章 886: 63
Chapter 62: A Stroke of Absurdity
The middle of the goddamn ocean, miles and miles away from Kumogakure... and Kirabi was there.
What the hell? Wasn't he in that huge valley outside of the village that he called his home? How did he even know that Naruto was in Kumo, let alone that he was taking a ship out of Kaminari no Kuni back home to Hi no Kuni? He was only there long enough to drop off Yugito and tell the Raikage about their little episode with the enemy. Talk about having an ear to the ground.
"B… why are you following me home?" In his head, Naruto was well aware of just how much hot water all of the Kumo sailors onboard were. For Kami's sake, the strongest ninja in Kumogakure managed to sneak away from his village at a time of war under their watch for a 'vacation' of sorts, "Your brother is gonna-."
Kill him? Kill everybody on the ship that let it happen? Kill Naruto for even being loosely involved with it? And after all of that time trying to get in good with the Kumo high brass too. Naruto didn't want to eat a Lariat. Not a chance, he liked his head on his shoulders and his spine lined up the way that they were already thank you very much.
"-A ain't gonna do a thing." Kirabi stated, waving off his fellow jinchuuriki's concern, "I got that fool played like a puppet on a string." He'd get his face nearly crushed in an Iron Claw for punishment, but after a few minutes of that and a few hours of getting chewed out later it would all blow over for him. No problem.
And everyone else there happened to be stationed at the coast of the country on wait for the Kiri forces in case they ever managed to reach the mainland. They'd all be way too far away from A's eventual wrath when it came down. He'd destroy his office, get it rebuilt, and that would be the worst of it.
Once again, Naruto looked around at the would-be unfortunate Kumo sailors and turned back to Kirabi, "I want to kick you over the side and make you swim home." But damn it that would probably start a fight that he didn't feel like seeing through on a ship in the middle of the ocean.
Still though, Kirabi held a ridiculously strong grip on Naruto that the younger biju container simply couldn't seem to pry off without using his sword as a lever first, "Aw come on kid you know this trip'll be a thriller, 'cause you're sharing a ship ride with the killer! Killer B that is! Yeah!"
'I'd rather share a ship ride with Yugito.' Naruto thought to himself, pushing on Kirabi's face to try and get the man's bro hug off of him, '…For multiple reasons, but he sure doesn't need to hear that part.' When he heard Kirabi say something about helping him write some new lyrics, Naruto started looking around rabidly like a trapped coyote that was one step short of trying to gnaw off its own leg to escape.
The Kumo sailors pitied him, but they had their own problems to worry about. Apparently Naruto Uzumaki was supposed to be absurdly tough, both physically and mentally. He could take a few days of dealing with that.
But Naruto would have rather taken two days of periodic Root conditioning in their boot camp to being stuck next to the rapping shinobi of Kumogakure. At least that was supposed to have made him stronger.
XxX
(Hi no Kuni Countryside)
There was simply too much land for Konoha to cover all over the place.
The enemy intelligence had constantly wondered just how thinly spread Konoha's military might happened to be due to how they seemed to currently be doing well on all fronts that the war had presented to them, but now that she had managed to get behind the border of the country that housed Konohagakure and the country that housed Amegakure she had to say that had the Continental Ninja Federation had made a tactical mistake at the outset of the war.
Instead of digging in on most fronts while trying to finish off Suna, they should have tried to wage a stiff two-front attack instead on both of the sides that Konoha had to keep covered. Had even one side been able to break through in the slightest and get squads into the defending Konoha's turf they would have been reeling to fall back to the village itself to keep it from being razed to the ground.
It wasn't the largest country of the Elemental Nations, but when their entire army was split into two with some of their forces in Suna trying to keep it safe until they had sufficiently recovered, the miles and miles of Hi no Kuni seemed arduous to try and cover.
