Long chapter inbound
Five blurs zipped through the trees like a formation of frantic ghosts. A pair of blazing Sharingan lead the pack, proactively burning a trail for his four comrades to follow. An illusion of crows that took the form of Itachi had appeared before Sasuke at an empty Tsuki no Me hideout and instructed him to travel to a nearby Uchiha outpost from the Warring States Period, and that's exactly where Hebi was headed. Sasuke was finally going to take his vengeance, and they'd help him achieve it.
"Massive chakra signature ahead!" Yukimaru called out from behind Sasuke as they approached the stronghold.
"How massive?" Sasuke asked while maintaining his focus straight ahead.
Yukimaru frowned. "Larger than Orochimaru, but not quite on the level of that blonde Akatsuki."
Sasuke's gaze hardened as that all but confirmed that Itachi was present, but the others somewhat stiffened at that. A chakra signature surpassing even Orochimaru's was still difficult to fathom for them, no matter how much Sasuke and even Yukimaru were closing that gap. With that in mind, they all maintained course with single-minded determination. Their goal was in sight.
"Incoming!" Yukimaru shouted, and the group halted when a figure dropped onto a spire in their path.
Sasuke's eyes narrowed at the sight; it was the same pale blue skin that he had passed over when he found Itachi at that convenience store years prior. Not only he but Yukimaru and Suigetsu perked up in recognition, as well, though for different reasons. Orochimaru had spoken of Kisame Hoshigake always being by Itachi's side to them before, so even if Yukimaru hadn't encountered him firsthand when he had to drag Sasuke's comatose body out of the pocky aisle, he would have already been well aware of who he was. Suigetsu, on the other hand, had actually met him in person once upon a time (if only briefly) when his brother was still alive, and everyone in Kiri revered the Seven Swordsmen as gods amongst mortals.
…No one ever accused the bar of being particularly high in Kiri.
"Only Sasuke alone can go past this point, and I'm here to ensure it remains that way," Kisame declared with a shrug. "Itachi's orders; them's the breaks. The rest of you are welcome to wait right here with me."
"Fine," Sasuke easily acquiesced, shocking the other four members of Hebi.
"You sure, Sasuke?" Yukimaru asked in mild concern.
"Why form a team if you're gonna go it alone?" Isaribi asked, her gaze darting between Sasuke and a carefree Kisame gripping his sword. "We can take him down here and head into the building as a unit."
"I have no interest in fighting all of you," Kisame lightly refuted, but the toothy grin that developed on his face juxtaposed those words. "But, if you insist on going with him, I'll happily cut you all down. Sasuke will be entering alone whether you all press the issue or not."
"It's fine," Sasuke finally insisted to his team, brokering no argument. "If that's the way it has to be, then so be it. This vendetta is mine alone in any event."
"Fine, then, but I'm not waiting around for you to come back," Suigetsu declared with a sharp-toothed grin of his own.
Sasuke simply shrugged and spared his group a final nod before he flickered past Kisame and into the outpost. Kisame quirked a curious eyebrow at Suigetsu before his beady eyes minutely widened when Suigetsu unsealed the Kabutowari in all its unwieldy glory.
"Well, it's been a while since I've seen that thing," Kisame mused. "Jinin must've finally croaked."
"You don't remember me?" Suigetsu feigned hurt. "I guess it has been a while. I'm Suigetsu Hozuki, Mangetsu's brother."
Kisame finally perked up in recognition, and he grinned once again. "Well, would you look at that, I didn't even recognize you. You're all grown up, brat. Last I saw you, you were still pissing your diapers."
"I was seven!" Suigetsu hotly rebuked.
"And still pissing your diapers," Kisame insisted, undeterred.
Suigetsu ground his sharpened teeth, meanwhile, the remainder of Hebi watched on in a collection of amusement and impassivity.
"Wait, so is he messing with Suigetsu or was he actually still in diapers at seven?" Isaribi leaned over to Jugo beside her and asked in a hushed tone.
"All good jokes contain a grain of truth to them," Jugo sagely replied, gently raising his hand to allow a bird to rest on his fingers.
"Oh, guess we're still doing this bit," Isaribi deadpanned.
As the two swordsmen clashed blades in an initial test of strength, Suigetsu learned very quickly that he was not going to outmuscle Kisame in any capacity. Luckily, he didn't need to, and even as he was pushed backward, his grin never faltered. With the axe grinding against Samehada, Suigetsu raised the mallet end of Kabutowari to cleave through the scaled broadsword of his senior, but Kisame disengaged and pivoted just as he was following through, causing Suigetsu to drive the blade into nothing but air.
"Still an amateur," Kisame taunted before batting through Suigetsu's back with Samehada, but the sword simply splashed through a watery torso.
Afforded a momentary reprieve from the quick use of his clan's hydrofication, Suigetsu leaped away to create space and regroup. This was already more fun than he could've asked for.
"I gotta ask, kid," Kisame humored him. "Aside from boredom and a gross lack of self-preservation, what drove you to challenge me so brazenly?"
"I want that sword," Suigetsu answered with a smirk, not even bothering to refute the other assertions.
"Oh? You're trying to wield all seven like your brother, huh?" Kisame laughed. "You really think you're that good?"
"Guess we'll find out when I have them all," Suigetsu bantered back, gripping the handles of the confounding amalgam that passed itself off as a legendary blade tightly in preparation to rush back in.
"Well, whatever," Kisame shrugged. "Word of warning, though: Akatsuki might be beating you to the punch, at least that's what I figure from what happened to Raiga and Zabuza. I wonder when it's my turn."
"Akatsuki?" Suigetsu questioned.
"The Kyubi jinchuriki was hunting those blades down a few years ago for the new Mizukage," Kisame informed, relishing Suigetsu's confusion and mild panic that he was attempting to mask. "Like I said, he already got to Zabuza and Raiga, and who knows about the others if they're still even alive to fight him off. If you're set on hunting the remaining blades down before they do, good luck to ya. Better pray you don't run into him and he decides he wants that one, too."
"He'll have to pry it off of my corpse," Suigetsu growled, clutching Kabutowari even tighter.
"I'm sure that's the idea," Kisame chuckled. "But enough about Samehada's future meal. Let's get back to her current one."
The dueling swordsmen then clashed once more, re-engaging in their deadly dance of dumbfounding weaponry. On the side of the spectators, Yukimaru blankly gazed at the devolving square-off between Suigetsu and Kisame, but his mind was elsewhere. His senses were spread throughout the area, and he could feel just about everything happening within the stronghold. Sasuke's chakra was there, as was the other chakra that felt so much like his, and they were both active.
Sasuke was finally taking vengeance on his brother. Yukimaru really hoped that he'd come out the other end of it. He'd already lost two mothers, and he wasn't sure how he'd handle losing a brother.
"I'm worried about you, friend."
The echo of Kokuo's soft voice within Han's mind minutely alerted him on the tree trunk he was sitting against, bringing his attention away from the distant mountains of the mostly barren borderlands of Tsuchi.
'Why is that, Kokuo?'
He heard the resounding shuffle of his tenant before she even spoke her concern.
"You've been in isolation for a considerable amount of time due to this ongoing mission. I'm concerned about your mental well-being."
A silent moment passed over them like a migrating osprey as Han chewed on that statement. It was true that he had spent the last better part of the last few years patrolling the border and keeping a close watch for potential Iwa incursion, only ever interrupted by the occasional mission in surrounding lands, such as his task to eliminate an Ishigakure terrorist cell composed of kekkei genkai wielders.
That was an interesting if no less lonesome endeavor. It did lend credence to Kokuo's assertion, nonetheless.
'I truly appreciate that, Kokuo. However, I'm no stranger to isolation.'
"That is precisely why I'm concerned. This mission has taken you away from your comrades for too long."
That actually took him aback. This was a new sentiment from his tenant.
"That's because it's different than when you were a shinobi of Iwagakure; you now have several people that respect and value you, rather than utilitarian reverence, cautious indifference, or outright scorn. I'd love for you to be able to enjoy that reality in lieu of subjecting yourself to perpetual solitude in a desolate environment."
'I have you for company.'
A light chuckle rumbled through his mind in the sonorously gentle intonation that he had come to find calming.
"I hardly count, Han."
