章 2646: 36
To Naruto's surprise, the plan was apparently to have Darui spar with Hinata first, and then when she did well enough then the Raikage would spar with Naruto. Well, it had been put as if, but it didn't seem likely that she wouldn't at least put on a good showing. When she was done it would be a sign that Naruto was likely to be able to put up a suitable challenge for the Raikage. That led to the rest of them moving into the observation area.
"You're quieter than I was led to believe," Naruto commented to B after a quick round of more official introductions. "Aren't you hoping to be a famous rapper or something?"
"I can't focus on rhymes," B replied, flinching as his short tentacle-like tail moved and hit the back of his seat. "Too many random pains and changes."
"Hospitalizing him has tended to quiet him down for a bit," the Raikage admitted. "Though usually only for a day or two at most."
"If we got a full day we usually considered ourselves lucky," C added. "But the problems aren't usually this...significant either."
The spar starting properly distracted them from B, who seemed happy about that. Darui lashed out with a 'lightning acting like water' technique, which was supposedly called storm release for some reason. Hinata's response was to coat herself with wind and light up her ears and tail, surrounding herself with a very strong fire.
"I miss being fireproof," Yugito said with a sigh.
"Fire isn't going to help her as much as she thinks," C said, seemingly ignoring Yugito. "Not with water chakra in the mix."
"Her fire is stronger than you'd think," Naruto retorted. "And it might not be obvious that she started with wind to block lightning, then lit it on fire."
"Oh...yes, now that you mention it I can feel the wind chakra."
Hinata just stood there while Darui's attack harmlessly struck the fire around her. Frowning, he narrowed his eyes and flipped through several hand seals. Black lightning chakra flowed out of his entire body, before taking the form of a large cat and darting forward at Hinata. She formed a wall of wind in front of her and the black cat slammed into it. A moment later it tried to dart around the wall, but she extended it around her. In the process her still-lit tail moved out and touched the wall, setting it ablaze and hiding her from view.
It didn't take long before the cat dispersed, obviously not getting through the wall, and Darui scowled. Hinata dropped the wall and the fire around her, though she left her ears and tail burning. He then pulled his sword out, the blade unfolding into position before lightning chakra flowed into it. In response, she produced Nuibari. She then flowed...earth and wind chakra into her sword, it felt like?
"I'd forgotten that she has that sword," the Raikage said, leaning forward. "I wonder how it will hold up against a proper blade?"
"As if a blade that you can fold in half is a proper blade at all," Anko-sensei quipped.
"...yes, it is a tad silly, but still better than an oversized needle."
Both combatants darted forward, and Hinata obviously aimed to keep Darui from getting within striking range for his own sword by attacking him directly with her longer sword. Her thrust with Nuibari was trivially deflected by his sword, only for her to grin and spin on the spot. He barely held onto his sword as her spin pulled it along with Nuibari, the two swords stuck together as if they'd been glued to one another.
Naruto hadn't been practicing that kind of move, but was now thinking that he should at some point. Especially as his earth chakra was stronger than hers and would likely make that trick more effective as a result.
After half a dozen rotations Darui figured out a chakra flow that caused the two blades to separate and went flying. Hinata recovered more quickly and darted after him while he was still airborne, striking out with Nuibari again when she caught up to him. He attempted to block with his sword, only for the legendary sword to pierce right through the blade. It also pierced into his body, her chakra flowing down the blade to strike and close...the fifth gate, it looked like.
He'd not seen her do that before, and thought that it took far more effort to shut down the gates. Then again, she'd basically stabbed the gate itself with Nuibari, so perhaps that made it easier? Whatever the case, having a gate closed like that had immediately created problems with Darui's chakra network, especially in his lower body. The piercing injury from Nuibari would also be a problem and would require a medic-nin to take a look after the spar was over.
...or not, because Hinata flowed medical chakra down Nuibari as she pulled it out, healing the puncture wound but leaving the gate closed.
"She's gotten a lot more practice with Nuibari than I thought she had," Naruto mused.
"...because she pierced his sword?" Yugito asked as Darui landed and went into a somewhat-uncontrolled roll.