The reason for Konoha's all out attack approach wasn't just fearlessness in the face of their apparent enemies joining together to face them. They wanted to finish off one or more of the countries to alleviate some potential pressure off of their backs so that they could commit more shinobi to a more conventional style of defense without having to worry about an emergency in case something got through the cracks.
How would they react to such a thing without the upper-echelon of their powerhouses there? No Jiraiya (one-armed as he was), no jinchuuriki defender, so who would do the heavy hitting? The Hokage? She wondered this as she observed it all and came up with a path mapped out to travel untouched with Pein.
As long as they could get past the border they could make it to the outskirts of Konoha where there would definitely be a stern mass of ninjas there to defend their home, but against Pein it would not matter.
Once he got within sight of Konoha there wouldn't be anything that could stop him. He wouldn't let the village that had been responsible for several of the greater tragedies in his life take anything else from him. It was the epitome of everything he stood against; a place that profited from the tragedies of others around the world. Compared to Konoha, Suna was wholly undeserving of his wrath, a softer target though it was.
Kona would continue trying to case as much of the countryside as she could until her predetermined time ran out and Pein summoned her back. Then they would begin to bring this war to an end by bringing it to Konoha's doorstep and taking out the cornerstone of the entire Grand Shinobi Alliance.
She would do this for him, for Pein. No, she would do it for Nagato.
XxX
(With Jiraiya and Team 8 – Ta no Kuni)
The tracking squad sent to discover the fates of the troops that had been repeatedly attacked at the rear of the battlefront line were still on the hunt for the origins of the Otogakure force that had done so. With an Inuzuka and a Hyuuga on the very same squad there wasn't much of a chance that they could fail.
That had been Jiraiya's exact thinking when he grabbed a squad from the roving division that was currently dropping its full force onto the enemy in the forests of Shimo no Kuni. They didn't need him there any longer. He was more useful in the field for a situation like this, just in case.
As they continued to travel, Akamaru let out a slight whine and a bark that Kiba readily understood and interpreted for everyone else's benefit, "Akamaru says that there's a strange smell in the air. Like ash and graveyard dirt."
What an oddly specific odor.
"It's getting stronger fast." Kiba warned in an urging voice, gritting his teeth and peering in the direction he could smell the strange scent from, "There's a hell of a lot of power behind it too. This is serious."
"How many?" Jiraiya asked, knowing that a stronger Inuzuka ninken could size up an opponent from the odor of their chakra alone, "Let's break down and set an ambush. We've got to make this quick."
"It's only one."
"One person?" Hinata turned her Byakugan on to confirm Kiba and Akamaru's assessment and gasped at what her powerful eyes picked up in the near distance of the forest. Her face looked as though she had seen a ghost, "No, that's impossible. I thought he was supposed to be dead."
"Who?"
She didn't know exactly how to say it. How could she? Just coming out and saying that she could see Sasuke Uchiha as clear as day, the same way that Sakura and Tayuya described him in their reports? Her team would think that she was a crazy person.
According to reports from the mission several months ago when a decently large squad had to try and rendezvous with a misplaced Naruto and ended up in battle against a team Sasuke had formed and Akatsuki it was said in the aftermath upon his eventual return that Naruto had ended Sasuke's life during that very same incident.
This was not a person that could easily mistake if he had killed someone or not. If he said he killed Sasuke, he knew for certain one way or another that his life had ended.
Thus when she shared the information of who she could see with everyone else, needless to say it ground the procession to a halt in the trees.
"…Are you kidding me?" Kiba of course was the first to voice his thoughts on the matter, "How is that possible? Naruto wouldn't lie. He's pretty shifty and flighty when there are things he doesn't want to talk about, but he's still our bud, and I trust him when he says that Sasuke died that day."
Naruto was a straight shooter, and he never directly lied, he merely dodged giving concrete answers. He hadn't done so about his encounter with the Uchiha brothers. He told them that Sasuke had died on the battlefield before his body had been taken away by the masked man, well that was what happened. A lie benefitted absolutely no one.
