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Been a while since I updated this. I've been sorting out some things on my profile.
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CHAPTER 8
The darkness of the crevice covered Naruto as he dove into it after Obito.
The crack in the ground was breathlessly tight and deafeningly quiet. The walls of the crevice were jagged and sharp, shearing at Obito's face and back as he bumped into it, but Naruto managed to keep his body straight as he shot headfirst toward the unconscious Uchiha.
Byakugan, Naruto pronounced in his head and his pale eyes blazed. A cobweb of veins spread out from his eyes to his ears.
His vision illuminated Obito's waning chakra network, as well as cut through the thick darkness of the tight crevice, allowing him to maintain a straight descent after his target, keeping away from the irregularly sharp rocks lining the walls of the crevice.
His eyes narrowed at Obito's limp silhouette, stretching his arms out and catching the boy in his arms with a heavy grunt. Obito still didn't wake up from that jolt, and Naruto clenched his teeth as he hefted the boy securely in his arms.
He snapped his legs apart and channelled his chakra to the soles of his feet, stopping his fall before he could plummet further. The sharp rocks of the crevice sliced into his upper arms and knees, and Naruto hissed, fighting to focus as he turned his eyes up to the top of the opening.
His eyes widened when he saw a too-familiar chakra network shooting pressurized air at Kakashi from the tip of her right finger gun, and the Hatake forced his weak body to dodge each concussive blast.
This was a mile and a half above him.
His baby sister, One.
She was one-eighth Uzumaki with a deep connection to her water and wind affinity chakra. Before Naruto had fled Konoha, she had been seeking to create a summoning contract with the krakens that guarded and surrounded Whirlpool Country, taming them with her mastery of water. Ten had informed him that she had finally succeeded in making a complete summoning contract with the Kraken, but those pressurized air bullets were something entirely new to him.
His best guess was that it was to replicate the pressure that affected the human body at the bottom of the deepest ocean, somehow combining water and wind with a heavier emphasis on wind.
Naruto looked at Obito and his expression became grim.
He saw thin fractures on the boy's skull and the small area above his left ear, where the pressure bullet had hit, was crushed inwards, revealing Obito's brain and splintering it with pieces of Obito's skull. His eardrums were essentially obliterated, burst beyond repair. Blood freely leaked from Obito's ears and nose, and his half-closed eyes were flooded red from blood.
His heart was still functioning and his lungs worked, but it would be a miracle if Obito ever woke up again.
He might live, but he won't live well.
Naruto grunted and shifted his right arm, closing Obito's eyes fully.
He looked up again, at Kakashi tactfully retreating and One giving chase with her wind bullets. Naruto correctly assumed that Danzo wanted this particular mission to fail, and for there to be no witnesses to CORE involvement.
He needed to get back—
He pursed his lips and whistled, casting the shrill sound up and reverberating it on the walls of the rocky crevice till it echoed noisily into the cave.
Immediately, Naruto's snow wolves came out of hiding and attacked One.
That should give Kakashi some breathing room, Naruto thought with a relieved breath as he saw his wolves split apart into formations, some guarding Kakashi and others manoeuvring toward Naruto's sister. Some of the wolves fell victim to One's pressure bullets, and others managed to push her further away from Kakashi.
He slowly looked down, bypassing Obito and peering straight into the dark crevice.
His byakugan glazed over and Naruto growled, dispelling the illusion as soon as it came over his mind.
"Three seconds," a yawning voice said in Naruto's ear. Naruto didn't turn though, firing chakra to his extremities and dispelling the genjutsu again. The voice faded, sounding both sleepy and engaged, "Must be your personal best."
Naruto's body wilted with sleep, but he jerked himself back upright and awake, firing away a third illusion as if he was shaking away a heavy blanket that had been draped on his body.
Sandy, Naruto thought, refraining from snapping his head around to look for his sleepy brother.
Sandy was a Uchiha with Mangekyo sharingan eyes. Due to an abnormal mutation in his genes, his sharingan could never deactivate and merely being in his presence made others in a ten-yard radius extremely tired.
CORE had built up an immunity to Sandy's passive chakra exposure, but when the Uchiha actively wanted someone to fall under his illusion, he was unbeatable.
