The initial shock that overcame Naruto's face upon seeing Orochimaru's formation of eight subordinates walling him off, all donning the silver eyes of the Rinnegan decorated with its signature ripples didn't take too long to subside. Naruto gripped tighter around the handle of his kunai and took a knife-fighting stance as if nothing had changed.
"My my… The spirit of this boy. You've had plenty of trouble dealing with me alone. Hurry up and run to your older self. I guess there are layers of immaturity not even age can fix." Orochimaru chuckled to himself, feeling confident about his chances enough to give the Seventh Naruto a wayward stare.
"What are you talking about, you mamba-bastard? I haven't even started fighting yet, you know." Naruto scanned the fighting stage, having submitted the luxury of the first move to the opponent.
"Hmm… What's this? Hesitant to rush at your enemy? That's unlike you, Naruto-kun… I wonder…" Orochimaru raised his eyes up, noticing a pair of Naruto clones with their feet stuck to the ceiling and their hands clapped together while the pair stood calmly in a praying position. "Ah, I see…"
Like an extension of his master's will, Kidomaru pressed two of his six arms together by his mouth and then pushed them apart, forming a bow of solid gold that he connected with a silken thread of his own production and added two more golden arrows on top. The skill at which Kidomaru's body moved made the skill feel almost natural to it though such a manner of attack would have not been possible had it been for the spider-like anatomy of the young man using it.
"Spider-Bow: Fierce Rip!" Kidomaru grunted in a voice that was undoubtedly his own though it had no life behind it, none of his usual overconfidence and joyous attitude of a hunter playing a game.
With a metallic buzz, the kunai spun in Naruto's hand, around the youth's finger by the blade's ring before going right for the six-armed body of Orochimaru's control. It was just a mean to dispose of the tool in Naruto's hand which he had placed there due to misreading the opponent's intentions in a quick and efficient manner, one that left him open to then respond to Orochimaru's actions as they developed and maybe one that would have displaced one of Orochimaru's eight "heads" at the same time.
The kunai clanged as a layer of golden armor it hit covering Kidomaru's body tested its fortitude. While Naruto didn't like what he saw, this freed his hands to protect his pair of clones using the Clone Kata fighting style as he had been employing it with decent efficiency earlier.
"Shadow Clone Jutsu!" Naruto grunted while weaving his clone technique hand seal and creating multiple airborne groups of clone, scattered apart one another. Kidomaru's arrows split the space within the cube with a golden glow like a rising lightning bolt, piercing through every clone in its way though the very presence of them in the path of the arrows had mucked up its trajectory enough for the greatly slowed down pair of arrows to miss its targets in the end.
"Naruto-kun… To think that you would muck around with your current, pathetic array of techniques and just stall until your clones gather you the Natural Energy you need. It was Jiraiya's desperation move. He'd be so disappointed in you, seeing you grasp at that straw from the get-go…" Orochimaru mocked Naruto.
"I think he'd mock you first, you know." Naruto pointed his finger at Orochimaru. "For being dumber than me and not seeing through your own weakness."
"My weakness?" Orochimaru smirked and bent his head to the side, letting his loose black hair slip to one side and fall down his shoulders. "Devouring such a noisy little gnat almost doesn't suit a Dragon God such as myself…"
"Whatever, it's your teeth that are gonna be all over the floor, you know…" Naruto shrugged and put his hands together, preparing himself to fight the enemy off using ninjutsu this time.
"It's you who's made the mistake, Naruto-kun, you've shown to me that you seem to care for and need those pathetic little clones of yours stuck up there!" Orochimaru hissed, at which point Kimimaro rushed out and put up his hands. The fingers of the Kaguya clansman bloated by where they connected to his knuckles before the swelling moved down to the tip.
"Shura Finger Bullets!" a barrage of metallic-tinted bone bullets burst forth from Kimimaro's fingers, like a machine-gun threatening to riddle the ceiling of the cube and the two clones that Orochimaru treated as hostages that he could threaten to make Naruto dance by his tune.