"I don't know." Hinata's melodious voice chimed out with a touch of serious concern evident in it, "All I know is what I see. I see Sasuke Uchiha. It's unmistakable. No Henge. It's truly him."
Ever the analyst, Shino held his own skeptical thoughts, but Hinata knew what she was looking at better than any of them would. And there was only one thing to do. In times of confusion, it was best to look to the squad leader for advice, "Jiraiya-sama?" There was no one else there that might know what to do better than him, "What do you propose we do? How should we attack him?"
All of this didn't jibe with Jiraiya. None of it seemed on the straight and narrow. When he had instincts they were usually right, and the last time he ignored them he wound up losing an arm for all of his stubbornness.
No, this didn't seem right at all. This stank of a kinjutsu in the worst way, and if that were the case he was the one best equipped to deal with it, both literally and figuratively, "Kiba, can you and Akamaru still smell your friend that we're tracking?"
"We still have his trail."
"Then go after it." Jiraiya said, landing to a stop on a branch. Team 8 jumped one more bound ahead before they realized that Jiraiya had stopped, "Don't get in over your heads. If you find the place don't go any farther until I catch up."
The way he was speaking, it sounded like catching up was the last thing he was thinking of.
Shino caught onto this quickly, "What are we to do if you do not catch up? How are we even to know?"
"…You'll know if I'm not going to catch up. Trust me." Jiraiya assured him grimly, before turning and shooing them all away with a nasty glare, "Get going already or I'll make you! I don't know enough about you all to work with you properly, it's better this way."
Without another word of dispute or reasoning, the three chunin and sole ninken left the temporary head of the team alone to stare off in the direction that he was informed Sasuke would be coming from, "…I haven't had to deal with an Uchiha in a long time… let alone an undead one. This'll be a first."
Trying to humor himself to lower the tension didn't keep his fingers on his one remaining arm from twitching in anticipation of the coming conflict however.
And in the next moment, the form of Sasuke Uchiha stopped on the branch directly in front of him, staring him down.
Kami, that kid was so young. He wasn't any older than Naruto was. A part of him was reluctant to strike down someone so young, but he had already been stricken down in the past and he dismissed this sentiment as irrelevant.
"Jiraiya I presume?" Sasuke asked in a voice that Jiraiya couldn't distinguish as being concerned one way or the other with what was happening. Apparently such a detached tone had been normal for him in life, "I didn't think I'd ever end up fighting another Sannin in my lifetime."
That was right. He ended up being the one that killed Orochimaru. Jiraiya supposed he owed him some semblance of thanks for that.
"Well technically…" Jiraiya said to break the ice, "You're not fighting another Sannin in your lifetime per se… you know, because you're dead?" Speaking of which, "How are you reanimated? I've seen jutsu do this before to corpses, but most ways don't let you keep your personality."
"Kuchiyose: Edo Tensei (Summoning: Impure World Reincarnation)."
Jiraiya's eyes widened in shock. That was the jutsu that Orochimaru used to bring back the Shodai Hokage and Nidaime Hokage to fight against his sensei the Sandaime during the invasion years ago. Oh, this was not good, "But you killed Orochimaru."
"I didn't kill Kabuto though. Apparently he learned it."
Damn it.
And apparently that was enough talking, because Sasuke's body sprang forward while suddenly unsheathing his sword for a quickdraw attack. Despite Sasuke's speed, Jiraiya hadn't gotten any slower from his disability and he was able to dodge the first stroke of the blade, 'Oh yeah, Orochimaru definitely trained this one.' He thought. Though the style Sasuke used kenjutsu-wise was different from his dearly departed former teammate, his movements had a noticeably wiry touch of the snake sannin to them.
Jiraiya quickly formed a hand-seal to harden his hair follicles before shooting an uncountable number of the quills Sasuke's way, "Hari Jigoku (Needle Hell)!"