'I disagree. You are not simply a tool foisted onto me by my former masters to be a weapon of war. You are a fully-fledged being with unique thoughts, desires, ambitions, and identity. You are just as much a person as I am, Kokuo. You are my companion and partner until death, and I treasure that. We may not have agreed to have our existences intertwined like this, but I am eternally grateful for it and you.'
Like many times before, Han could feel the warmth of his partner's delighted chakra envelop him from the inside. He didn't even need to imagine the smile on her vaguely delphine snout from her position lying down in the seal.
"Thank you, friend."
Her smile promptly vanished, however, and her expression immediately grew intense as her gaze shot into the distance on the outside world.
'Is everything alright?' Han inwardly questioned, unnerved at her sudden shift in demeanor.
"An alarming chakra signature is in the vicinity…"
Then, the wholly unfamiliar sound of a low, hateful growl slid out of the ordinarily serene and pacifistic biju, putting Han even further on edge.
"It's so reminiscent of him."
'Him?'
"The man who captured and collected us like toys to be sold to the hidden villages. The man who forced us all into servitude."
It took a moment of consideration before Han's eyes widened, the realization finally dawning on him. "Alarming, indeed…"
Not even acknowledging that he was speaking aloud, Han finally stood to his towering height, sending a hardened glare in the direction Kokuo had sensed the chakra signature. "Do you sense anything else?"
"There's one other alongside them, and their signature is vaguely familiar. It feels explosive in nature."
Han considered that information. They were a pair, and while one of them was remarkable enough to remind Kokuo of the Shodai Hokage, the other was still considerable enough to not be completely washed away by the former. It was no doubt the Tsuki no Me pair tasked with capturing him.
Well, no sense in waiting for them to come to him. He might as well alert one of the outposts on the way to send word back to Ame. If there really was an invading force from Iwa on the approach, sending in the cavalry would be nice.
"Charging straight into a battle with them may not be a wise choice if that signature is of similar capabilities."
"Maybe not," Han conceded. "But it's ours to make. What say you?"
"I am with you, partner."
Han nodded. "Alright then, let's go."
"Have you guys ever thought about why it never stops raining around here?"
The card game between the four Ame-nin within the outpost on the border of Tsuchi came to a halt at that inquiry, and three of them turned quizzical looks to the young man who asked. The young man in question, a newly minted Chunin with spiky, brown hair in a ponytail that rested on the scruff of his green scarf, momentarily faltered with all attention suddenly on him. However, he quickly regained himself, running a hand through his hair and clearing his throat.
"Like, meteorologically speaking, it doesn't make any sense," he clarified, easing back into his train of thought. "Think about it; we're entirely landlocked, mostly between two huge, arid nations, and we're not close to the coast at all. Any southerly winds from the sea should've lost all that moisture by the time it got to us, right? It's clearly not being carried over the desert in Kaze, so why does our little nation specifically get so much rain?"
"Well, the southerly winds don't necessarily lose all that moisture," one of the other Ame-nin, a man in his 30s with brown hair mismatching his black goatee, replied in consideration while scratching his scalp over the black bandana acting as his forehead protector. "Remember, hot air carries moisture better than cold air, so the southerly winds should bring more rain than the northerly winds coming from Yuki would."
"And they do," a third Ame-nin added, this one a brown-haired man in his late 20s with a scar trailing up his right cheek. "Those southerly winds slide northwest across Tani and Konoha all the way to the jungles in Kusa before the mountains on Tsuchi's border interrupt their path and keep that moisture from going any farther. With nowhere else to go but down, it pours, and that's why Kusa's lush with so many dense forests and why we get so much rain that freshwater is literally our biggest export."
"In the process, it casts a big ol' rain shadow over Tsuchi," the goateed ninja jumped back in. "It's the same kind that exists because of the mountain chain in southern Kaze that creates that endless desert down there on the leeward side."
"Wait, so then why do we get so much more rain than Kusa if we're both on the windward side?" asked the young chunin in confusion, something still not adding up about it all.
"I heard that Lord Pain casts a jutsu to keep the rain going," spoke the fourth player in their card game, another young chunin with spiky, black hair and a green scarf to match his former teammate's.
"Maybe, but the nonstop rain has been happening since Hanzo was in power," the goateed Ame-nin replied. "It's not a new phenomenon. I was only a kid during the Second War, so I don't know what it might've been like before that, but I always had a poncho on every time I left the house to scrounge for food."
Just then, a latch on the ceiling opened, exposing the small control room to unfamiliar sunlight, and a grizzled man with two scars traveling up his right cheek and under the eyepatch he wore poked his head in and glared at them.
"The hell are you fuck nuggets in here doing??" the jonin heatedly chastised. "We're on the lookout for an Iwa invasion, and y'all are in here playing cards and talking about the fucking wind??"
When the four ninjas leaped to clumsily put away the cards, the jonin groaned and shook his head. "I'd expect this from you two chunin because you're still young and stupid."
He then turned his singular glare onto the two older shinobi rigidly standing at attention. "But you two dipshits ought to know better. This is why you're pushing fucking 40 and still genin-"
The thunderous crash of a steam-boosted Han blasting through the wall threw whatever he had to say across the horizon, just as being unceremoniously snatched into his big, meaty claws ripped him out of any semblance of coherent thought. The five Ame-nin were all somehow squeezed snugly in Han's armored clutches in the blink of an eye before he smashed through the other wall of the room, rocketing them outside like a bat out of hell.
Mere moments later, the outpost exploded. The building and connected watchtower went up in a glorious inferno, one that the dumbstruck Ame-nin got to view up close in all its magnificence thanks to Han weathering the immense force of the blast and keeping a firm hold over them. When the blast subsided, he finally set the frazzled ninja down, and he was immediately accosted by one of the young chunin.
"What the hell?!" frantically demanded the climate-ignorant youngster as he clutched onto Han's cloak. "What was that?!"
Unfazed, Han simply pointed upward with one finger, and the five shinobi looked above to see two pure white, abnormally large birds circling them in the sky. It was a strange sight to them, as none of them had ever witnessed anything of that species.
"What the hell kind of bird is that?" the goateed genin balked.
"The one that blows you up," Han grunted before stepping a few paces away from the group, keeping his gaze locked on the aerial invaders. "Clear out. They're here for me."
"But Han-," the jonin stammered, but the slight jerk of Han's head silenced him.
"I remember him," Han stiffly interrupted, already knowing where that thought was headed. "He was the Tsuchikage's apprentice once upon a time. You'll just be in the way."
The gathered Ame-nin needed no further prompting to retreat. They were given explicit orders for what to do in this situation, and since their control center was annihilated, they'd simply have to make haste to the nearest outpost and send word back to Ame that the invading force had arrived.
Ushered away by the present jonin, they left Han to it. Han, on the other hand, remained rooted in place. Truthfully, he had been anticipating the day someone would come for him, whether it was Tsuki no Me or Ohnoki himself. Isolation aside, the humdrum inactivity of the borderlands during a period of Iwa aggression was beginning to grate on him. He should have been used to the Fencesitter's "wait and see" approach by now, but the experience was apparently twice as aggravating when on the other end of it.
"See, I told you that would draw him out!" Han heard one of them boast from atop the closest bird, all but confirming his identity as they descended to the ground. "He always was the heroic type, hm!"
"Deidara, it's been a while," Han placidly addressed, but his gaze periodically shifted to his peculiar-looking partner who was putting Kokuo on edge. "To what do I owe the pleasure?"
"I think you know why I'm here," Deidara answered with his signature smile, not rising to the bait.
Despite the thickening tension, a rumbling chuckle reverberated from under Han's mask. Even with his face obscured, Deidara could easily tell that Han was smiling.
"Good, I was tired of waiting for the old man to either shit or get off the pot," Han remarked, his assessing gaze now remaining fixed on the white, contorting spiral into a void that was the other man's face. "Fitting that he sent for you of all people to capture me."
"Hey, eyes over here!" Deidara demanded. "I'm the one you need to be worried about, hmph!"
Han's eyes flickered to Deidara for a brief moment before returning to his mannequin-esque partner on the other bird. It had been years since he had seen Deidara, but despite growing a bit taller, he was still the same as he was back then. This one, however, Han couldn't get a read on. There was no way it was human; it just didn't feel like one at all. It didn't appear to be one of Deidara's clay sculptures given life, either. If this thing was the one Kokuo sensed…
"It is. Do not let your guard down for a single moment."