"She did far more than that," C said. "He landed wrong because his chakra stopped flowing properly in his lower body."
"The strike closed one of his gates," Naruto clarified as Hinata body-flickered behind Darui to strike at chakra points on his back. "And then she healed the puncture wound when withdrawing the sword."
"Turning a sword many kenjutsu experts feel is a joke into a far deadlier weapon than you might expect," the Raikage said, obviously paying more serious attention after the revelation. "Without needing to use it to run someone through and tie them up with wire."
"Now that I know she's been practicing, if only because it was the first thing we found for documented ways the sword has been used."
"Ruined three trenchcoats of mine when I was stupid enough to volunteer to be a practice target," Anko-sensei added. "Good on her for wanting to not run allies through, but it's hard on clothing."
Darui failed to get up from the barrage of closed chakra points and signaled surrender. Hinata backed off and put Nuibari away and C jumped down to check on Darui.
"I should've tried harder to stay at range," Darui grumbled. "Definitely didn't expect that trick that stuck our swords together without it being a surface-sticking variant."
"Suna refers to it as 'magnet release'," Hinata offered.
"That fits what it did, and I'm sorry for underestimating you and holding back on some of my stronger techniques." It didn't take long for Darui to be back on his feet, though he scowled at the hole in his sword before folding it up and returning it to his back. He also remained somewhat unsteady when walking, but was repeatedly assured that the closed gate would return to normal over the next few hours.
Inoichi shook his head as he worked alongside a couple of clones to sort the information that Team Yurei had already turned in. "I still can't believe that a couple of chunin managed to grab so much information from Kumo."
"The best part is that they were invited in," Ibiki commented, looking through his own stacks of information. "But they're damned good at what they do too, and I'm willing to bet that nobody in that village even suspects that they've been infiltrated to this degree."
"Why would they? Everyone knows that they're a heavy assault team waiting for an excuse to be deployed for their 'real' skills."
Ibiki snorted as he picked up the next folder. "Sometimes looking underneath the underneath isn't just a fun way to tell genin to pay more attention to motives. The problem Kumo has is that they provided the initial motive for the team to be there, and they've got cover skills that provide our side of the motive equation." He blinked as he scanned the paperwork in the folder. "Huh. I don't think we even noticed this attempt to get a spy into Konoha."
"...do we need to round them up?"
"I doubt their decayed corpse will tell us anything useful. They're one of the four genin that died in the camping training exercise...five years back, I think it was?"
"Oh, that was six years ago now. The one that we thought was one of the four trying to off the other three to improve their own graduation chances, right?"
"Yeah."
"...come to think of it, didn't we figure out that two of the four were inserts from Iwa and one of the smaller villages when their stuff was gone through afterwards?"
"I believe we did, yes. Kumo's communication methods are at least harder to spot from that kind of check."
"There's a copy of their infiltration manual in this pile," one of Inoichi's clones commented, holding up the lightly-bound stack of papers in question.
It was really a pity that Kumo was theoretically shifting to 'ally'...and that they were unlikely to be lucky enough for Team Yurei to be invited into Iwagakure.
"I hope you've trained up your speed," the Raikage said as they prepared to start their spar. Naruto had already put his weights and resistance belt away entirely, and the Raikage had discarded his hat and haori. But not the golden vambraces he had on his arms, which likely helped him get more powerful hits with some of his known moves. "Because you're going to need it if you want to live up to your father's reputation."
"Don't have his signature technique," Naruto admitted, leaving out the 'yet' since he was working on it. "But I have other tricks that speed me up."
"Pity he couldn't pass his creation down to you, but don't think that I'll go easy on you just because of that."
The Raikage probably shouldn't be blamed for not knowing that the original technique had been Tobirama's, and Naruto wasn't about to reveal that his father had found the original scrolls. Because that would reveal that original scrolls existed.