The trunks of trees quickly wound up being littered with Jiraiya's sharpened hairs, but none of them managed to wound Sasuke who Kawarimied his way out of the initial line of fire before using his quickness to avoid the rest of them.
"Looks like it's my turn." Sasuke said as he formed electricity in his right hand, "Chidori Senbon (One Thousand Birds Senbon)!" Needles of chakra and lightning happened to be the response of Sasuke to Jiraiya's attack, and Jiraiya managed to dodge in his own way.
The man seemed to swan dive backwards off of his branch, but in actuality had dropped ninja wire across his branch prior to doing so, allowing him to balance out safely before reaching the ground where he landed in a flipping crouch after Sasuke had spent the payload of his attack.
Quickly forming a snake seal as he stood up straight, Jiraiya slammed his heel against the ground, forcing a trench to split forth that felled the tree that Sasuke had been attacking from, "Doton: Chikyuu o Mizo (Earth Release: Groove of Earth)!" As Jiraiya expected, the moment the tree started leaning and falling, Sasuke jumped off, taking care not to land in the channel that Jiraiya had created and wind up trapped.
In preparation for this, Jiraiya had managed to create two Kage Bunshin at his sides that had taken that entire time to gather oil in their mouths, just waiting for the cue to attack. And they wound up receiving it when Sasuke chose his intended direction of evasion in the air, "Katon: Endan (Fire Release: Flame Bullet)!"
Both Jiraiya clones sprayed out oil-driven fire from their mouths as if it were napalm into the air, taking care to aim around the airborne Sasuke to ensure that they had reached him before bringing their precise jutsu inward, burning the deceased young shinobi out of the sky.
The real Jiraiya didn't hang around for long, because his stratagem wound up engulfing much of the forest canopy in flames, and he felt a self-preservational need to vacate the scene lest he find himself caught in a forest fire of his own creation. Still, something didn't sit right with him.
"It shouldn't be that surprising that someone like you managed to pull that off with only one arm. You can never count out a legendary ninja no matter what it looks like I guess."
Gritting his teeth, Jiraiya turned around and saw Sasuke striding out of the blaze, with dust and ash regenerating the parts of his body that had been devastated by the fire that had engulfed him. Even his clothing wound up being restored by the properties of the Edo Tensei jutsu.
'So this is what Sarutobi-sensei had to face.' And instead of a single highly talented ninja, he had to take on two of the most powerful men ever produced by Konoha. The old man had truly been amazing to somehow take that battle to a stalemate in a fight where his enemies were immortal, 'But I can't do that here. I can't seal him away the way that sensei did to the other two.'
He was still the leader of a squad. Hell, he was technically the head of an entire division of shinobi. Besides, giving his life to seal someone away wasn't in the cards anyway. There were always other options. If he had known in advance that he'd have been fighting a resurrected ninja he'd have prepared some countermeasures in advance for just such an occasion.
XxX
(Meanwhile – Konohagakure no Sato)
A pronounced frown simply could not worm its way off of Tsunade's lips, no matter what she did. The war was going well. It was going extremely well. In the northeast the enemy was being rolled up between the combined sandwiching efforts of Konoha and Kumo alike. In the northwest Takigakure had been sacked and their leadership destroyed by the clandestine assault from Root, and it was only a matter of time before the brutal jungle fighting led them to Kusagakure's front step if they weren't wise enough to surrender unconditionally before then.
Suna was being left alone to regroup after the last failed attack by the combined western C.N.F. forces led by Pein, and while Kiri still hadn't mustered a mainland landing it didn't seem like they would be needed. Iwagakure was oddly being silent, but they wouldn't throw their hat into the ring unless it seemed as if they could take it all in one fell swoop. Onoki was really earning his nickname by sitting this one out.
If he tried something on the softest target in Suna, without a doubt he'd draw the ire of the other villages in the G.S.A. and unless they all wound up destroyed they'd turn Iwa into a gravel pit if he tried something so treacherous and opportunistic.