More clones popped into existence just to absorb the stream of gunfire and disperse after their demise. It didn't look like Naruto seemed to be bothered at all by splitting his chakra multiple times and creating clones of it just to get murdered in masses to protect the two channeling Natural Energy for him. Orochimaru on the other hand, he looked like he was finally beginning to catch on.
"A weakness?" Orochimaru muttered while releasing a breath imbued with hilarity through his nose. "A weakness he says… I take it that you consider my chakra reserves a weakness, right? I will admit, there is a massive difference between our chakra, you would most likely be able to protect those clones this way long after I would be done having the stamina to attack them."
"That's right. Even Pain struggled having to deal with six whole bodies. You're keeping up with supplying chakra for eight bodies other than your own. You're going to dry out before too long, you know." Naruto pointed at Orochimaru and then punched his own knuckle to show off what he intended to do once Orochimaru ran out of juice.
"Heh… But Naruto-kun… You've made a massive oversight, I think…" Orochimaru gestured with posh elegance. When his eyes opened again, they possessed a sense of vicious brutality and the Sennin spat out his tongue which headed right at Naruto. Before the future Seventh Hokage could put up a meaningful response, the tongue latched onto his wrist and tied him in place.
Jirobo kicked off of the ground and rushed right at the subdued enemy, he threw a gut-punch of dominating physical force but Naruto vaulted over the chubby juggernaut, taking the opportunity to kick him in the back of the head and blast him away from him. Even without his Sage Mode active, Naruto still seemed to possess far greater physical force than before. He grabbed Orochimaru's tongue, looking to free his wrist of it. That was when Sakon charged at him and engaged Naruto with a primitive barrage of taijutsu strings.
Sakon's use for his rogue master appeared to be solely based on his physical abilities as his brother was no longer attached to Sakon's back at all. With one of his arms restrained and the tongue applying manipulation to throw Naruto off-balance, the young man had little hope of matching a body of Orochimaru's he solely focused on taijutsu. As the threat of that realization gripped Naruto by his throat, the youth found himself unable to track let alone defend against Sakon's attacks. In just a few exchanges Naruto found himself on his back, reeling back from the painful kick to his chest with Orochimaru's tongue still attached to one of his wrists and pulling him in.
"Shura Vibrating Sound Drill!" Dosu chanted out in a husky tone while moving in to Naruto and driving his mechanical arm into his gut, generating powerful sound waves from inside it, as well as driving a mechanical arm with all of his force into the abdomen of his opponent that was being pulled in, dreading just such a strike.
The force of impact that sent Naruto flying strained Orochimaru's tongue too much and forced it to snap back into his mouth. As unnatural as the Sennin's bodily modifications were, even he had to correct the position of his tongue and munch on it for a few seconds due to how much it had stretched out in the restraining process.
"Your seemingly infinite chakra is my chakra as well…" Orochimaru concluded his thoughts that he had left dangling. Seeing Naruto down on the ground, he turned to Kin Tsuchi who moved without the need for any visual cues. The moving, modified corpse of the Otogakure kunoichi flung two handfuls of senbon at the pair of clones attached to the ceiling. There appeared to be no way for Naruto to interfere in his current position but, just when the distance between the tips of the oversized needles and the clones was just inches, the clones dispersed into smoke.
"What!?" Orochimaru showed his fangs with a face that perfectly translated both his frustration with his opponent as well as his surprise at every corner, even though he thought himself to be the only one capable of surprising the enemy given his acquisition during the second round of the Chuunin Exams.
A deafening crash sent Orochimaru spinning on his feet and reeling to maintain his upright position. With a fearful twitch, the Sennin turned to face Naruto with toad-like irises and gleaming, yellow eyes as well as patches of orange face paint around his eyes. His fist had stopped a good meter away from Orochimaru's face after colliding with a wall of solid soundwaves which Zaku Abumi had erected just in time to protect the collective brain of the Eight Heads of Orochi.