It was likely obvious that Naruto wasn't going to respond to the latest quip, so the Raikage took that as a sign to get started. Pulling on his chakra, he filled and coated himself in lightning chakra. Naruto countered by pulling on the combination of wind and lightning that enhanced speed, while also creating a couple dozen sand paperwork clones. This proved to be a very good thing as the Raikage immediately lunged forward, arms spread out. Upon reaching Naruto, one of his arms swung forward, and only by switching to sand and immediately taking over a clone did he avoid taking a significant hit...though the Raikage seemed to be shocked that the sand clone left behind actually resisted his arm's movement thanks to the wind and lightning combination negating some of the benefits of his own lightning chakra.
"Now that's what I'm talking about," the Raikage said with a grin as he looked around at the clones as the one he'd just hit finished falling apart.
Naruto's response was to quickly open up the first two gates, drastically increasing the amount of chakra he could push into his own body. This didn't help his existing clones, and made it obvious where the real him was currently.
It also made him just fast enough to barely duck under the next charge from the Raikage, but not fast enough to counter-attack. Or attack at all, really, he'd only been able to get out of the way due to seeing the attack coming. The Raikage was obviously still faster, bouncing off of a boulder and attempting to drop onto Naruto's back. Only thanks to the byakugan was he able to dive off to the side in time to dodge, the elbow strike cratering the ground where he'd just been.
Obviously two gates weren't going to be enough, since the Raikage had worked to fight against a manifested Gyuki, so Naruto pushed open the third. He'd not yet managed to get the fourth to open properly before now, but thought he might need it.
While Naruto was popping open the third gate, the Raikage had taken out several clones that had attempted pot-shots with various techniques. Scowling a little, Naruto created fifty more clones, then swapped with one and had it attempt to engage. The third gate being open sped up him and his new clones, and the Raikage just grinned and seemed to stop holding back. Or at least holding back as much, moving faster than he had been.
The combination of the Raikage's fighting style, his massive speed, and the aura of lightning chakra around him made most of Naruto's alternate tactics difficult to use. They were moving too fast for basically everything ranged in his arsenal, and the hiding in mist technique wouldn't have time to form. Leftover lightning chakra was hindering his sand control when clones were dispersed, and it didn't seem like it would be easy to control the battlefield in other ways because the high-speed movement was creating other headaches.
Unfortunately, the only options left to Naruto without revealing things he didn't want to reveal were clone spam and praying he came up with something better. On the upside, the three-gate clones coupled with some wind chakra emulating Knight Armor protections were managing to tank many of the man's attacks now. Attacks weren't seeming to affect the man in return though, which was a problem. Since the ice mirrors trick helped boost speed in other ways, Naruto had a few clones start preparing a ring of water around the area they were fighting in.
Upon seeing that, the Raikage picked up a couple of boulders and threw them. Their impacts created 'drains' for the water to flow away from the battlefield through, but it was trivial for the clones to just use earth manipulation to stop it. But instead of doing things on the surface a couple dropped into the ground to make an underground hollow ring full of water instead while the rest visibly changed tactics as a hopeful distraction.
Sasuke had expected both fights to be interesting, but had been let down by Hinata-sensei's. She'd obviously been underestimated far too much by Darui, allowing her to get an easy win.
That was not the case with Naruto-sensei. The Raikage could obviously have won from the start had he gone all out to begin with and was toying with Naruto-sensei...though seemingly out of a desire to see just how strong Naruto-sensei actually was. Drawing his potential out or something like that.
The problem was that even with the sharingan active the two of them could only be seen properly when they paused between attacks. Sure, Itachi had said that there were people fast enough to be hard to observe with the sharingan, but seeing it was another thing entirely. Or perhaps not seeing it, but only the aftershocks of their clashes. The Raikage hit hard and fast, and Naruto-sensei was able to take hits but not much else so far.
"I didn't think that the kid would push A this hard," C said. "...which means I think I lost the betting pool."
"It's definitely impressive," Yugito said. "Didn't think the kid had that much chakra to pull on either, and whatever he's doing to increase his speed is obviously more effective per unit of chakra than A's lightning release."
"The kid doesn't have to overcome wind resistance," B said. "Which means wind is likely involved, and probably explains why he can tank lightning chakra so well. Wind insulates against lightning."