Meanwhile, Deidara was starting to steam at being disregarded so brazenly. "Looking down on me, are ya…"
Not a moment later, the two birds shot into the air, and the two moon-clad mercenaries disembarked right as the birds nosedived and torpedoed into Han before he could blink. The resulting explosion unleashed a fireball just as tall and luminous as the one that destroyed the outpost minutes prior.
"Yowie wowie!" Tobi incredulously cheered. "That was fast! Did we get him?"
"Quiet, Tobi!" Deidara commanded. That attack was powerful, but he knew it wouldn't be nearly enough to take down Iwa's former designated super soldier, as evidenced by him already digging into the pouches of clay on either hip.
When the smoke finally cleared, it was just as Deidara expected; Han remained standing in the newly formed crater with a damaged Akatsuki cloak but no worse for wear otherwise. Han cracked his neck and removed his ruined cloak, exposing his crimson armor to the world before rapidly bringing his chakra to a boil. Steam poured out of his armor as the furnace on his back lit up with activity, boosted by the ignition of his signature Boil Release jutsu.
"Because we hail from the same lands, I'll do you the courtesy of gifting you a single warning," Han gravely intoned, his light brown eyes boring into his two adversaries. "You're punching way above your weight class. Reconsider if this is truly the correct choice of final resting place."
Undeterred, Deidara removed his hands from the pouches and held them in front of him, regurgitating masses of clay from his palms. His answer was obvious.
The thick pools of clay bubbled and rose like liquid bread, growing into two large, vaguely humanoid blobs with a random assortment of both skinny and bulbous limbs. The slight narrowing of Han's gaze was all the warning either Deidara or Tobi received before he blasted out of the crater toward them at a ridiculous speed. He zoomed right between the two lumbering clay creatures and past Deidara entirely, appearing before Tobi in the blink of an eye and slamming a steam-boosted fist into his chest.
Han felt the satisfying cracks under his fist as Tobi was jettisoned into the smoldering rubble of the outpost with a thunderous crash, and he quickly pivoted to smash the encroaching clay monsters to bits with unrivaled strength. This was good; he knew what Deidara could do, and while definitely dangerous, he was at least familiar. The other one, Tobi, was not, and it behooved him to eliminate him from the equation immediately if Kokuo's concerns were warranted. A punch of that caliber when propelled and empowered by his Unrivaled Strength jutsu would kill any ordinary Iwa jonin, so he could size up just what kind of monster he was dealing with based on how Tobi handled the impact.
In the meantime, he could focus on hammering in these ever-spawning clay constructs, constructs that kept respawning in greater numbers every time he blew them to pieces with a punch. It was obvious what the endgame was here, but he was certain that he could handle Deidara's explosions just fine at this level. However, he was also sure that Deidara was aware of this, too, so with every strike that blasted right through an oblong goblin of clay, he was wracking his brain at just what Deidara hoped to accomplish or what he could be planning beyond the obvious.
"You know exactly how this ends, and yet you continue to play along!" Deidara taunted with a haughty grin, reattaching each discarded chunk to the streams coming out of his palms and reinvigorating them with chakra to continue the overwhelming assault.
Han internally scoffed, deciding that enough was enough with this dance that was going nowhere fast. Backhanding one last creature to the ground, he pivoted and released the built-up pressure from the steam stored in his armor, blasting off from his spot on a collision course with Deidara. Deidara wasn't S-rank for no reason, though, as he narrowly avoided a devastating kick to the throat that instead obliterated an approaching clay monster.
A wicked smirk developed on Deidara's face, and the monster detonated with his triumphant hiss of, "Katsu!"
Han was rocked by the point-blank blast, but he recovered just as quickly and was more than able to leap away from the incoming swarm of detonating creatures he had practically created himself. The explosions had more kick to them than he was expecting, but they were still entirely manageable, and it was only the sheer number of monsters being sent after him that posed any annoyance. That numbers game eventually caught up to him, though, as he soon found himself surrounded by clay bombs raining down upon him.
Unfazed, he unleashed the steam that had been building up in his armor once more for his Steam Explosion jutsu, blasting the incoming bombs and surrounding terrain with a great plume of scalding vapor.
"If you think that's gonna stop my art, then you've grown arrogant in your old age!" Deidara chastised, watching the bombs continue uninhibited into the thick steam cloud.
It didn't matter to Deidara that he couldn't see Han, as the bombs all found their mark, and once Han was covered from head to toe within the cloud, Deidara detonated them with gusto. The explosion was magical to him, dispersing the steam cloud and replacing it with a magnificent plume of smoke.
"Ha!" Deidara maliciously gloated. "What do you have to say now, you uncultured prick?!"
His revelry only lasted a moment longer before he noticed wood chips and burned chunks of a log falling to the ground. He barely got the word, "substitution," out of his mouth before white filled his vision, and he was narrowly saved from oblivion by Tobi intercepting Han's surprise attack the only way Tobi knew how: with his face.
Consequently, Tobi was rocketed away once again, tumbling along the ground and slamming into a nearby rock formation with a comical thud. Deidara didn't waste that moment to jump away and create some much-needed space before Han could continue the attack, and he sent a sidelong glance at his partner.
"…I'm okay!" Tobi called out, raising a shaky thumbs up from his spot pancaked against the rock.
On one end, Deidara was floored. That punch would have reduced his head to mulch had it landed, yet Tobi took it for him without hesitation or any apparent, serious injury, and that was on top of the punch to the chest he took earlier. It only added to his confusion about just what the hell Tobi even was and what he was actually capable of.
On the other end, Han's already hard gaze narrowed. He was getting a better idea of this mystery creature, and he wasn't liking it at all. He was sure that he would need to tap into Kokuo's chakra at some point to take them both down, but if their suspicions turned out to be true, then would "Tobi's" jutsu just suppress them? Would it do the same to Naruto when he arrived?
Speaking of Naruto…
"I do sense my sibling's chakra approaching, but they're a great distance away."
'Then he'll be here soon. He might be the fastest man I've ever encountered. If not the fastest, then he's definitely in the top two.'
"Refrain from telling him that. I do not wish for my sibling's head to get any bigger than it already is."
As Tobi peeled himself off the rock and hobbled over to Deidara, Deidara took a long look at Han, reevaluating the threat he was facing.
"You're too damn quick for someone so big, hm," Deidara groused. "Someone of your size should be a lumbering powerhouse like the other meatheads in Iwa, yet you insist on cheating with your build."
Han took a moment to process that with a quirked eyebrow, and then he shrugged. "Size isn't everything."
Deidara just snorted, and then he retrieved another lump of clay from his pouch. "Y'know, you say that, but I don't really think that's true."
"That's because you don't know how to work with what you have, Padawan," Han sagely replied. "You think bigger is better because you are incapable of maximizing your efficacy relative to your output."
A vein bulged behind Deidara's bang at the insinuation, and his grip on the dragon he had just molded tightened. "Whatever, hmph! The size of an explosion is always proportional to its beauty!"
"Explosions?" Han asked in confusion as Deidara dropped the sculpture, and it immediately poofed into a massive, C2 Dragon coiling around them for Deidara to jump on the head of.
Tobi animatedly gasped. "You're pulling out the big guns, aren't you, senpai??"
"Shut up and make yourself useful!" Deidara commanded as the white dragon opened its mouth and vomited a surge of smaller sculptures. "Cover the terrain."
"Can do!" Tobi gladly complied and then slapped his hands into the snake seal.
The scope on Deidara's left eye nearly shot off when his eyes bulged at the sight of wooden tendrils emerging from the ground in droves, wrapping themselves around the small bombs and pulling them underground. His jaw hit the head of the dragon underfoot, and his gaze was so focused on Tobi that he neglected to notice Han quickly evacuating the immediate area.
"All done!" Tobi saluted, and then he noticed his partner's awestruck expression. "Um, what happened?"
"What happened??" Deidara incredulously parroted. "Tobi, what the fuck?!"
"What?"
"You never told me that you can use fucking Wood Release!"
"Well, you never told me what it's like to poo!"
"THOSE ARE NOT ON THE SAME GODDAMN LEVEL!"
So wrapped up in their squabble that they failed to notice the darkening shadow looming over them until the last possible moment. The C2 Dragon took to the skies and cleared out in the nick of time, but Tobi was not so lucky as to escape the red, hospital-sized salamander that crashed into the ground, shattering the earth beneath them. However, before anyone could move a muscle, the cratered ground erupted in a huge explosion that launched the frazzled salamander back into the air.