Out in front of her sat a massive map, illustrating the gains that Konoha had garnered in the field as of the last reports sent via messenger hawk from the battlefronts, with compounded statistics in each theater of combat for her benefit by Konoha's intelligence department.
A knock came at her office door. A thankful temporary distraction from all of this dreary much ado about war. Tsunade never had much of a stomach for it back when she was an active battlefield medic despite her equal skill as a combatant, and even far behind the lines she could only imagine what it was like out there from the reports, "Come in."
The door cracked open to reveal a white head of hair from outside and the pleasant demeanor to go along with it, "Hokage-sama. How goes the war?" Naruto's longtime attendant Hamako entered the office with a demure bow and a warm smile.
"It goes… and goes, and goes, and goes." Tsunade replied aloofly, "Has anything changed with the village's defenses?" Either the Konoha Barrier Team or the Defense Division sent her. Poor girl kept herself busy when Naruto was away by trying to configure what she could from older Uzushiogakure defense designs into Konoha's program. She'd been doing it for years actually, even though they'd never had to use it, "Or do you need me to sign off on something?"
"Nothing like that." Hamako assured the powerful village leader, "I'm just going around checking up on people I know, people away from the front resting here in the village… things like that. An active body keeps the mind from wandering after all." She finished with a bit of a nervous laugh.
"Worried about the brat? Trust me when I say I know the feeling of just sitting back and waiting."
"I guess. I know Naruto-sama can take care of himself, and we've already received word that he is on the way home, but I never like it when he leaves, and this whole war just makes it worse."
He was one of four similar objective targets of the enemy after all. A target of opportunity as it were. If he was spotted and identified in the field, his recovery by the enemy was to take initiative over whatever objective the enemy would have on his mission. The same went for Yugito, the same went for Kirabi, and the same went for Gaara… to a significantly lesser extent extent.
If any enemy somehow came across the Kazekage in the desert they were meant to flee on sight… for all the good that would do them.
Tsunade knew the feeling though. Between Jiraiya, Naruto, her apprentices in Sakura and Shizune, and many of her high-level shinobi in the field such as Shikaku or Kakashi just to name a few, she had no absence of people she knew on various personal levels to worry about, and apparently it showed on her face as clear as day, "Is there something the matter?
No. There wasn't anything wrong. And that was the problem. There was absolutely nothing going wrong on any of the fronts. All was quiet in Kaze no Kuni, and the stalemates in the northeast and northwest had been broken, allowing the G.S.A. to advance.
Across the Elemental Nations there wasn't any catastrophe victimizing any of Konoha's wartime operations. It was officially the greatest start to a Shinobi World War that Konoha had ever managed. For once they weren't in a situation where things were about to go from bad to worse.
"…I'm just wondering what the hell is about to go wrong."
XxX
(With Naruto – At Sea)
It had taken a few hours, but Kirabi had managed to chill out enough to notice that Naruto was busy trying to figure with something. Let no one say that the man was not astute despite all of his eccentricities.
The topic of the day was Naruto's funky heirloom of a sword. And when it came to swords, there probably wasn't anyone better than him to talk to them about… at least someone that wouldn't try to kill Naruto on sight, "Whoa. Hearing that info might make me just crash… finding out your sword does more than cut, stab, and slash."
"Well that's technically still all it's meant for." Naruto said, holding up the sheathed Sen'nenki no Ken to observe the make of it, something he had done time after time over the years, "…You know… it just turns into a form that lets me cut stuff better and can apparently cut through the fabric of reality."
That sounded a lot better in his head.
It probably didn't matter how dumb it sounded though, since Kirabi would probably say something that would trump it within five minutes anyway.
Kirabi would have reached out and touched the sword by now, but according to Naruto there were security measures on it that prevented anyone outside of his lineage from laying their hands on the blade without suffering the consequences.
"Yo, Mister Nine."
"What's wrong B? Your face is all twisted up like you're thinking about something."
"That's 'cuz I am fool!"