Nearly, Naruto hissed internally and leapt away from a spiralling vortex behind him, replacing himself and Obito with a shadow clone. He caught himself from falling, sticking to the wall with one hand and both feet, using his other hand to keep Obito from slipping off his body.
"Almost got you there," Sandy sighed from nowhere.
Naruto's byakugan allowed him to instinctively know when he was under an illusion and see through it, but dispelling it was completely on the boy's shoulders.
Sandy released another heavy yawn, one that trembled the walls and vibrated the heavy, dark air, groaning grumpily, "Kill that kid and let's go home, Nine-Nine. He's basically dead, and I'm sleepy…"
Naruto clicked his tongue and, in a blaze of speed, thought of his options.
He debated creating shadow clones to send Obito out of the crevice and away to safety, but his clones weren't as durable as the original and could easily fall under Sandy's passive chakra exposure.
He thought about discarding Obito in favour of fighting Sandy and quickly getting back to Kakashi, but his deal with Minato hinged not only on the mission succeeding but also on each member of the team coming back alive. However, the state of each member of Team Minato wasn't something they discussed. Thankfully.
Naruto looked down again, sagging under another heavy sleep genjutsu but tiredly shaking his head, waking up again. Naruto yawned widely and Sandy giggled.
The boy cursed and pursed his lips, whistling as loudly as possible.
For a brief moment, his wolves paused to comprehend the message.
Then a handful of them swarmed One, doggedly dodging and clambering away from the girl's wild wind bullets, while the rest took Kakashi, snagging him by the back of his jounin flak jacket and retreated with him. The Hatake was smart enough to not resist, knowing that those large wolves were on his side.
Naruto's snow wolves ran to the mission's objective, Kannabi Bridge, linking up with the wolves with Rin's unconscious body.
Meanwhile, Naruto released hold of the rock walls and free-fell further into the crevice, hugging Obito close.
Sandy audibly huffed in annoyance. "You're so stubborn."
They heard One's annoyed scream at the top of the crevice, killing every last snow wolf and going after Kakashi.
Before Naruto's eyes closed, he saw a pair of half-lidded Mangekyo eyes open from above and fall toward him.
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
Naruto woke up in a desert.
He sat up with a groggy groan, blearily looking at his wrist and seeing that he had been asleep for two minutes.
Not good, he thought slowly, shaking his head of sand. Definitely not good.
He winced and peered up, shading his eyes from the scorching hot sun beaming down on him. It was blindingly bright and red, searing the skin of his face.
My face? Naruto's mind reeled and he touched his face, realising that his ski mask was gone. He got to his knees and palmed his face, looking around the endless desert. There was nothing in sight, even pushing his byakugan to look further than the very edge of the world, and only finding endless sand and heat. He frowned with a sarcastic exhale. Fun.
His byakugan thrummed. A ripple of chakra raced across the sand and unsettled the air.
The red sun twitched, with Naruto's immediate vicinity flickering from bright and hot desert to pitch black and stony, then back to the desert.
In that split second, Naruto scrambled to Obito before the unconscious boy was covered again by the illusion, checking Obito's vitals and sighing with relief when he saw that the Uchiha was still alive, albeit barely. The Obito in his grasp crumbled into sand, passing through his fingers as if the Uchiha was a mirage.
Naruto's eyes rolled up to the back of his head and he slumped forward, though before his temple could meet the sandy ground, he got his hands under him and pushed, springing forward into a roll and a front flip onto his feet, landing with a dramatic flourishing.
"Show off," Sandy said, speaking from everywhere and nowhere in particular.
Naruto jeered and gave a dramatic bow.
His eyes rolled to the back of his head again, woozy from sleep, but Naruto slammed a punch into his cheek, violently jerking him back awake but bruising his cheek in the process.
The Mangekyo eye in the sun shone brighter and hotter on Naruto, but the boy grated his teeth with a laughing curl of his lips and punched his face again. He beckoned with his hands, and his byakugan thrummed again, but this time the desert illusion stayed strong and unbreakable.
COREs Sandman, familiarly called Sandy by his siblings, made illusions so powerful that his manifestations attacked all of the senses simultaneously, and his Mangekyo only made his illusionary constructs more solid. It was a largescale illusion that reduced the will of the victim to nothing.