Deidara watched in ever-growing incredulity as the boss summon cussed up a storm at the blonde riding atop his head, meanwhile, Han couldn't help the chuckle that left him at his comrade's antics. His grand entrance was a failure, but it inadvertently cleared the minefield that had literally just been laid.
In the center of it all was an astonished Naruto standing on a very irritated Kenji with a cackling Aoimori still nestled in his hair. This was, admittedly, not what he had in mind when he and Aoimori cooked up this plan. He just knew that he wasn't ever going to hear the end of this at Kuromizu.
"Ugh, I'm gonna be feeling this in my underbelly for the next week," Kenji groused, his displeasure being heard for miles. "Next time, please don't drop me on a goddamn bomb, kid."
"How was I supposed to know that we'd literally be walking into a minefield??" Naruto stressed, ignoring Aoimori cackling even harder. "That's not something that you just prepare for, y'know!"
"You're a shinobi!" Kenji balked. "It's exactly something you're trained to prepare for!"
"And exactly how often do you ever actually encounter one?" Naruto rebutted.
"You LITERALLY had Karin prepare a minefield outside of your notice as training, which you never cleaned up, by the way! You asshole!"
"Listen, we have other things to focus on right now," Naruto finally put a stop to the back-and-forth. "You can head back. Ao and I have this covered."
"Fine," Kenji grumbled before vanishing in an enormous puff of smoke.
Landing in the uneven crater, Naruto idly noted the white arm sticking out of the dirt as he flickered back to solid ground beside Han.
"Yo," Naruto greeted far too casually for the situation.
"Quite the entrance," Han remarked, greeting him back with a nod.
"Yeah, well, didn't go quite to plan," Naruto muttered, ignoring a muffled, "you don't say," from Han. "What are we dealing with here?"
"Deidara, formerly of the Iwa Explosion Corps," Han pointed to the C2 Dragon. "He uses clay that he can mold his chakra into and detonate at will. Works best at long range. His partner, on the other hand…"
That same white arm emerged from the crater, followed by his freakishly spiraled face shaking the dirt off before he yanked himself out of the ground.
"Deidara, why didn't you warn me that was coming?!" Tobi whined.
"…is whatever that is," Han finished.
"Naruto."
The sudden interruption from Kurama startled Naruto. 'What is it?'
"That… thing… the white one."
'Mhm?'
"I don't like its chakra. It's far too familiar."
Naruto furrowed his brow at both the statement and the way Kurama growled it. '…Like Madara Uchiha familiar?'
"Worse."
That didn't leave too many candidates, and Naruto's glare darkened when he settled on the one that made the most sense.
"You and your partner came to the same conclusion as us, I take it," Han surmised from his expression.
"Yeah," he confirmed. "This… complicates things. Incoming!"
The two jinchuriki evaded the two small dragons that were fired from the mouth of the big one, but both were surprised when the dragons split up and followed them in their attempts. They briefly met each other's gaze, and in that moment, they sprinted toward each other with the dragons hot on their trail. Once they were a yard apart, they jumped as high as they could as the two dragons collided and exploded in a glorious fireball.
There was no rest for the weary, unfortunately, as wooden tendrils sprouted from the ground below and shot up to intercept them. Naruto was ready, though, a bright and powerful Rasengan already forming in his right hand before he slammed it into the offending wood, grinding them to chips, splinters, and sawdust all the way down.
"Kokuo and I can take what Deidara dishes and respond in kind, but the presence of Wood Release eliminates her from the equation," Han began once they were back on solid ground. "He's powerful enough to withstand my attacks even without it."
"Focus your efforts on Deidara," Naruto instructed. "I'll handle the other one."
Han was rightfully taken aback by that. "Are you sure? I don't imagine the Kyubi is too keen on facing the same jutsu that captured him all those years ago."
"You'd be surprised," Naruto chuckled. "Still, even without him, I've got a thing or two up my sleeve. Don't worry about me."
Han eyed him in his periphery for a considerable moment, but he eventually acquiesced. "Very well. I trust you."
"Awesome," Naruto smirked, and then he retrieved two scrolls from his cloak and tossed them to Han. "He's a specialist from Iwa, so if my suspicions about his clay are correct, these might come in handy. I know lightning jutsu isn't your strong suit, so you'll know when to use them."
Han nodded in thanks, and then he and Naruto turned their attention back to the C2 Dragon as Deidara fired five more guided explosives at them.
"Ready?" Naruto asked.
"Yeah," Han nodded, steam pouring out of his armor once again in preparation.
When the dragons covered half the distance, Naruto and Han burst into action. They dashed along to the ruined terrain to meet their combatants head-on, evading the explosives as best as they could and smashing through the roots that attempted to intercept them all the while. Two shadow clones popped into existence beside Naruto before he grabbed each one in either hand and launched them at Deidara, colliding with the next few bombs the C2 spat out. Another wave of roots came next, but they were slashed and sawed through by a quick barrage of vibrating chakra chains. While doing so, Naruto took the lead and explicitly carved a path through the roots for Han to traverse until he had pooled enough steam necessary for his next charge.
That charge came when Han finally released that built-up pressure, resulting in a titanic burst that launched him toward Deidara like a rocket. Meanwhile, Naruto continued his charge through the roots toward a frantic Tobi.
"Wait wait wait hold on a sec-" Tobi babbled with his hands up as Naruto closed the distance and slammed his fist straight into Tobi's eyehole.
Yet again, Tobi was blasted away by a ridiculously hard punch, though rather than crash into the rubble of an outpost, he just skipped across the ground like a tumbleweed in a wind storm this time around. Fortunately, he was caught and saved by an emerging Zetsu clone. Unfortunately, Naruto was right there in moments to slam another Rasengan into the both of them, crashing down onto Tobi's chest and cratering him, crushing the Zetsu clone in the process.
Skidding to a stop after jumping away, Naruto watched in fascination as Tobi peeled himself out of the crater with barely any indication that he had taken any damage.
"Wow, you sure are strong!" Tobi marveled at Naruto. "I honestly didn't expect you to pack so much more of a punch than the Gobi, but I guess I should've expected it from my actual objective…"
'Actual objective?' Naruto apprehensively mused.
"Before we officially begin," Tobi continued, his previously childlike tone developing a dark, sinister edge to it. "Tell me, what is it like to poo?"
"…What?" was all Naruto could respond with before his instincts screamed at him to jump, and he did so just in time to avoid another Zetsu sprouting from the ground under him in an attempt to capture him.
Tobi didn't waste any time pressing his advantage, slamming his palms together in a snake seal. "Deep Forest Emergence."
Before Naruto's very eyes, the dry terrain transformed into a dense thicket. Among the emerging shrubs and grass were tall trees sprouting into the sky, the branches of which were reaching for the heavens to ensnare him. Having absolutely none of it, Naruto flew through a sequence ending in the tiger seal and blew a gargantuan Majestic Demolisher down at the emerging woodland, setting it ablaze. It didn't stop Tobi from leaping through the flames in a single bound to engage Naruto, though, throwing a punch that sliced through the wind like warm butter.
Naruto's first mistake was blocking that punch. His second was wincing at the sudden jolt of his ulna fracturing on impact, leaving him briefly vulnerable to a punch straight to the jaw that rocked and launched him in a corkscrew toward the ground. Landing just outside of the blaze and skipping along the ground just like a discarded stone, Naruto eventually recovered back to his feet, immediately using Kurama's chakra to mend his injured arm and jaw.
"Geez," Aoimori remarked, finally poking his head out of the safety of Naruto's hair. "This guy's crazy strong!"
"Yeah," Naruto grunted, jumping back to avoid Tobi cannonballing the ground with an enormous crash that formed a considerable impact crater. "Physically, he's stronger than Tsunade. This isn't ideal."
Only years of being smacked around by Pain allowed Naruto to intercept the hand that attempted to sneakily clamp down his throat from beside him. Clamping down on the attacker's wrist, the second Tobi dissolved, revealing itself to be a wood clone. Naruto knew what was coming, though, as a barrage of chains shot out of him to meet the real Tobi's charge in the brief window created by that distraction. Tobi didn't bother avoiding them, merely clashing with the almost protective rib cage that the chains had formed around Naruto.
"You can't run," Tobi informed in a far too dark tone for a voice so seemingly nonthreatening.