"Definitely wind in some fashion," C agreed. "But also something that isn't quite wind as well. It almost feels like an alternate way of using lightning to enhance him?"
"With all the chakra tricks he and his partner here demonstrated," Yugito said. "My bet is mixing wind and lightning. Lightning to enhance speed and reaction times, plus wind to cut through the air with no resistance and negate A's lightning. The sand is also interesting in that it falls apart when hit by enough lightning, but insulates against it perfectly in the process."
"Magnet release is earth and wind, made famous in Suna and used to Darui's detriment today. Developed from working with the one-tail, so the lightning is probably overcoming the earth element and then being overwhelmed by the remaining wind. The kid's earth and wind are also stronger than you might expect, like the girl's fire and wind are stronger than you'd expect."
Sasuke spared a glance at Hinata-sensei to see her blinking a couple of times. "My wind is stronger than it should be?"
"Stronger than I'd expect it to be. Yugito used to have the same, but she could only really manage it when mixing it with her fire. You don't seem to have that limitation, and Darui never really sparred against Yugito to experience her lightning-resistant fire."
"I know that Naruto and I noticed that he had stronger earth and I had stronger fire, but maybe we missed the wind because we were comparing against each other and both of us saw an increase?"
"Perhaps, but it means you've both got an advantage over our village's preferred element. Something that we previously mostly had to worry about from Suna."
"As if every major village doesn't have at least one specialist of each element," Mitarashi commented. "If only to help counter every other village's specialties when needed."
Yugito nodded. "Yeah, that's the single worst-kept secret of the entire system, and the minor villages are constantly looking to bolster their collection of elemental specialties. Still doesn't change that the village most likely to have a high-level counter for lightning chakra was Suna before now."
"...yeah, you've got a point there. They were probably only willing to ally with us for so long because we were more likely to be able to counter them, given how easily they were duped into trying to invade us."
"And now you have two powerhouses that cover all your bases and then some, plus likely the ability to use variants of the medic-chakra seal to flip anyone to any element you want."
Mitarashi didn't argue that point, and Sasuke was considering it and the other dynamics between villages when all of a sudden things changed in the fight.
Naruto had run into the problem that the Raikage didn't seem to be wearing down. Zero actual injuries on him, though thanks to sand clones there hadn't been any actual injuries in the other direction either. At the same time, a combination of earth manipulation while preparing for the surprise ice mirror attempt and the sheer number of destroyed sand paperwork clones meant that they were now fighting on a layer of sand...and flowing wind chakra over the surface both kept it in place and prevented ambient lightning chakra from the Raikage from canceling out Naruto's control.
Most of that control had been put towards grinding the rock below them into more sand, building a large sand pit, plus reinforcing the top layer of sand. The latter was both to protect it against the Raikage's more direct hits and to prevent it from acting like the far deeper sand it now was and tipping him off to the change. Maintaining all of that, even with three gates open, was taking more chakra than expected though.
Not that he was feeling like he was even remotely running low on chakra himself, but the Raikage's lightning chakra wasn't exactly weak.
"I think we've gotten a bit repetitive," the Raikage commented after taking out another set of clones. "Admittedly, we're also seemingly perfectly matched in an inability to cause each other any actual harm at this level."
"There aren't a whole lot of techniques that work well at this level of physical combat," Naruto retorted, but he was also somewhat ready for his next plan and was quickly making a hole under the top layer of sand by shifting the sand off to the sides under it.
"True. But you're an Uzumaki, are you not?"
"I am." A last-minute addition of water-turned-ice at the bottom of the hole, curved to form a bowl shape, followed.
"Then where's..."
Naruto chose that moment, as the Raikage was moving over the center of their battlefield, to drop the sand out from under his opponent. Sand slammed up and in from the sides at the same time, and while the Raikage's chakra was causing control problems for the closest sand it didn't prevent the further-out sand from adding to the pressure. At the same time, the water in the channel around the outer edge of the battlefield burst from the ground and formed ice mirrors, and Naruto quickly pulled out kunai while stepping into one of them. Several clones did the same thing.