Naruto raised his fists, swaying tiredly from side to side and looking ahead with half-lidded eyes.
"You don't have anything to tell me?"
Naruto's head lolled from left to right, fighting to keep his eyes even a little bit open. He didn't move to answer.
The desert rumbled and a hard fist planted into Naruto's cheek, coming from a humanoid pile of sand with burning red sharingan. The blow dropped Naruto to his knees and he slumped face-first into the sand. Naruto's hands shakily gripped the sand, trembling terribly from being too tired to push himself upright, only for Sandy to plant a boot into Naruto's ribs, sending Naruto careening into a wall.
For less than a moment, the desert world flickered from bright hot to dark cold, snapping back in place when Sandy glared at the sun.
Naruto panted raggedly, his ribs hurting too much to properly breathe and his legs had fallen asleep from Sandy's physical attacks. It was not enough for the Uchiha to naturally be predisposed to illusions, but to also use a taijutsu style that helped knock people out.
His arms shook and he heaved himself onto his side, missing a stomp to the back of his head but too slow to miss the punting kick to his chest, slamming him again into the wall. Naruto slumped against the wall, his head hanging to his chest.
This time, the desert illusion held strong.
"We trusted you, and you ran." Sandy fully materialised, looming over his big brother with clenched fists and a vengeful glare. Naruto smirked a little, seeing from the blurry corner of his byakugan that Sandy was completely awake, and exactly how he remembered him; dusty brown and a childishly pudgy face that quivered with annoyance. Sandy lifted Naruto by his blonde hair and punched the boy in the gut, letting Naruto fall back with a painful wheeze onto his knees, then slump to his side, laughing and coughing breathlessly. The Uchiha spat, his knuckles popping at how tight he was squeezing his fists. "This isn't funny."
Naruto was now fully laid out on his side, coughing and vibrating with low laughter as a thin line of drool leaked from his mouth. He sputtered wordlessly, huffing for air and clenching his teeth in a pained grin.
Sandy looked down at Naruto with an irritated glow. "Just…sleep already. This is embarrassing."
It took some effort and plenty of patience on Naruto's part, but his hands were in the right place.
He let his full weight settle on his right wrist, dislocating it with a jarring crack.
White hot pain seared Naruto's mind and the boy flickered from his spot, just as the desert illusion destabilised, reappearing with his left hand curled around Sandy's neck and looking firmly between his brother's shocked wide eyes.
Sandy's mouth opened but Naruto shushed him gently when his younger brother made to apologise; Naruto wasn't mad that Sandy had been tossing him around. Rather it was the opposite.
Naruto was proud that his sleepy brother had the guts to use his sharingan on him.
Naruto lifted his brother clear off his feet and choke-slammed him down on the hard ground.
The illusion shattered with Sandy's choking gurgles.
The former CORE stood over Sandy as the younger boy clutched his caved-in throat, wheezing and weeping inconsolably. Naruto rubbed his right wrist, sore from being dislocated, and he jerked his right hand with his left so that the wrist popped back into its joint. He hissed through his teeth and closed his eyes, grunting as he regained the flow of chakra into his hand.
Sandy's sobs echoed in that cavern, several miles at the bottom of the crevice, and his crying broke Naruto's heart.
Naruto's eyes cut through the sightless darkness, once again confirming Obito's location. The boy was barely breathing and his brain activity was worryingly low.
A pair of shadow clones burst from him and went to the Uchiha, gathering him up and clambering up the walls back to the surface.
As they scaled the rock walls with their chakra, Naruto knelt on one knee beside his brother. In reaction, Sandy turned his back to him, still lying on the ground and holding his throat.
An exasperated smile came onto Naruto's face and he rolled his eyes.
It was too dark for Naruto to sign, so the former CORE used the next best thing.
He rhythmically tapped Sandy's shoulder, speaking in morse code.
"You're being dramatic. It didn't even hurt that much." It sounded so much like it was Naruto's fault for being so rough in his retaliation and that Sandy was going to tell on Naruto to Danzo, and that brought a soundless chuckle from Naruto's mouth.
"Not. Funny." Sandy huffed in a scratchy voice.
Naruto shook his head, half-heartedly frustrated. "I keep telling you, if you can dish it out, you need to know how to take it."