"Well spit it out already!"
Both Naruto and Kirabi headbutted each other one time, the metal of their headbands clanking momentarily before they both backed off. Kirabi scoffed a bit before getting to his point, "Well you said the yin-yang release makes the sword change, but what if one variation ain't the range?"
At first Naruto just stared at him before running a hand through his hair, "…I must have been out in this sun for too long, because that actually made sense to me." As long as he'd had the sword, Naruto had been using the only transformation of the weapon that he'd known of.
But there had never been any set jutsu to make it change. For Kami's sake he used it mere hours after unearthing it and there had never been a scroll or any other source of information on it, how would he have learned any real techniques?
Honestly, the first time that Naruto used the materialization properties it was based solely off of advice from Hamako whom he had met a day earlier. All the message from her during the battle with Sasori said was to assert his will and lineage over the sword and make it his. He had nothing in mind, other than something that would help him cut Sasori down to size and they took the form of the Sen'nen Kougake bladed gauntlets and grieves.
Apparently in the history of the sword, no user had ever repeated forms that the weapon could take. There had to be a reason for that.
"Right?" Kirabi said with a grin, thumping Naruto on the shoulder, "Yin-yang let 'the Sage' make anything real, so why not use it to keep changing your steel?" He jumped up from his seated position on the deck and started dancing oddly, "Pick up the pace, don't let that power go to waste!"
Caught up in the rhymes coming his way for once, when the rapping Kirabi extended his fist for a bump Naruto hit it spiritedly with his own before he realized what he'd done… and when he did he had to admit that damn it the fist bump felt right!
Hell yes, due to his lineage he'd been passed down one hell of a tool of destruction and he'd be damned if he didn't exploit it to its fullest extent in combat! Crushing chakra drain for every transformation use or not, he was an Uzumaki damn it, and they had been known for serious vitality. He could take it.
A still grinning Kirabi gestured wordlessly, confusing Naruto until the rapping shinobi vocalized his actions, "Well? Go on and show me what it looks like mothafucka!"
Naruto held up the sword within its sheath before slowly pulling the steel free from its confines with a sharp sound, "Here it is." Naruto said before holding it out, blade toward Kirabi, "You want me to do the Sen'nen Kougake (Millenium Gauntlets) transformation?"
"Fuck no! I already heard about that from the kitty cat and big bro A! Show me something new!"
Something new? What kind of new? True, they had just been talking about the idea, but now Kirabi was kind of putting him on the spot and he was drawing a blank. What if his first idea was something dumb that he couldn't use in an actual fight?
Well his first idea hadn't been anything other than that he wanted something that would have helped him shred Sasori's Hiruko puppet to tatters during the battle in the ruins of Uzushiogakure.
But there wasn't anything he particularly wanted from the weapon. He was a bit of a do-it-yourselfer almost to a fault at times, and he liked fighting in close. That was probably why the sword changed forms to a taijutsu-suitable state and did what it did for his speed.
"Unmarked vessels starboard side!"
Every able-bodied person on the ship crowded to the left side of the ship to see and caught sight of the larger battle-ready ship that had been bearing down on their broadside. They weren't a warship, they were a regular transport. Outside of Mizu no Kuni where they were ultra-useful, warships didn't particularly exist. At least good ones didn't.
But after a few minutes or so the ship wasn't moving any closer. It was just sitting out on the edge, seemingly observing them.
Eventually Kirabi muscled his way to the front to catch a look-see with Naruto following close behind. Placing a hand just above his sunglasses-clad eyes, Kirabi's mouth and mustache wrinkled up in a frown, "One ship ain't very scary, even if we are a ferry."
"Stop rhyming…" Naruto said, but once again the man had a point. Maybe that was why they weren't approaching? They had the drop on them, and of course they had to have a scope of some sort. Maybe after seeing that the ship belonged to Kumogakure the would-be buccaneers backed off from trying to attack? Pirates were usually way smarter than people gave them credit for. Cutthroats most of them may have been, but leading lives like that gave them ridiculous survival instincts.