As expected, the Raikage was only slightly inconvenienced by the sand trap itself, powering his way out of it without too much trouble, only to see the dome of ice mirrors surrounding him. Naruto and his clones started bouncing between the mirrors, launching real and ice-chakra kunai at the Raikage as they did so and doing their best to ensure that wind chakra coated everything to help against the lightning chakra the Raikage was still coated with.
Sand swirling around the outside of the ice bowl that had been created helped to keep the Raikage in the 'kill zone', and the man seemed delighted at this turn of events as he worked to both not be repeatedly impaled by projectiles and to get out of the trap. His lightning wasn't all that effective against the ice, nor could he get a good grip physically or with his chakra. Leaping up with any accuracy was made difficult by the bowl's shape and slickness, and he couldn't get purchase on the swirling sand.
"Never give an Uzumaki time to plan," the Raikage finally said with a grin, after noticing that a single kunai had managed to lightly cut his skin on one arm. And while pushing his chakra further, speeding up even more and making the wind chakra even less effective at letting the kunai through. "Instant pit trap is a pretty good trick too."
Despite the ice, the man was now dodging most of the kunai outright, at least until he leapt up and attempted to punch his way through one of the upper mirrors. He seemed surprised when that didn't work, the mirror not even appearing to flinch at the impact before he dropped back down into the hole. Scowling, he tried again, pushing a lot more chakra into the attempt and ramming the mirror with his entire upper arm instead of just his fist. The added contact area helped push more chakra into disrupting the mirror, allowing him to break through, though he barely managed to push off of another mirror to keep himself from falling right back down into the trap again.
It did get him out though, and he landed off to the side before obviously examining things from the outside with approval.
"Definitely living up to the Uzumaki name there," the Raikage said as Naruto and a couple of clones stepped out of the mirrors at the same time. "But nowhere near enough to best me."
Chakra chains or wood with chakra suppression would likely work to take him down, but Naruto wasn't willing to reveal those. Instead he just pulled harder on his chakra as the Raikage darted in again...and got a lot more than he was expecting as the fourth gate popped open. This allowed him to just barely keep up with the Raikage's own increased speed.
Hinata frowned as she hadn't gotten a good look at Naruto's chakra network before he got moving again, her own perception with her byakugan nowhere near fast enough to follow the fight. Her best guess was that Naruto had managed to open the fourth gate, but there had been something weird about it.
"Did they just get faster?" Kiba asked.
"Yes," Sasuke answered. "As if they weren't hard enough to follow."
"Been a while since someone other than me pushed bro this hard," B said. "But it still isn't enough."
"Neither of them is going to go all-out," Darui pointed out. "Both know it's a friendly spar and neither is going to give away all their secrets."
"True. Doesn't make it less impressive that the kid has pushed this far though."
"Yeah, sorry."
"I don't know how I'd have handled that pit trap trick," C commented. "Admittedly, I also wouldn't have lasted long enough for it to be necessary, but setting up something similar for an ambush has the potential to be devastating."
"I'm proud of him," Anko-sensei said. "He figured out how to manage it on the fly without the lightning chakra ruining the surprise, somehow, and also kept the fight in the trap zone long enough to pull it off."
Hinata agreed, even though she'd known it was coming long before the others had, but was worried about Naruto. She thought something odd had happened to him, but couldn't place what it might be. At the same time, he was now meeting the Raikage for every third blow or so, barely dodging the others, though still with frequent swapping out with sand clones to avoid serious injury. It was hard to spot that happening, admittedly, but she could tell that it was by the feeling of the flow of his chakra.
She was fairly certain that nobody else was familiar enough with his chakra to spot it though.
The Raikage seemed determined to ensure that they weren't staying 'contained' enough for another pit trap to be set up, and was currently most visible when he stopped long enough to pick up boulders to throw around. Some of those were obviously intended to destroy the existing pit, but others were used to try to take out clones before they could flank him and to generally control the battlefield in other ways.