"I do know how to take it," Sandy complained with a pout, still refusing to turn to his brother. "You just hit too hard."
Naruto scoffed and rolled his eyes again. "It wasn't even that bad."
"It was!" Sandy objected loudly. He slapped Naruto's hand away from his shoulder. "Don't touch me."
Naruto smirked teasingly, tentatively tapping his Uchiha brother. "Sandman—"
"I said, don't touch me." He curled deeper into himself, mumbling sourly. "Traitor."
A hard exhale came from Naruto's nose, frustrated at his brother rebuffing him. Sandy didn't move though, not intimidated by his big brother's grunt. He got up with a shrug, giving the other boy a parting shove. Fine. Be stubborn.
Naruto's byakugan eyes looked up to where his clones had taken Obito, rolling his shoulders.
He made to jump to it, but he faltered when Sandy sniffed tearfully, telling him, "Sister wants Kakashi gone."
Naruto looked down at his stubborn brother, who petulantly kept his back to Naruto. He released a breath from his mouth and his shoulders sagged. I know.
He raced to the surface without any parting words to his brother.
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
Clambering out of the deep crevice, Naruto was shocked at the sight inside the cave.
Blood coated the walls and ground, with headless wolves laid haphazardly where they had been killed, their heads disintegrated completely, not leaving behind a single fragment of their skulls.
The wolves that hadn't lost their heads had sections of their necks and torsos crushed to a paste, staining the ground where they were left to die of their wounds.
Naruto's faultless eyes caught some of the marks on the dead wolves; circular suction marks that had taken chunks of flesh and fur from their bodies, matching the circular holes that were imprinted on the walls.
There was also sweltering humidity in the air, bringing sweat to Naruto's brow and making his breath heavier.
He counted close to two dozen snow wolves, the shortest being as tall as Naruto.
Naruto bent down next to a dry heaving wolf, choking on her blood; her formerly pristine white fur was matted down by blood and moisture. A section of her gut was crushed, separating her hind legs from the rest of her body.
The boy comforted the wolf by gently scratching under her chin, sliding his hand to his side and quietly taking out a kunai. His expression was soft, shaking his head a little when the wolf tried to sit up to lap at his face with her tongue, but she was only able to loll her tongue from her mouth and weakly lick the knee close to her snout.
Loyal to the bitter end, and too stubborn to easily die.
The wolf didn't see Naruto's blade, even as he pushed it into her head, killing her swiftly and painlessly.
Naruto closed his eyes and exhaled, releasing a quiet weight from his shoulders. His right hand rubbed the dead wolf's head, grunting as he yanked his blade from her head. His byakugan hummed as his agitation increased, sighing and grinding his teeth.
He didn't need to study the cave again to know that this reckless carnage wasn't following CORE's principles of mission engagement.
CORE was methodical, calculating, and careful, only applying brute force and reckless abandon in scarce situations that were far out of logical control. Danzo would have wanted the assassination and failure of the mission to be subtle and quiet, no matter what hurdles One and Sandy encountered.
Naruto knew One, nearly as much as he knew his other siblings, and this wasn't how she performed on missions.
This was reckless.
One wasn't reckless.
One was never reckless.
She only ever lost her cool once and it was during a mission when Kakashi messed up, triggering an alarm that almost jeopardised the entire mission.
Naruto's eyes opened and his face hardened as he frowned.
Kakashi.
His body briefly vibrated, and then he flickered away.
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
Flashback
Naruto pulled out a fistful of shuriken and threw them at Kakashi, intercepting the five shuriken One had sent to the horrified Hatake.
Kakashi was too surprised to move.
Meanwhile, Naruto raced to his brother and tackled him out of the way of a volley of kunai, smoothly forming a shadow clone, and pushing both Kakashi and the clone away, prompting the clone to carry Kakashi to safety.
He drew his ninjato and turned just in time to deflect One's ninjato, shoving her back and stepping in front of her again when she made to dip around him to get to Kakashi.
The Jashin temple they had been tasked to steal vital documents from burned in the background, illuminating the hill it was built on with smoke and fire. Inside the building, the documents incriminating the Hot Water Daimyo of colluding with the Jashin cannibals—that is Danzo's intended blackmail against the Daimyo—burned alongside the building.
The Jashin priests were all dead but the mission was still a catastrophic failure.