"Who's running?" Naruto retorted with a growl, a new, wind-coated chain lashing out at Tobi's head in the blink of an eye.
Unfortunately, Tobi was faster, disengaging and backflipping away from Naruto with ease. At that moment, several white arms breached the surface from underneath the dirt, and even more Zetsu clones rose from the depths like a horde of the undead, all of them staring right at him with hunger in their poisonous, golden eyes.
"Gotta be honest, I was expecting more out of you," Tobi lamented, folding his arms and shaking his head in disappointment. "Oh well. Tear him apart."
With that single command, the horde charged at Naruto with an inhuman war cry. Naruto, meanwhile, was feeling the burn of indignation welling within as he set his icy gaze on Tobi at the back of the horde.
"If you want more, I'll show you more, you pasty fuck," he growled, a few chains slowly coiling around his arms and legs while others reared out menacingly from behind.
Then, his right hand sparked with lightning, and the Chidori crackled up his arm and through the chains coiling around him until his entire body was sparking with lightning. Not a moment later, he zoomed into the incoming horde and cleaved his way through toward Tobi in short order, clashing arms with him once he reached him. Tobi was still physically stronger, but some of the difference was made up by Naruto's makeshift armor as the two launched into a hard-hitting melee.
Naruto and Tobi exchanged blows with such ferocity that many of the remaining Zetsu that approached were knocked away by the force of their collisions. Those that made it through were swiftly cut down by a lashing chain, leaving Naruto able to focus on gaining a foothold in the fight. Unfortunately, the lightning crackling off of him wasn't akin to the Raikage's Lightning Armor, as it was channeling over him through the chains and not through him in the same way a chakra cloak would. As a result, while Naruto did see a boost in strength, he wasn't granted the same degree of speed boost that he otherwise might have been.
In other words, every punch was met, every backhand was ducked, every kick was countered, and every chain swipe was intercepted by a violently lashing root. No matter how hard Naruto fought, Tobi was always a step ahead and at least a degree more forceful in his offense. Naruto, on the other hand, was still being slugged, cut, and battered by a mixture of strikes and wooden spikes from Tobi's Cutting Sprigs Jutsu. On top of that, Tobi would not shut up.
"I bet you thought you were the baddest man in town, huh?" Tobi prodded, his childlike demeanor creeping back in. "This must be embarrassing for you-"
Naruto finally managed to shut him up with a furious elbow to the opening in his blank face, and he capitalized with a thunderous kick to Tobi's chest, rocketing him into the smoldering trees ahead. Finally, he was able to turn around and devote his attention to cutting down the remaining horde.
A gang of Zetsu converged on him, but a quick discharge of the Chidori fried them in short order. With the cloak down, Naruto began shredding through the clones with his chains, letting off a bit of steam at being matched so easily earlier on by mowing through these ready and willing targets. He had been up to six chests punched through, seven decapitations, and twelve bifurcations when he noticed a white spore growing on him. Then, more spores were sprouting across his cloak and converging into a pudgy, white cloud atop him. He could feel them siphoning his chakra as they did so, so a quick flash of Kurama's chakra was all that was needed to overwhelm and burn much of the spores off of him, but some remained and continued growing to make up the difference.
"Ao!" Naruto called.
"On it!" Aoimori responded, jumping off of his perch on Naruto's head and firing a Water Trumpet at him, power-washing the rest of the spores off.
"Thanks!" Naruto shouted, catching his partner and stashing him back up top before kicking an encroaching Zetsu clone's head off.
Disregarding the spores once they were off of him, he missed them crawling towards each other and converging into a singular mass before vanishing into the ground. Instead, he focused on wiping out the remaining horde before Tobi inevitably returned, and not a moment sooner than Naruto's dispatching of the last clone did Tobi dash back into the fray with a haymaker. Naruto narrowly ducked it and responded in kind, slamming his fist into Tobi's gut as hard as he could and forcing him back.
Righting himself in the air, Tobi answered back with another Cutting Sprigs Jutsu, firing a plethora of small, wooden spikes at Naruto like bullets with a swipe of his arm. Each one was blocked by a chain, but Naruto still jumped back to create space, nonetheless. A straight taijutsu slugfest wasn't going to work out for him, so a ninjutsu battle would have to do.
Slamming his hands into the snake seal and taking a big breath, he spat a gargantuan torrent of water at Tobi that rose into an Exploding Water Shockwave, towering over Tobi and even dwarfing burned trees behind him. Unfazed, Tobi performed a few seals and called the roots from underground, forming them into an impossibly thick pillar that lifted him into the sky above the wave to avoid being swept away. Another sequence of seals later, and the rushing wave grew even more violent until four Wood Dragons emerged from under the surface, rearing menacingly over Naruto with glowing, yellow eyes focused squarely on him.
Naruto's response was a tremendous Multi Shadow Clone Jutsu, and the army of Narutos attacked with gusto while the original sank into the ground via the Subterranean Voyage Jutsu. The clones shot over the water and soared towards the attacking dragons, many leaping right into their fearsome mouths while others evaded the chomps and chose to climb onto them instead. Soon, however, the first explosion rocked one of the dragons, and it set off a chain of massive explosions within the mouths of the dragons that were more than sufficient in bringing them down, as hidden amongst the clones were a great number of Exploding Shadow Clones that intentionally jumped into the maws of the wooden beasts.
Atop his perch, Tobi was busy fending off the scores of clones that made their way past the dragons to target him, and he was admittedly having difficulty combatting their coordinated strikes. Liberal use of wooden spikes that were shot out of every inch of his body was doing about as well as it could to cull the numbers when punching and kicking the others that made it to him wasn't an option, but one clone inevitably made it through and headbutted him like a missile, knocking Tobi right off his root pillar.
The fact that the clone then exploded and propelled him to the wet ground even faster didn't help matters.
As soon as he impacted the muddy ground, the real Naruto shot out from underground with a Fire Style Rasengan in hand, and he slammed the spiraling ball of flames straight into Tobi's face, taking extra care to hit the eyehole dead-on to ignite whatever was underneath. A bright, fiery burst was the result, and Naruto bore the heat of that burst head-on in order to ensure Tobi was down for the count. The impact burned through whole chunks of Tobi's face, turning much of it to blackened goo with flashes of pale, burned flesh peeking out from underneath.
"Did that do it?" Aoimori poked his head out of Naruto's hair to ask, the pair looming over the still form of their freakishly powerful foe.
"One way to make sure," Naruto responded, wind-coated chains creeping out of his back to go for the double tap.
As if directly responding to Naruto calling his bluff, Tobi jolted alive and fired wooden spikes at Naruto, and the chains instantly reacted to cut them down while Naruto created space. The wave he created had dispersed by now, leaving the battlefield a muddy mess speckled by ruined trees on one side and a single root pillar on the other. Tobi rose back to his feet, his face already repairing the damage done by the Rasengan and rebuilding itself into its familiar spiral. The glimpses of flesh underneath were hidden once again, but Naruto still kept them in mind despite how much Tobi's resilience was beginning to irritate him.
"This guy's giving you the business," Aoimori solemnly muttered.
"I'm well aware!" Naruto shot back, simply wanting this battle to be over already so that he could assist Han with the gargantuan explosions happening elsewhere.
"I stand corrected," Tobi finally spoke, his carefree tone now full of intrigue as he gave Naruto a reassessing once over. "You're good; really good. Immensely powerful, even."
His demeanor changed once again, and back was the darkness that broke through earlier. "Still, you're merely a speck in the void in comparison to Mother…"
"Fuck your mother!" Naruto fired back, allowing his irritation to get the better of him before pouring an absurd quantity of chakra into a familiar seal sequence. "Wind Style: Great Breakthrough!"
The gust of wind that was expelled from Naruto's mouth wasn't any ordinary Great Breakthrough, but rather it was much more akin to a hurricane spawning in a calm forest with no warnings whatsoever. The force of the winds uprooted the nearby trees, toppled the root pillar, and slammed into Tobi who had suddenly gone rigid at Naruto's vulgar rebuke of Mother, blasting him nearly out of sight.
Miles away, among the shredded, butchered carcasses of five horribly unlucky Ame-nin, the battle unknowingly had a spectator… a very, very, very angry spectator.
Well, it was more accurate to say that half of the spectator was livid. The other half was simply scandalized.
"He pressed the Mother button…" White Zetsu muttered, putting down the half-consumed head of the Ame jonin from the destroyed outpost before sending a sidelong glance to Black Zetsu physically vibrating in fury.