By comparison, Naruto was obviously out of ideas that didn't reveal things he was keeping secret. This kind of battle didn't play to his strengths at all and she was fairly certain that he couldn't win it under his current limitations. The two were also now putting out enough chakra to likely be noticed from a very significant distance.
Despite feeling like he was at least fighting at the Raikage's level, Naruto wasn't doing very well when it came to making any progress in getting the upper hand again. Not that he felt like he'd had the upper hand even when he'd sprung his trap.
This was not his preferred method of combat. He much preferred setting things up for a quick ambush over this kind of long and drawn-out slugfest, and the longer the fight went on the more he wanted to go back to something that simple.
Still, Naruto was making an attempt at faking the Raikage out again. A dozen sand clones were using underground movement to stay out of sight and he was making fewer visible clones to replace the ones the Raikage was destroying, as though to signal that he was getting weaker. If he could break the man's concentration then there was a chance of using wind-enhanced Gentle Fist to punch through his defenses and close chakra points. The problem was figuring out how to manage it, because no strikes with his chakra at full strength were currently getting through.
Hence the attempted ruse. With any luck the man would fall for it and let his guard down a little.
When down to only himself and two clones on the surface, the Raikage seemed to decide that it was time to finish things...and let out the first killing intent of the match in the process. It wasn't even on Anko-sensei's level and barely caused Naruto to twitch. He acted like it caused him, and his two clones, to freeze up though...and retaliated with his own killing intent when the Raikage committed to 'taking advantage'.
It was a gamble, given what happened when Orochimaru had been exposed similarly, but Naruto had multiple escape routes ready from his clones in the immediate area through to a couple of 'can handle him being knocked out' clones ready to pull him out with summoning. Plus Hinata and Anko-sensei watching, of course.
A blinked as he snapped out of whatever had just happened, fleeting flashes of paperwork tsunamis in his memory. Looking around, he was in one of the outdoor sparring areas...and it was very heavily modified from the state it had been in recently. Right, he had been sparring against...the Uzumaki boy? But B was the one on the ground looking injured. What had happened?
And why did he appear to be holding a torn-off arm?
"Are you back to your senses?" Yugito asked, drawing A's attention to her...and the fact that she was also injured.
"...I have no clue what happened," A answered.
"You were sparring with Uzumaki and then all of a sudden you went berserk. Finally managed to hit the real him, and the first thing you did was tear his arm off and try to beat him to death with it. His team got him out while B, C, and I intervened to try to calm you down."
That...would explain the arm, at least, but a quick look around didn't reveal C. "What happened to C, then?"
"Punted off the mountain," B answered. "To the South somewhere."
"Oh."
"I think Darui already sent someone after him."
A nodded, because that was good, then his eyes went wide as some of this started to click properly. "Oh shit, how's Uzumaki?"
"Unconscious with his team in the observation booth," Yugito answered. "Or at least I think he's still unconscious. His chakra is still incredibly strong, so I doubt he's dead or dying."
Now that she mentioned it, the boy's chakra was up there...and...stronger than it was this morning, but weaker than near the end of the fight?
It didn't take long for the three of them to get back up there, to find that the boy was awake and scowling at where his arm should be...and a lump of sand was instead, just attached to his shoulder.
"Er," A said, looking down at the arm he was still holding before holding it out to the boy. "Sorry?"
Uzumaki accepted the arm, sighing. "I shouldn't have used my killing intent, especially on a Kage."
"...your what?"
"His killing intent," Mitarashi said. "Or, as those of us that have been exposed to it think of it, his paperwork intent."
Responding to that was put off for the moment as Uzumaki did something that caused the torn-off arm to fall apart into sand, and then a burst of what had to be medical chakra regrew the limb.
"That's one less problem," Uzumaki said. "Now I just have to figure out why the first two gates won't close."
"...won't close?" Mitarashi asked, the three genin looking confused and the Hyuga girl's eyes widening.
"The limiters dissolved!" the girl exclaimed.
"What?" Uzumaki asked.
"When you opened the fourth gate the limiters on the first two dissolved entirely."
"...that would make closing them difficult..."
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