Besides, labeling pirates as simple honor-devoid cutthroats without giving them any credit was the rough equivalent of the pot calling the kettle black as a ninja.
"There's one leaving the ship!"
Just one? On a lifeboat or something? What, were they in trouble? They had to know that they weren't getting a damn thing without surrendering, and even then they'd probably just wind up being imprisoned for life or executed.
Squinting and focusing his eyes, actually cheating a bit with his Sharingan since no one was paying attention to him at the moment, Naruto was able to get a better look and saw that the one person wasn't in any kind of boat, he was walking on the water. A ninja.
A single man with white hair and purple garb as well as a large sword on his back. Wait, was that Kubikiribouchou? Maki and Sai stole that from some guy on Sasuke's old amassed team and they all gave it back to Kiri months ago. What the hell was some guy doing with it again on a pirate ship?
XxX
"This is close enough right?" Suigetsu said to himself as he stood along the waves of the ocean, walking steadily toward the Kumo ship in front of him, "Karin said that was the ship that Uzumaki was on." She also said that there was another jinchuuriki there due to the garish amounts of chakra she could sense as they got closer to bearing down on them, "Okay, let's get this show on the road."
A grin crossed his face as he took Kubikiribouchou from his back and sealed it inside of a scroll on his person while unsealing another of his three swords of choice, "That Choujuurou kid had no idea how to really use this sword. My brother was the true master with it, and I wasn't that bad myself." The large twin-handled sword with the funky fish-shaped blade just felt right in his hands, "Hiramekarei, let's make a mess of this place. Hiramekarei Kaihou (Hiramekarei Unleashing)!"
In the blink of an eye, chakra fully engulfed the blade to the size of the ship in front of him and soon absorbed the very waters of the ocean that covered it entirely, like a grand blade of Poseidon.
Suigetsu held it over his head as if he wasn't swinging a sword the size of a transport ship and brought it forward to slam down onto the hapless vessel. It wasn't the most productive way that he had destroyed a ship out of the near two dozen that he had taken out throughout the duration of Tobi's blockade, but it was certainly more fun than just destroying it with a wave to overturn it.
He had managed to hit it so hard he had to have split the hull, and it went under so quickly that it probably wouldn't be resurfacing either. Chuckling to himself he let Hiramekarei return to its normal shape and size as he wanted to observe his handiwork.
But much to his displeasure, the ship emerged from the water and bobbed in the water like a bath toy, "Tch. How'd they reinforce it enough to protect the ship?"
"Suigetsu look out below!"
Upon hearing Karin call out to him from their pirate vessel, Suigetsu allowed his body to liquefy and avoid eight large octopus tentacles that tried to smash and grab him. Not too long after that, Kirabi emerged from the drink, looking around for his would-be target, "The fuck?"
Suigetsu reformed a good distance away, seemingly not very impressed by his enemy's first move, "You huh? What, did Uzumaki drown? Because he's the one we really want to kill here. We don't give a crap about fighting you really… unless you want to fight."
Kirabi's first inclination was to reach for the seven swords that he carried on his back so that he could take on this opponent, but he wound up stopping himself from doing so as he started thinking, "Hmm…so you came here to fight with Mister Nine? Heh, be my guest, that'd be just fine. If he's the one you want go and move on past, but don't start cryin' when he whoops your ass."
"Awesome." Suigetsu said, grinning with his shark-like teeth, "So where's he hiding?"
"He's not hiding fool!"
So what the hell was he doing?
After a second of thought, Suigetsu didn't have to think twice before palming his forehead hard and making himself one with the water as he rushed speedily back to the pirate ship, "Juugo, Gataro, get ready to defend the ship!"