The girl wheezed through clenched teeth and stood with a tired hunch. She wasn't that much shorter than her brother, with her rust-coloured hair styled into a bob cut and her light purple eyes glazed over with rage. Her black jumpsuit and shinobi sandals were singed from the fire. She pointed her weapon at Naruto and spitting venomously in an all-too-calm tone, "It's his fault this happened."
Naruto shook his head, signing with both hands as best as he could while he still had his ninjato in his right, "Take it easy on him. He's not CORE—"
"Then why's he here?" she spat again, losing the calm in her voice. "What business does he have here?"
Naruto shrugged and he tried to smile to calm the situation. "He just needs more in-field experience."
Her lips curled back into a snarl, not reacting to the gas explosion inside the temple and stalking closer to her brother. The tip of her blade touched his chest, and that was when Naruto's easy-going smile dropped.
His sword arm fell and his pale eyes, not activated, darkened.
"You enable him too much," she stated pointedly, looking her brother in the eyes as his expression became colder. He sheathed his ninjato, keeping eye contact as the tip of her blade pressed into his chest. She released all her pent-up thoughts and emotions at that moment. "Kakashi is a liability. He has no place being anywhere near CORE. He shouldn't even be in ROOT!" She spoke through grit teeth, telling Naruto in no uncertain words, "The sooner you realise that, the better."
Naruto didn't answer her, his coldly neutral face staring down at One.
He took a step forward, threatening to pierce his chest with her blade, only for the girl to take two steps back.
He marched up to her and One discarded her swords, closing her hands into hard fists and keeping them at her sides. She looked ready to fight him, hand-to-hand if it came down to it.
Naruto looked down at her with a controlled look and she defiantly looked back up at him.
The crackle of the burning temple and the sporadic bursts of explosions in the background were the only sounds that could be heard.
"I hate him," she breathed under her breath, standing up to her brother. Her stony posture stood strong to Naruto's looming presence, saying in a clear and calmer voice, "He's holding you back, and I hate him."
Naruto nodded once, never breaking his composure, and turned around.
That was when One crumbled, calling out to him in a pleading voice, "Brother—"
He held up his hand, walking away.
Their relationship was never the same again.
Within a week, Nine-Nine found a way to strong-arm Kakashi out of ROOT, to keep him away from One's animosity.
All the while, Ninety-Nine kept away from One.
Flashback end
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
Naruto ran so fast he could scarcely be seen.
He caught up to and passed the two shadow clones carrying Obito, without giving them so much as an acknowledging look, tearing through the canyon as a faint blur with his byakugan focused ahead.
He reached a section of the canyon littered with Kiri and Iwa ninja corpses, most having entire torsos blow off—head, arms, middle, and all—, with their blood spattered messily on every surface.
He raced toward the sound of heavy thuds and rushing wind.
Naruto had to skate a few yards on the slippery, bloody floor, before slipping onto the walls and running, flipping around an eight-foot-tall, Iwa ninja with his whole stomach crushed into nothing. He wobbled with uncertain feet and lurched instinctively at Naruto when the boy rounded the corner, though he slumped forward into a dead comrade and died when Naruto stomped on his head, jumping off and skidding to a stop.
They were dangerously close to the Kannabi bridge.
Naruto wasn't worried about being caught or noticed by Iwa forces anymore.
The boy clutched his chest, gasping for air and blinking to get the wooziness out of his vision.
That was when he saw One.
She was in her stealthy black shinobi clothes. The black gloves on her hands and bandages wrapped around her sandalled feet only allowed her face to be seen, having sickly purple suction marks dotting her face and under her chin. Her formerly purple eyes were pupilless black and her dark orange hair was soaking wet, longer and shaggier, not as kept as Naruto remembered.
She resembled a black hole, shrouded in angry purple chakra that sucked light and sound inwards; Naruto had to fasten himself to the ground to keep from being lifted toward an unknown demise.
In a nanosecond, Naruto's thoughts were a blizzard in his head as his byakugan studied his sister.
She was using sage mode, that much Naruto's eyes confirmed. The control and balance of her natural chakra and the nature chakra were all over the place.
He also saw that aside from the suction marks materialising on he face, her skin was becoming motley and slimy, resembling the texture of a squid.