"You dared to disrespect Mother, you vile wretch?!" Black Zetsu apoplectically foamed. "Kyubi jinchuriki or not, I will have your head!"
Black Zetsu then slid off of White Zetsu and vanished into the ground, very much surprising his other half with his direct action.
"Holy shit," White Zetsu remarked, shooting a bloody grin at the battle ahead. "This is gonna get interesting."
"So, now what?" Aoimori asked. "Doesn't seem like he's going down any time soon, and he can match whatever you dish out."
"Yeah," Naruto begrudgingly acknowledged, having gotten ahold of himself after foolishly using more chakra than he should have on that wind jutsu.
"How about the fox?" Aoimori suggested. "It would definitely even the playing field."
Before Naruto could even reply, Kurama spoke up in his mind:
"I wouldn't recommend it. A pale imitation of that blasted Senju he may be, but his Wood Release is incredibly potent, nonetheless. You'd be taking a gamble that isn't guaranteed to pay off at your current level."
'Woah,' Naruto mused. 'Takes a real big man to admit that, Kurama. It might hurt your reputation, y'know.'
"No one you tell will ever believe you."
"So?" Aoimori prompted in the outside world.
"That option's out, but I know what will take him down," Naruto said, and he sat down on the mud and closed his eyes.
"Wait, are you…" Aoimori began in daunted realization.
Suddenly, a thunderous sound boomed from the distance Tobi was blasted to. Rising into the air and slowly trailing toward them was a gargantuan, wooden statue of a Nyorai surrounded by hundreds of equally hulking hands. Aoimori turned his panicked gaze toward the racket, whereas Naruto's eyes remained shut. The statue was taller than anything Aoimori had ever seen, even bigger than any salamander boss. Riding atop the head of the Nyorai was Tobi with his arms crossed, and sitting below him on the statue's forehead were the faces of five other Buddhas.
"I can't let that slight against Mother go unpunished," Tobi gravely informed. "We only need you alive, though not necessarily in one piece."
Tobi clapped his hands together, causing the many hands of the statue to creak into motion. The sounds of wooden limbs springing to life thundered across the somehow ruined wasteland, spelling nothing short of inescapable danger for all that lay before it.
"Dude?!?!" Aoimori stressed, but Naruto didn't reply, nor did he bother to open his eyes.
Instead, another Multi Shadow Clone Jutsu flared to life, and an army of hundreds of clones charged to meet the titanic combatant in battle. The hands finally went on the attack, and the clones fearlessly engaged, ducking and dodging the giant punches as best as they could and slinging powerful ninjutsu back at the statue to little success. It became clear very soon that the clones were little more than a distraction to keep the statue busy, so Tobi changed tactics.
"All is Suffering," Tobi uttered, and the five heads opened their mouths, revealing a powerful jutsu of each nature forming within.
The clones' efforts were not halted whatsoever, and five of them even fell back to prepare for what was to come.
"Since all of you are here, at least one of you can finally answer my question," Tobi remarked. "What is it like to poo? I imagine that it's similar to the refreshing feeling you get after killing someone. Maybe one day, I won't have to imagine…"
A wistful sigh escaped Tobi before he locked back in. "Die."
The five Buddhas fired, unleashing the enormous jutsu combination onto the clone army, shredding through the unlucky many that were caught in the blast zone. The five clones on the ground remained firm, though, meeting each blast with a powerful jutsu of the same nature to counter and stalemate the attack. The resulting explosion created a dense smoke cloud that obscured the clones' vision, leaving them vulnerable to getting smashed by the fists of the statue as it pounded away at the remaining distraction. Once they were all taken care of, a fist shot towards the original still sitting cross-legged on the dirt.
"Incoming!" Aoimori shouted as he took cover inside of Naruto's Akatsuki cloak.
Naruto, however, didn't move. His eyelids had developed a black pigmentation that jutted down his cheekbones to the top of his whiskers like blades. The fist inevitably closed the distance and was within reach of pulverizing him, but a slightly webbed hand shot out and caught the gigantic extremity, stopping it dead in its tracks.
Naruto opened his eyes, exposing his black, dilated pupils sitting atop yellow sclera to the world, and his glare was rooted firmly on Tobi.
The first Salamander Sage since the days of the Sage of Six Paths had arrived.
Naruto tossed the giant hand away with a single arm before shooting off toward Tobi like a missile. Any fist that came at him from any direction was either evaded without issue or brutally smashed through without hesitation. At a point, the statue sent each of its remaining fists at Naruto at once to converge on him, but he merely flickered on top of the attack and used it as a launch pad to reach Tobi with a punch that shattered a portion of his head, sending chunks of his spirally face flying away alongside him and revealing even more of the dead-eyed vessel underneath. Tobi had no time to process this before an equally devastating kick from a newly appearing Naruto above him sent him hurtling into the ground like a meteorite.
Only then was Tobi afforded a moment's respite, but it was only a moment, as Naruto quickly performed a few seals on his descent. "Sage Art: Fire Style: Twisted Inferno."
A bright, red-hot stream of fire erupted from him that corkscrewed on its way down, building up more energy and growing even larger as it did so. Tobi could tell the blast radius was going to be enormous, so without the statue to shield him, he was forced to create a wooden dome around him for protection. Unfortunately, he underestimated just how much punch these senjutsu-powered flames packed, as the jutsu exploded into a violent, salamander-shaped fireball on impact that blasted through the dome with ease and just about torched Tobi.
Finally dropping to the ground, Naruto used his greatly enhanced sensory prowess to survey the new state of affairs in not just his battle, but in Han's battle, as well. He could sense the emergence of the Gobi in all her glory alongside a few titanic explosions from Deidara, and thankfully, Han and Kokuo were winning, so that was one less thing to worry about.
Focusing his attention on Tobi, though, revealed something interesting. Underneath the tattered cloak and overwhelming chakra presence that Kurama sensed, there was a limp yet vaguely similar one being slowly cannibalized by it. Tobi was nothing more than a parasitic shell using another body as a conduit, which wasn't anything he hadn't encountered before in principle given how the Six Paths of Pain functioned, but it was an interesting tidbit to keep in mind.
Alongside that, he idly acknowledged the similar chakras to Tobi lying in wait underground, but he had to assume that they were more of the clones he mowed through earlier since the ground was so saturated with Tobi's chakra that it was exceedingly difficult to parse any unique signatures among them, if any even existed.
As he reached the end of his thoughts, Aoimori reemerged from the neck of his cloak. "Holy shit, dude! I knew Sage Mode would be a trump card, but I didn't think you'd tip the scales this much!"
"I can't maintain it for long stretches while also using big ninjutsu just yet, so it's best if I finish this quickly," Naruto replied.
"Oh, is that why you're just standing around and letting him recover over there?" Aoimori pointed out, motioning to Tobi rising back to his feet a good distance ahead. "You're already recharging?"
"More like stockpiling as much as I can for what I have in mind next," Naruto cryptically responded. "Hang on. It'll get a little bumpy."
Meanwhile, Tobi finally regenerated the deleted mass from his face and shook the stars out of his vision, and then all he could do was chuckle. "I'm in danger."
Feeling it was time to transform the battlefield to be on his terms, he slammed his hands into the snake seal once more. "Deep Forest Emergence!"
Once again, a sea of trees rapidly sprouted from the ground, though this one was far larger than the last instance. The dry, barren foothills of Tsuchi's mountains became a green, lush oasis in seconds, trees stretching as far as the eye could see and reaching for the afternoon sun beaming down on the land. Now, with his chakra flooding the terrain through the plant life, he could easily mask his presence amongst the trees and pinpoint Naruto's location from anywhere-
A surprise kick to the back of the head blasted Tobi through the woods, knocking down a whole clearing of trees on his assured path to oblivion. Naruto darted right after him, weaving through the roots and branches that rudely attempted to accost him along the way until Tobi recovered and met his charge with a wild haymaker. Naruto caught the fist and formed a Rasengan in his other hand before drilling it right into Tobi's chest, grinding through his white chest and hitting the body that lay underneath until he was blasted away yet again, something that had become far too familiar for him in this stretch of the fight.