"Sage Mode…?" Orochimaru muttered to himself. "Yes, of course… I've pushed you so close to the wall, haven't I? Forced you to dispel those clones and take what little they've managed to scrounge up until now. It doesn't matter that Dosu's soundwaves have confused your bo…"
Another deafening crack, followed by a howling shatter. Zaku Abumi rolled backward, thrown away by the violent collapse of his own wall of sound and just as Sage Naruto raced in from the side to begin chipping away at Orochimaru's collection of moving bodies, the Sage gave a wayward look to Jirobo's direction and dashed back, avoiding a large chunk of the Black Cube from taking his head off just in the nick of time.
"Yeah…" Naruto admitted. "I guess those soundwaves really did hit my balance hard if I couldn't shut you up outright, you know."
"Impudent brat…" Orochimaru expressed his vexation with a click of his tongue while moving a wild strand of hair away from his face. "Enjoy whatever temporary rush this flawed technique provides you with. If anything, you'll just entertain the Dragon God by making eluding his jaws into a game this way."
"It's all just a fun game until a head or two get caved in, you know." Sage Naruto calmly stated, straightening out his back.
Lacking the words to express his desire to inflict grievous bodily harm onto this blond child in an adequate manner, Orochimaru extended his hand outward. Strong acceleration of pulling force brought all manners of junk and dust Orochimaru's direction but Sage Naruto was no longer where the serpentine Sennin had intended to pull him in from.
Jirobo dived in out of nowhere with his hands raised. A platform of the same black structure that the Black Cube was made of erected him above the rest of the Eight Heads. The response seemed timely enough for the airborne Rasenshuriken coming their way to dissolve into sparkly dust and enter Jirobo's body. Sage Naruto landed on the ground right after his ace technique disappeared.
"It wasn't such a great idea to absorb a massive jutsu like that one made out of Natural Energy, you know." Sage Naruto warned Orochimaru. "It's an even worse idea when all of you share one chakra pool and everything you absorb goes right back into it."
"Is that what you used to defeat Pain in your universe, Naruto-kun?" Orochimaru chuckled, looking mighty proud of at last having an upper hand and knowing something that Naruto did not. "You know, you're not the only one to have mastered Senjutsu. If a stack of chaff like Jiraiya could do it, it was just a matter of snapping my fingers…"
The expression of Sage Naruto did betray a slight sense of trouble though it did not entirely rock his world to find out that Orochimaru knew how to control and handle Natural Energy and had a reserve of his own where to store it. Judging by how smug the snake looked about this whole affair, Naruto didn't dismiss the circumstance that he might have had a Sage Mode of his own to resort to once his fancy eyes and Dragon God gimmick fails him.
Orochimaru's mouth shuffled something deep inside again, this time Sage Naruto knew the cue and therefore he used all of his enhanced speed to avoid being caught unaware by Orochimaru's tongue again. The Toad Sage glanced back at where he was charging, sensing an influx of chakra and noticed Kidomaru having spat a whole web for Naruto to get stuck in. A clone manifested via his Clone Kata swung Naruto by his forearm and threw him aside and away from the web, helping Sage Naruto land on the wall to his side instead of getting stuck in the web that Orochimaru was leading him into.
A band of enraged ogres with covered up ears and eyes emerged from around Tayuya, another one of Orochimaru's Eight Heads and raced onward with a furious rampage, threatening to flatten Naruto. The Sage dashed through a gap between the titanic Doki of Tayuya's employ and turned around to try and slip in a counterattack but ended up facing a cross-shaped combination attack of shapeless ghosts that appeared from the backs of the Doki and slammed into Sage Naruto's chest.
Everything around him was black. Not even the red paint job of the sealing glyph markings laid on the walls. Orochimaru or his Eight Heads of Orochi were nowhere to be seen either. It all felt just like a very bad dream, at least until the nightmare revealed itself to have been very real with the black pond underneath Naruto's feet shaking and rumbling in violent ripples, letting a rotten and leafless star-shaped pillar of wood emerge from the center with branches covered with shriveled fruit that smelled of rotten milk and bad fish all at once.