Ten had informed Naruto that One was learning sage mode through her new summoning contract, and since One was the one that created the summoning realm for the Kraken, wrote the summoning contract, and tamed a good portion of the Kraken into obeying her, One was almost certainly not sure what she was doing, aside from the pitifully lacking knowledge about sage mode in the ROOT archives.
Naruto was willing to bet that One had lost control the moment she activated her unfinished sage mode.
Kakashi and eight surviving wolves were perched behind a slanting rock; the wolves were digging their claws into the rocky ground and Kakashi fought the pull with all his might, holding onto the fur of one of the wolves.
By himself, Naruto didn't have the raw power to face One while she was using Kraken senjutsu; he had to think outside the box.
One pointed her right hand in their direction, fingers curled into a gun—
Naruto didn't want to find out what a sage-mode-powered pressure bullet would do.
His eyes lit up as an idea came to him.
He removed a scroll from a seal on his wrist, and it rolled open. From it, Naruto unsealed a feral surprise in a plume of white smoke and shrill shrieking. A flurry of sharp wind lashed at the hand holding the scroll, turning the scroll into ribbons and savagely slashing Naruto's right hand.
Samehada, as large as a behemoth and manically fraying its purple scales, cried with a deafening shriek as it was removed from the scroll by the person that incinerated its holder, but before it could turn on Naruto and shred the boy to pieces, it was violently pulled into the inhaling wind vortex.
One's attention was broken from aiming the pressure bullet at her target in favour of whipping around in blatant surprise at the sudden appearance of the sentient sword.
She blasted several pressure bullets at the sword, with the bullets crushing down large patches of Samehada's scales though they ate the chakra in each shot, using it to heal itself, until it slammed into One and collapsed on the girl, writhing and shredding with gluttonous glee. One and Samehada collided against a hard wall, with the girl being entirely covered by the massive sword.
The pulling force stopped abruptly and Naruto dashed out from his position, getting to Kakashi as the boy collapsed onto his face and all of his strength left his body all at once.
Naruto didn't often witness his wolves looking as relieved as they were the moment they saw him, but five of them piled on him and the other three fell in a dead faint. Their flak jackets were in several states of disrepair, hardly handing onto their bodies.
Naruto chuckled soundlessly and futilely pushed away their snouts, inhaling gulps of air between their fervours licking. He patted their heads and ruffled under their chins as best as he could, trying to get them to calm down as they whimpered. They licked his bloodied, mangled right hand, whining when Naruto snatched it away in pain.
He was finally able to get enough space to whistle, shakily and still trying to catch his breath.
The wolves that had fallen unconscious groggily twitched but didn't get up to their feet, while those that had dogpiled the boy took a few steps back and sat on their haunches. Their tails wagged and their tongues hung from their jaws as they panted. Even sitting, they were just as tall as the boy.
Samehada's wailing punctuated the background, feasting on One's nature chakra and natural chakra.
There was also a constant noise that sounded like rushing wind as if the heavens were taking a continuous and unending deep breath. It was a looping cycle of Samehada being unable to wriggle off One but content with staying because of the well of chakra it was absorbing, and also One being too inexperienced with her sage mode and having unstable chakra to properly heave Samehada off her.
Naruto took out another scroll from a different seal on his near-shredded right hand, beckoning one of his wolves to him and neatly placing it inside one of the large animal's flak jackets.
Next, Naruto helped Kakashi onto a wolf's back, summoning a shadow clone to ride beside the unconscious boy.
The shadow clones with Obito caught up in that moment. Immediately, they draped Obito on the back of another wolf and a clone sat with Obito.
Naruto signed his next commands so that they were all on the same page, "Catch up to the wolves with Rin and finish the mission. We'll figure out a way to get Minato's kids back to Konoha later."
The clone riding with Kakashi looked at the wolf with the scroll inside their flak jacket, flicking his byakugan stare back at the original and signing, "Isn't that bomb overkill?"
The original scoffed. "This whole mission is overkill. Might as well end the day with something entertaining. Flashy."
The three clones lilted, begrudgingly agreeing that the mission had been extremely more troublesome than advertised.
Minato was going to owe Naruto triple the original agreement for all of this stress.
"Get going." Naruto waved them off. He stopped when he heard one of his clones snap their fingers at him, calling his attention.