He slammed into a thick tree, cracking it and leaving a Tobi-shaped imprint in the trunk as Naruto made to press his advantage. It was time to weaponize the full breadth of Salamander Sage Mode. Utilizing the central focus of total control that Salamander senjutsu stressed, Naruto reached within and took hold of his chakra, molding some into fire-natured chakra and some into water-natured chakra before fusing them to create something otherwise impossible without a kekkei genkai.
"Sage Art: Boil Style: Scalding Poison," he intoned before expelling a toxic, bright purple cloud at Tobi that indiscriminately mauled everything it touched.
The mauve gas melted the bark off of the trees, killed the plants underfoot, and even blackened the leaves on the branches until they fell in shame. Tobi quickly slammed his hands to the ground, erecting a dome of roots and mud in a desperate attempt to protect himself from the deadly jutsu, but in doing so, he fell right into Naruto's trap. The toxic miasma ate through the dome in short order, and Tobi couldn't even go anywhere thanks to the largescale, senjutsu-powered Swamp of the Underworld Jutsu appearing under his feet and trapping his legs in place. Outside of the dome, an expansive pool of super glue-like mud blanketed the forest floor, leaving little to no solid ground to speak of and nowhere for Tobi to escape to.
Then, in the blink of an eye, Naruto vanished, flickering up the trees and landing on the treetops, overlooking the wooden expanse and catching a glimpse of Kokuo firing a bijudama at a giant, clay facsimile of Deidara. Turning back to the forest floor, he felt for the senjutsu chakra flowing through the mud on the ground, and then he performed a few more seals.
"Sage Art: Boil Style: Swamp Gas," Naruto said, activating the chakra within the mud and expelling a forest-wide cloud of the same, acidic poison that he used on Tobi earlier.
It was a highly potent brand available only to the Salamanders in their domain, one that Kodai and Seidai helped Naruto replicate with his senjutsu chakra. The cloud rose up the trees, stripping them bare of their bark and doing horrific things to Tobi still trapped in the mud below. Naruto momentarily cursed the enhanced sensory prowess of Sage Mode giving him a clear picture of exactly the level of torture befalling Tobi in the improvised gas chamber. His white skin was somehow shriveling, bubbling, and peeling off all at once, and the body of the poor bastard within was fairing even worse. Blood and white goop cascaded down his form and pooled into a grotesque, carmine soup within the mud.
Shaking that visual off, it was time to finish it. Leaping away to a faraway treetop, Naruto slammed his hands into the horse seal and readied the last gasps of his Sage Mode for the coup de grâce.
"Fire Style: Majestic Destroyer Flame."
Within moments a literal sea of flames exited Naruto's mouth in a glorious display. The forest was set ablaze, and at the epicenter of the raging inferno was Tobi bearing the brunt of it all.
"Get us out of here," Naruto instructed Aoimori, and the two vanished in a puff of smoke back to Kuromizu Swamp, escaping the raging inferno before it could swallow them up, as well.
Every step Han took was an arduous task as he lumbered his way toward the general area Deidara crashed in after his most recent attempt to disintegrate him had failed. It was evident that he no longer even cared to take him alive to extract the Gobi from him; he simply wanted Han dead. Han didn't really mind; the feeling was mutual, and he'd be getting right to that as soon as he reached him.
He didn't question the forest that had spontaneously appeared nearby, nor did he question why it was on fire. Naruto didn't do anything half-assed, including but not limited to forest fires, apparently.
The closer he hobbled to Deidara's limp form, the more trouble he had navigating the minefield of craters wrought by Deidara's bombs. Not helping matters was the occasional spasm he suffered thanks to frying himself with a juiced-up Electromagnetic Murder Jutsu from the scrolls Naruto gave him. It saved him from disintegration via Deidara's C4 attacks by rendering the micro-bombs inert while Kokuo's chakra purged them from his system, so he couldn't be too upset with Naruto about it. It still hurt like a bitch and a half, though.
Again, Naruto did nothing half-assed.
"Fucking hell…" Deidara groaned as he did his best to sit up, and his drained gaze fell onto Han steadily approaching him.
"It's over," Han growled, doing his best to fight against how draining fully manifesting Kokuo was for him. "Tsuki no Me won't have my partner, nor will Iwagakure have my freedom."
Deidara silently stared at Han for a lengthy moment as the distance between them progressively shrank, and then to Han's surprise, he began chuckling. "You know, I actually respect you, Han. You chose to be the master of your own destiny rather than an old man's superweapon. If I wasn't given explicit orders to capture you, I'd bring you back with us as a member."
It was Han's turn to be rendered silent, and that silence lingered in the odd battlefield they inhabited. Han cocked his head and stared at Deidara, doing his very best to figure him out to no avail.
"…You've literally been trying to kill me for the last ten minutes at least," Han finally spoke. "That ship has long since sailed. And aren't you supposed to be bringing me in alive, anyway?"
Deidara scoffed. "It's because I respect you that I'm killing you. You're gonna die anyway, if not to me, then to Madara when he rips out your biju. Why not die with some dignity in the beautiful flash of sublimation of my art coming fully into its own? You deserve a glorious death in an explosion!"
"…Right," Han muttered. "Counterpoint: I'd rather not die, nor have my partner extracted at all, so why not go with neither?"
Deidara's dark chuckle put Han on edge. "That's some mighty powerful wishful thinking if you believe you really have a choice. After you were dead and that goddamn, self-fellating Uchiha prick finally came for me, I planned on taking us both out with my magnum opus. But, unfortunately, it looks like I'll have to unveil it earlier than planned…"
Then, he ripped off his shirt, exposing a suture on his chest over his heart, and he placed his hand over the suture to allow the mouth on his palm to bite and tear it open to reveal another mouth on his chest. He swiped the last handful of clay he had and stuffed it into that mouth, activating his most powerful and destructive jutsu. His skin steadily darkened, and the explosive chakra pumping through his veins became visible.
"This is my ultimate art!" Deidara manically declared. This time, I'm going to detonate myself, and in death, I will become art! No one has ever seen an explosion like this, one that shall leave behind a scar on this very planet! I'll be hailed as the greatest artist that has ever touched this dimension!"
Han had been shuffling backward as best as he could in his addled state, but having chakra exhaustion was not the best condition to be in when trying to escape a no-doubt titanic explosion on the horizon.
"This explosion will cover 10 kilometers, so don't even bother trying to escape, hm!" Deidara cackled, his body steadily folding into the mounting nuke of chakra in his heart. "Accept your fate! Recoil in despair! Cower in awe! Because my art…"
"Han, tag me in!"
Han needed no further prompting to allow Kokuo to take the reins despite the havoc it would wreak on his body afterward, and Kokuo's chakra blasted out of him like a jet engine as she formed herself around him once again. Meanwhile, the ball of chakra hovering over the ground that was once Deidara began to crack, overflowing with the masses of mayhem that its psychotic wielder had loaded it with. Within moments, the orb burst, and Kokuo braced herself to tank the apocalyptic discharge that followed.
One puff of smoke later, Naruto and Aoimori returned from Kuromizu Swamp to the foothills of the border between Ame and Iwa territory. Naruto sighed, allowing the last dregs of Sage Mode to begin fading away after the momentary resurgence he received from appearing at Kuromizu. He winced, though, pain shooting throughout his body from the physical stress senjutsu caused him. Accessing Sage Mode was so much more taxing outside of Kuromizu, so on top of already using quite a bit of chakra in that battle, he'd have to take care to move gingerly for a little while. Such was life, he supposed.
Looking around, however, both he and Aoimori noticed a lack of a raging forest fire in the immediate area.
"Damnit," Aoimori hissed. "I'm still not great at this. I didn't have a summoner's chakra to lock on to, so I could only get us to a rough approximation of where we last were."
"Don't sweat it," Naruto assured. "I can still sense-"
An explosion larger than anything he had ever seen, felt, or imagined stopped whatever was on his tongue dead. He spun around to find a blue, resplendent explosion towering over the land in the direction he sensed Kokuo's chakra.
"What the fuck??" he and his familiar balked at once, both awestruck by the display.
It certainly wasn't the result of a bijudama, so Han and Kokuo couldn't have been responsible for it. That was quickly emphasized by the steadily growing figure in the distance. Naruto squinted to get a better look, and then he paled when Kokuo's form hurtling toward him like a runaway Chibaku Tensei became frighteningly apparent.