"What's the matter, Naruto-kun? You said that it's okay to die, didn't you? You said that all that you've done and learned would be passed down to those succeeding you, am I wrong?" a deceitful hiss filled the air. Naruto recognized that foul voice before its owner showed its ugly and pale head from the crown of the tree and slithered down around it in a spiral. It was hard to tell what was an illusion or a nightmare when the real deal possessed the very flexibility needed to do that same thing…
"Yeah, so what, you know!?" Naruto swiped his hand aside in defiance.
"Then why do you resist right now? Just die and let your knowledge, all your power from beyond just your own universe pass down to those succeeding you." Orochimaru hissed with a devious smile after detaching himself from the tree and standing up in front of Naruto.
"You think you're being clever, don't you?" Naruto growled back at him.
"But of course, when two meet, one feels it is okay to die, another one opposes and defies death, which do you think more likely to survive the meeting?" Orochimaru shrugged, never dropping his proud smile for a second.
"I'm not going to just throw away my life like that and let you kill me, you know!" Naruto dismissed the idea.
"Atta boy…" Naruto heard an oddly familiar voice behind him. One that unlike the unexpected voices he had heard up to now of people aiming to surprise him managed to provide him with a welcome tingle that ran down his back like a warm shower and then converged in his belly with a warm buzz.
"Pervy Sage!" Naruto turned around with gleeful eyes.
"That's right, your spirit's in the right place, kid, though you're sort of drowning under. I'm afraid by the time you see your parents he'll have pulled out too much. Instead of standing here and debating philosophy with that snake, how about you just kick him in the nuts and bust out of the hold he's got you in?" Jiraiya winked at Naruto with a thumb-up.
"Leave it to you, you decrepit bastard, to ruin it all…" Orochimaru hissed.
"Like all things you blame everyone else for, you've brought this onto yourself, Orochimaru. By trying to pull out his soul, you've exposed him to the Pure Land and the souls that reside there-in. Naruto's a tough kid but, most importantly, unlike you, people like him, so whenever a friend of his sees the kid in trouble – they're naturally going to help the kid out. Whether it's in the Pure Land or on the living plane." Jiraiya looked at Naruto with a warm pair of eyes and an encouraging nod.
Naruto just nodded, his face encompassing both the desire to stay here a little bit longer as well as the knowledge that if he did so he might have ended up losing his way in the end. While he didn't truly disappoint his mentor, Naruto clapped his hands together and let out a brave battle cry that sent bright ripples throughout the Pure Land, ripping him out of it and forcing his struggling body to open its eyes on the physical world as well.
The shapeless ghosts of Tayuya's hissed and dispersed like defogged mist. While an ethereal copy of Naruto lingered with almost entirety of its upper half ripped out of its body. Once the empowered Doki no longer threatened to remove his soul or had any contact with it, the ethereal shape returned back to its rightful place inside Sage Naruto and helped the young man snap back to reality.
"I didn't expect that Sound Four girl to be able to use the Human Path's technique, you know," Naruto spoke up, still catching up to the feeling in his body. "Though I guess I should have, you've shuffled in some of Asura Path's abilities in that metal-arm guy and bone-guy, you know…"
Orochimaru stood there bemused that his surprise maneuver that might have ended up in the sudden death of his unruly opponent had failed. Even when by all means he still perceived to have the upper hand on the young man, still he continued to defy his superior strength and countless skills he had acquired to the point where even in Orochimaru's heart doubt began to seep in. Doubt that perhaps he was being led somewhere and he's been winning so far just because Naruto was lulling him.
Then again, seeing this young man stretching out and making all sorts of goofy gestures to test if his soul really did settle back into his body served as reassurance that this oaf couldn't have been capable of concealing anything from the brain behind the Eight Heads.