"What about you?" the clone signed.
Naruto suddenly looked tired, his shoulders hanging and his eyes heavy with weariness. He shook his head, moving his hands, "I can't just leave her." He gestured to Samehada, writhing as it was attached to that rocky wall by One's suctioning ability, "Not like this."
As much as she hurt him all that time ago, and as much as he hurt her and their family by running away, she was still his sister.
He couldn't just leave her.
The clones winced. The third clone crouched down by one of the three insensible wolves, running a hand through their thick brown fur. He looked over his shoulder at the original Naruto, nonverbally asking, "And them?"
"I'll carry them back to Kumo myself if I have to," Naruto swore, not wanting to lose any more wolves to One's carnage. He pointed ahead, in the direction of the Kannabi bridge. "Go."
Samehada's gleeful cries faltered and the clones left to complete the mission, just as the sentient sword began to make a panicked chattering sound.
Little by little, Samehada turned to stone.
Naruto rolled his wrists and readied for another fight.
Like an uneven boulder, Samehada toppled off the rock wall and One, smashing onto the ground to the side.
The girl on the other side, although cloaked in purple chakra, was covered head to toe in cuts and tears, her wounds weeping blood. Her crazed, pupilless eyes saw her brother, who clenched his hands and raised them; he swayed a little, physically overexerted and mentally taxed past his limits but too stubborn to bring his fists down.
She clicked her tongue. "Tch."
Naruto sheepishly smiled, shrugging. "Sup."
Her concentration wavered, caused from also overexerting herself and trying to heal her wounds, and her sage mode flickered, eventually deactivating. She inhaled and exhaled raggedly, cursing and shaking her head as her normal features returned; her dark orange hair, although messy and tangled, was no longer so drenched with water and her purple eyes turned with queasiness. She clutched her head and swore under her breath, clenching her eyes shut and forcing herself to concentrate in search of nature chakra.
His byakugan saw that the Uzumaki was completely depleted.
Naruto whistled for her attention and her eyes blinked open.
His hands signed, "Do you really need that power to fight me?"
"You won't listen to reason," she answered hotly, breathless and visibly tired. She could barely stand, swearing at her brother, "You'll have to listen to force." Her purple eyes steamed with festering rage. "When Kakashi's dead, you'll see my point."
"That chakra is hurting you, sister." He shook his head. It was already remarkable that a twelve-year-old girl had gone that far in her Senjutsu training, but the nature of her summoning contract needed a more patient, delicate approach. Using it in its unstable form was doing more harm than good to her body, so he signed to her, "You need more time to train."
"I'm fine," she growled.
"I'm tired, sister," Naruto admitted. He didn't look that much better than One, energy and chakra-wise, and she could see that clearly. "I'm hungry, I'm tired, and I want to go home—"
"Then come back home," she cried, her posture faltering as her hands came down from her head and clutched into fists, holding them to fight. "Please, brother. We need you."
"I can't go back there."
"Why not?!" One broke down, openly crying as she battled the urge to fall over. She shook her hands, forcing them to stay as fists. She stumbled forward, blubbering almost incoherently through the tears that blurred her vision. "Tell me why you can't come home. I promise I'll listen."
On her third step, One's eyes rolled to the back of her head and she fell onto the hard ground, passed out from exhaustion and dizzily oblivious to the world.
Naruto finally allowed himself to sag with relief, releasing a heavy exhale from his mouth. He didn't see any threats for several miles, so he deactivated his byakugan.
He stalked to his sister and a slight frown marred his expression.
He shook his head, answering her question in his mind, I can't go back until I'm ready to end Danzo.
Authors note
That's that for this chapter.
Kind of a side note/recap: I can confirm that Kisame was indeed killed by Naruto's bomb-barrier combo in Chapter 7. Ao is also dead; killed by Naruto using a Silent Killing Technique. Kushimaru (the Needle sword holder) is also dead; incapacitated by Kakashi's Chidori, and killed by Naruto. Besides Ao, Kisame and Kushimaru's deaths are offscreen and implied.
With the gap between this story's updates, I get how that might seem like it came out from nowhere.
That should be it.
Let me know what you think of this chapter and the story so far.
Stay safe, and I'll see you when I see you.
Foy.