Panicking, Naruto began taking in natural energy once more to reenter Sage Mode and catch his falling comrade, consequences be damned. Kokuo would probably survive the crash, but there was no telling what state Han would be in afterward, and Naruto refused to take any chances. Black pigmentation returning to his eyelids and his pupils blackening back into voids, Naruto fought through his body's howling protests to prepare himself for the worst and most important game of catch he'll ever have to play… hopefully.
As the mountain of a horse with the head of a dolphin began to dominate the sky above them, Aoimori stashed himself inside Naruto's cloak as Naruto anchored himself to the ground with chains as well as reinforcing his upper body with as many as necessary to pull off this absolutely, monumentally stupid endeavor.
Anything for his family, goddamnit.
Kokuo finally slammed into the ground right onto Naruto, smashing a generational crater into the landscape that quickly became a canyon as she slid along the terrain. When she finally came to a halt, the dolphin-horse to end all dolphin-horses was lifted off of the ground, revealing Naruto hefting her with all his might above his head and a trail of chains trailing down the length of the canyon from the point of impact. With a final grunt, he heaved her out in front of him, dropping her a safe distance away and collapsing to the dirt.
Man and biju lay bonelessly in the wreckage, Sage Mode disappearing once again and leaving Naruto in tremendous agony. This was the biggest pitfall of Salamander senjutsu, particularly for inexperienced practitioners; it was absolute murder on the body until it was fully mastered. Rather than turning into a stone statue like with Toad senjutsu or transforming into a white snake wholesale like with Snake senjutsu, mismanaging Salamander senjutsu tore the user's body apart from the inside out like a very violent, poison-induced necrosis. Until mastered, it was a last resort, and it was this sort of visceral backlash on top of the inherent difficulty of learning senjutsu that dissuaded Hanzo from ever broaching that far in the Salamander arts.
Naruto, however, simply had that dog in him, as Kurama and some of the older Salamanders would often say.
"My dearest apologies, Naruto, and thank you," Kokuo lamented once she somewhat regained her bearings.
Naruto let loose a mixture of a groan and a chuckle. "It's all good, Kokuo. Is Han okay?"
"He's suffering from chakra exhaustion, but he's otherwise fine," she answered. "He'll need to be carried to safety, unfortunately. I don't foresee him walking on his own power until he rests."
"That's okay," Naruto assured, patting Kokuo's fur. "You can head back in. You probably need to rest up, too. I can't sense either of them around, so I can take care of things from here."
"Thank you," Kokuo gratefully replied, and she started shrinking, her chakra receding into an unconscious Han.
Naruto wasn't lying when he said that he couldn't sense Deidara or Tobi around. In truth, he couldn't sense much of anything at the moment, but he did feel the explosion wipe any trace of Tobi off the map when he was briefly in Sage Mode just now, which was a relief. Deidara also vanished with the explosion, but since his chakra comprised the entirety of it, it was an obvious suicide attack. That meant that both of their opponents were taken care of.
He sat up and gingerly climbed to his feet right as Aoimori emerged from his cloak, returning to his perch in the safety of Naruto's hair. Naruto exhaled once more, finally allowing himself to relax for the first time since he had arrived. He needed a nap, he needed some ramen, and most of all, he needed to see Konan. It had been far, far too long since he had been home, and he just wanted to hug his mother.
"Gotcha, bitch!" a voice shouted from behind as a black miasma suddenly latched onto him.
"What the hell??" Naruto reacted, struggling against the sudden pressure squeezing down on him and locking his body in place. "What is this?!"
"Justice," the gravelly, menacing voice intoned with a sinister smile. "You're getting what you deserve."
Naruto's panicked gaze flickered to Han. "Ao, get him out of here!"
Without a word, Aoimori jumped off of his head and landed on Han, reverse summoning with him back to Kuromizu just before a pair of white arms could emerge from the ground and grab him. A white head poked out of the dirt immediately afterward, only the left half of his face present.
"Damn, just missed him," White Zetsu half-heartedly lamented, his smile never faltering. "Looks like we caught a bigger fish, though. They're coming, by the way."
Refusing to succumb to the ambush, the Kyubi's chakra flared to life around Naruto in an attempt to burn Black Zetsu off of him, but Black Zetsu merely chuckled as the chakra was absorbed into the void like water. He poured as much of the Kyubi's chakra out of him as he could while fighting viciously to break Black Zetsu's ironclad grip, but it was all for naught.
"That's right, you little bitch, struggle," Black Zetsu gloated. "You think you're without equal because you can throw around puny chakra balls that blow up mountains? Mother can annihilate planets and create whole dimensions. You aren't even a fraction of a speck of dust compared to her. You're not a blip on her radar. You are nothing to Mother, and it's time you learned your place, human scum."
Naruto grunted in defiance, valiantly maintaining his efforts to free himself despite it all. However, things went from bad to worse when he noticed activity in the distance… a lot of it. Crossing over the mountains was a whole company of Iwa-nin rushing to their location, and floating alongside them was the goddamn Tsuchikage himself.
"They're here," White Zetsu sang. "We gonna let them have him?"
"Sure," Black Zetsu answered. "Let him rot in an Iwa dungeon until they rip the Kyubi out of him and toss his body in a garbage heap to die a lonely, miserable death in a puddle of his own feces. It's more than he deserves. We already have what we need from him, regardless."
"And the Kyubi?" White Zetsu asked.
"Obito can get it back at any time," Black Zetsu dismissed. "It's not like they'll be able to seal it, anyway. We'll just pick it up after it destroys Iwa."
Naruto was not in favor of this. He was not in favor of this at all. However, Black Zetsu must have sensed his next action, as a black void pressed down on his mouth, muffling his furious ranting before it began.
"Shut your goddamn mouth, you wretched brat," Black Zetsu spat. "Your filthy, traitorous, ungrateful father and uncle should have been annihilated at birth to prevent the knaves they would inevitably become. You and your dumbass brother aren't any better, but at least he was a useful idiot. You're just disposable trash."
Naruto would have been confused at whatever the hell Black Zetsu was waffling about if he wasn't already experiencing panicked fury for the first time since he ditched Konoha. He couldn't figure out a viable way out of his predicament; he didn't have the strength to muscle his way out, Kurama's chakra was simply being absorbed, and his own chakra reserves were wearing way too thin to turn himself into a bomb.
To add insult to injury, the Tsuchikage was staring him dead in the eye with a flicker of recognition as the army made their approach. When they finally closed the distance, the collection of Iwa jonin and chunin surrounded them. Naruto recognized a few faces from the bingo book, such as the Tsuchikage's own son, Kitsuchi, who was nothing short of relieved for whatever reason. Strangely enough, there was a girl among them who looked around his age and was staring at him with a mountain of curiosity hidden amongst a veneer of smugness.
Amongst the silence of the crowd, Ohnoki floated towards the Zetsufied Naruto and gave the three of them a once over before his hardened gaze landed on White Zetsu.
"I asked for Han," Ohnoki finally spoke. "This is not Han."
"He escaped," White Zetsu shrugged. "Here's the Kyubi instead."
Predictably, Ohnoki's eyes widened, and his gaze fixed itself back onto Naruto. Aged, black irides met icy cerulean as he scrutinized Naruto closely, taking in and analyzing every possible detail about him.
"Looks just like him…" Ohnoki muttered, and Naruto noticed several older Iwa-nin bristle. "So, that's what happened to the fox."
"So?" White Zetsu prompted.
"I'll accept this," Ohnoki nodded before turning around and floating away. "Seal his chakra and knock him out. The Kyubi will be Iwa property before the end of the week. And be sure to use the advanced seals pilfered from the Uzumaki. You will need them for this."
Before Naruto could even explode at the implications of that, several Iwa-nin sprang into action, and he immediately found himself being overwhelmed by chakra suppression seals as Black Zetsu opened himself up to allow them to get to work. He even uncovered Naruto's mouth right as Kitsuchi was in front of him with a seal in hand. Opting to get one last act of defiance in, Naruto spat a fat loogie right in Kitsuchi's face.
The last thing Naruto saw was Kitsuchi's stone-covered fist before unconsciousness enveloped him.
Finally, the million and one Chekhov's Guns I set up were finally fired. Now, I can breathe and move on to Pain and Konan finally getting active.
I've hinted at it several times throughout the fic, but all of the Zetsu are wise to the plan to revive Kaguya. Rather than being loyal to Obito or Madara, they're loyal exclusively to Kaguya with Black Zetsu at the helm.
I also played with senjutsu lore a little bit, don't worry about it it's fine
Thanks for reading.