had happened due to Naruto's actions – everybody backed off of her weird expression of affection towards people she hadn't seen for maybe an hour or two tops.

From now on, that was just the way in which Team Hokage expressed their affectionate bonds toward one another, at least Kiyomi didn't come off of as too weird that way, just a part of the weird whole. Whether Naruto did that on purpose or if he just misread the social cues, the outcome turned out just fine in the end.

"Most curious…" Toru looked around the devastated Konoha Hospital yard and the building that looked as if though it would fall apart at any time now.

"Never took you for a buildings geek but it wouldn't surprise me one bit…" Mouza grumbled, never skipping an opportunity to poke fun at his punier teammate.

"While the architecture is… Quaint… That is not what's so baffling, Mouza. Look around, smell the ashes and the dust, listen to the rumbles of the still settling battlefield. Missing anything?" Toru tried communicating with his bully of a teammate, fully used to the way Mouza carried himself by now.

"What, trying a new deodorant to mask your fishy smell? Yeah, I've noticed it but as a Kirigakure native, it never bothered me anyway, so…" Mouza shrugged.

"There are no hunters around…" Guna spoke up so loud that it silenced whatever small-talk the other teams were engaged in as well.

"Indeed, not a soul in my range…" Neji looked around with an active Byakugan. "Strange indeed."

"Nothing strange about that…" Naruto rubbed his nose that got itchy whenever he boasted and felt a bit embarrassed about that fact, "After this much damage, who in this world would ever want to challenge all of us, you know?"

"Let us hope that Naruto is right…" Toru nodded while scratching his chin.

"Are you sure you're not from Kirigakure?" Mouza raised an eyebrow while nudging Naruto with his elbow. Despite the large size and build of the young man, Naruto didn't appear to be too bothered by the elbow poke.

"No, why would you say that, you know?" Naruto rested his head in his hands behind and over his shoulders.

"Oh, no reason, Mr. Whirly Fishcake…" Mouza shrugged. "Man, it's so weird staring at your face when I've been punching nothing but your face for the last hour… No offense, you know…"

"Hmmm… I wonder where the other me went. I'm sure he shouldn't have been taken out by just one Rasengan, you know…" Naruto wondered.

"Maybe he was, remember that while he may have been a darker version of you, filled with hatred, but he was also nowhere nearly as empowered by the chakra inherent in this universe as you were. You two might have been equals back in your universe, or so he implied, but right now, you two were anything but…" Neji suggested.

"I guess…" Naruto looked up into the sky, only halfway satisfied by such an answer.


A sound reminiscent of a concentrated lightning current followed a blade coated entirely with golden lightning aura as it left the chest of a gothic Lolita kunoichi it had impaled through the chest and sent down. The light blue hair that hunter Saya carried tied around in pair ponytails laid spread wildly underneath the lifeless body of the puppeteer kunoichi. Due to the intense heat of the blade that Aoi Rokusho had impaled her on, the blood was slow to pool underneath her body so the loose, light-blue hair did not turn sticky with it immediately after the kunoichi's demise.

Beside her laid a cut in half body of Saya's teammate – Sana. Her previously sadistic and smug face was now twisted in an expression of horror as the young lady had passed not too long after realizing she was cut in half by the thunderous sword Aoi Rokushi wielded. Outpaced and outmatched by the ungodly speed of the rogue swordsman.

"W-We're both hunters…" Mamushi, a fellow teammate of Team Saya laid on his knees and twitched with his entire body, a condition caused by the painful spasms of losing half of his right hand to a careless swing of Aoi's Sword of the Thunder God.

"True, what a curious circumstance, don't you think? There is a team of you three out there taking part in this exam but there is also a team of hunters comprised of you three… How do I even tell you guys apart, right?" Aoi smirked and finished off Mamushi.

A gaunt ethereal shape emerged from the back of the rogue swordsman, floating behind him as a ghost and causing visible irritation and excruciating pain to the swordsman.

"Are these all the hunters that went for the hospital?" the floating ethereal spirit asked.

"Yes, that Ao guy and these three, a lot of them must have already moved on to the outer ring of the village, closer to the walls." Aoi forced out a reply through the pain.

"In that case, find the hunter that Naruto was fighting." The mysterious spirit ordered Aoi and then moved back inside Aoi's body, granting a limited amount of control over his body back to the rogue swordsman.

"Of course… What's so amazing about that guy anyway? No way he's strong enough as the two of us together…" Aoi breathed heavily while moving large chunks of rubble around, looking for a body. "I don't really get why it would be useful to kill him when he's…"

Aoi froze upon setting his eyes on an injured version of Naruto emerging from the rubble. Despite the Dark Naruto not posing any sort of clear physical threat to him, and looking quite confused by the fact that another hunter sought him out, Aoi was shaking like he had just seen the devil himself entertaining himself with his fanciest jig.

"What's wrong with you, hey, you know?" Dark Naruto turned his head.

"N-No… Isshin-sama… L-Look… His body isn't going to work, he's all bruised up and beaten…" Aoi chuckled in panic fear. "Also, he doesn't have a Kama, you see… It won't work at all!"

A blood-curdling scream of a man who no longer seemed to care how undignified his scream sounded got shut-out by a similarly macabre halt of his voice. It was as if the scream got stuck somewhere down in his neck which was then promptly snapped from within, forcing the pent up air to escape through the blood-spouting hole where his spine was sticking out…