Chapter 93: Naruto : Chapter 93
Some days passed and the ship encountered a massive iceberg.
"We're close to Snow Country now!" Gai announced. "Let's fan our flames of youth to protect our charges to the best of our abilities!"
"Yes, Gai sensei!" Lee shouted eagerly.
The director of the filming crew then decided that the iceberg was the perfect location for another scene in the film, so they went there to get it done. Then Neji called out a warning.
"I detect three persons coming closer fast," he told the team. "Two male and one female. One male uses a board on which he glides over the snow."
Then the group appeared and their leader greeted Yukie as Princess Koyuki. None of the Konoha ninjas was really surprised, as the Hokage had already suspected something like that. The snow ninjas started to attack and the Konoha group managed to dodge and keep Yukie and the film crew safe. Gai gave orders.
"Lee and Haku, take the guy with the snow board. Naruto and Tenten, take out the woman, I'll deal with the leader. Neji, you are in charge of protecting Princess Koyuki and the film crew," Gai ordered.
"Understood," the younger ones in the group chorused and took their positions.
Each of them raced towards their opponent while Neji was ready to shield against any kind of attack. Meanwhile he arranged for the retreat of the film crew.
Koyuki was a shaking mess on the ground, so he picked her up bridal style and then put her onto one of the carts that the film crew used. He deflected a few kunais from hitting anybody while keeping an eye on the whole battle.
Haku and Lee were pushing the guy on the snowboard hard. His armour worked fairly well against Haku's direct ninjutsu, but he used them mostly, after finding out that any chakra based attack really didn't cause any worthwhile damage, to herd his opponent towards Lee, who was a green blur on the snow.
Lee then took care of smacking him around with his taijutsu and easily got him off his snowboard, which lost him the manoeuvrability advantage he had had before.
Then Haku landed a perfect hit with his senbons on a spot on the neck that put their opponent into a fake death state. Soon they had the opponent in a prisoner scroll and were back on the way to the ship.
It was clear to Neji why Haku was known as a really good medic. And hitting that precise spot on a moving target from a distance proved serious skill with senbons. Not even Tenten could have done that any better.
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"I'm going to take the fight up in the air against her," Naruto told Tenten when the woman activated some flight extrusions of her armour, "I'd like you to put more pressure on her from the ground as best as you can."
"I could set up a trap, but she would have to come down for that. And here is nothing suited for that," Tenten complained.
"Just preventing her from leaving a certain area will help a lot. And if you manage to hit her armour in that round field, I would guess it would malfunction. I'll see to it that you get some good opportunities to fire at her," Naruto informed Tenten.
"Alright, let's do it!" She agreed and got her arsenal ready.
Naruto took off his warm coat and activated the flight seals on his normal trench coat. He soon was upon his opponent that hadn't expected that there was somebody in the Konoha group that could fly and match her in aerial combat.
And by now Naruto could instinctively control his movements in the air. His control over his wind element was that advanced.
He saw that he had surprised his opponent with his ability and used it to fire a wind jutsu that created a tornado around her. It wouldn't harm her body, but she wouldn't be able to fly around like she wanted to.
He had read Kakashi's report on the armour of the snow ninjas and knew that he had to attack indirectly, causing physical damage.
So while the wind made of chakra didn't do much, when he added a pack of senbons into it, the situation was completely different. He could hear pained yelps from inside the tornado.
Fast senbons were simply devilishly tricky to dodge or deflect. He controlled the tornado enough to bring his opponent lower in the air and then he dropped the jutsu when he saw Tenten in position to strike.
Tenten reacted immediately. She threw a barrage of kunai, aiming at the round piece of the armour, where Naruto suspected the power source.
The second kunai was a bull's eye, the first one had been deflected. The third and fourth ones also hit, but not dead centre, as the woman had started falling from the sky when her power supply to her wings was cut off.
Tenten secured the woman quickly, tying her up in ninja wire for later interrogation, not to mention that the research department in Konoha would love to have a look at the armour. Naruto took out a prisoner scroll and soon the two went back to the ship, backing up Neji, who simply nodded to them for a good fight.
...
Gai meanwhile was having a harder time. His opponent was very skilled with Ice release and was keeping him at a distance. While he didn't manage to get a true hit onto Gai, he was simply too fast for that, Gai also couldn't get into range to use one of his jutsus.
They exchanged some attacks and counters, but the man, whose name was Nadare, retreated when he noticed that his comrades had fallen and were captured.
Against superior numbers he wouldn't do too well and he knew it. Gai frowned at him leaving, but with having to get around another ice jutsu to get to him, he didn't really manage to stop him.
Gai returned to the ship.
"Good work, everybody. I'm proud of you all! You truly showed them that your flames of youth were far superior to their weak will," Gai declared, giving them a thumbs up with sparkling teeth showing in his bright smile.
The film director was also ecstatic about having got so much perfect action material from this incident. Yukie was taken inside to rest and then the ninjas sat down with Sandayu. They needed the full story now, as this mission had got a whole lot more difficult than expected.
...
Naruto looked at Sandayu with disdain. This plan he had worked out was not thought through. Who thought that dragging a princess back to her home country, when she clearly suffered a trauma, would be enough to make her take over the leadership over some weak rebellion? Even Wave Country had had better starting conditions.
Tazuna had been a leader. A drunk and insulting leader, but he had stood up for his people and had done something. He had found a way to achieve the goal of giving his people a future.
The main problem had been that the opponent was too powerful for him alone, even if the people of Wave Country would have all stood up against Gato.
The numbers of thugs that Gato employed required ninja intervention. It required the silent assassination that he and Kakashi sensei had performed, no matter how hard that had been. But in the end Tazuna had managed to motivate his people to work for their freedom after the danger was gone. The people were just too scared to do anything that could get them killed.
Here in Snow Country there was no leader that was taking the lead over those that were perhaps willing to fight. They all expected their princess to lead them, when it was clear that she wanted to be anywhere but here. It was a strategy that was doomed to fail from the beginning.
He and Haku had interrogated their captives and had found out that Doto had been aware of the identity of Yukie for a while and had let Sandayu play into his hands by bringing her back to Snow Country.
It meant it would be much harder from here on, as Doto wanted the hexagonal crystal that Koyuki wore around her neck. It was supposedly the key to the treasure of the Kazahana family.
And he wanted that treasure. The interrogation also gave them a lot of information about the technology of the Snow Country, technology that was far advanced compared to anything that Konoha had.
It was clear that they would have to take the chance to take some of it for Konoha and if possible steal some blueprints to recreate the armour.
It would increase the power of their village a lot. The main problem was that they would have to get into Doto's fortress and that was damn difficult. The man was a security nut and it would take time to sneak inside.
Especially as there were few animals that Naruto could imitate to get in like he had done with Gato's hideout. Well, perhaps this could be a proper test for his mirage jutsu.
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