Gataro quickly pulled his cutlass from its sheath as a blur passed over the side of the ship and began cutting down large amounts of his crewmen that moved to intercept it. Dozens fell within seconds, "Sack up and stop dying you pack of weaklings! It's one ninja!" Being forced to back up his actual talk with action, when the blur rushed at him, Gataro actually managed to block the blade meant to cut through him, putting him face-to-face with Naruto, "Uzumaki-san I presume?"
Instead of answering, Naruto headbutted Gataro in the face and nailed him with a quickly formed Rasengan that propelled him into the mast of the ship hard enough to break it in half. If he survived even one of those things there was no way he lived through the other, "Yeah. It's me." Naruto answered posthumously.
Waves cascaded over the side of the ship and formed into Suigetsu who blitzed in Naruto's direction with Hiramekarei, missing when he swung three times with the blade itself as Naruto dodged out of the way, "I've been waiting for this ever since your flunkies stole Kubikiribouchou from me! I can't find them, but unfortunately for you Karin can pick out your chakra signature from two countries away!"
This guy was from that team that Sasuke had managed to stitch together while he had been hunting down Itachi, which meant he wasn't alone if he was talking about another person that could find him anywhere.
From his blindspot, a partially transformed Juugo launched himself at Naruto, his gnarled fist ready to punch him into pulp if Suigetsu's sword didn't remove his head from his shoulders first. Naruto managed to optimize the space he had between the two killer blows and swayed out of the way of them both before spinning low and cutting Suigetsu's legs off with the Sen'nenki no Ken.
Unfortunately for Naruto he didn't get to see the graphic and morbid sight of blood spilling from the severed limbs, instead they turned to water where they were cut and quickly reformed to solid form. Still low from his sweeping slash, Naruto dove forward and avoided a swing of Juugo's arm that had now transformed into an axe. Instead of hitting a blonde ninja, he cut through the deck of the ship, splitting a large crack all the way to the edge of it.
"He's fast." Suigetsu noted, a bit pleased at that facet of his enemy's ability, "Though if he killed Sasuke he'd have to be pretty quick." His eyes then went wide when he looked into Naruto's own and noted that they didn't match, "What do we have here? You've got a Sharingan bud? Where'd you get that?"
"Had it before I fought your boss." Naruto said cryptically. They didn't need to know where he had gotten it, as long as they didn't jump to the conclusion that he had taken it from Sasuke's body. Misinformation that bad and politically crippling wasn't welcome with him, "Your turn. Where'd you get the sword from? I thought I took the one you had."
"I took Hiramekarei off of its last user who had Kubikiribouchou on him too." Suigetsu recalled, bringing up the incident that netted him two of his desired seven swords in one fell swoop, "He wasn't as good as he thought he was with either of them. Kiri really has a problem with holding onto these things don't they? Picking better swordsmen would probably help."
"Like you?"
"A little late for that don't you think?"
Juugo got sick of waiting for the banter to subside and made to attack Naruto again before the entire ship was rocked by some outside force. Along with more than a few chakra-less pirates, the berserk Juugo didn't have the mindset to channel chakra to his feet to keep his balance and fell over into the water from whatever had occurred.
"Uh-uh. One-on-one bitch!"
Good old Kirabi. He might have his own reasons for making him fight Suigetsu by himself, but at least he wasn't sadistic enough to sit back and let the enemy play the numbers game. Although maybe that would be more because sitting back and doing nothing would bore him. He'd probably fight Juugo just so he could come up with some rhymes out of the stimulation of battle.
The Hachibi jinchuuriki would probably wind up tormenting that poor outmatched psycho for kicks while waiting for Naruto to finish up. Juugo seemed like an absurdly powerful monster, but he seemed to lack the intellect to use that power as effectively as he could on command. Berserkers were like that.
Meanwhile, both Naruto and Suigetsu stared at each other as the ship shook violently, "So you've got your sword again and more to go with it, and as much as that pisses me off after what we had to do to get it back to Kiri it's not really any business of mine. Why do you want to kill me?"
He couldn't remember directly screwing over Suigetsu with his own two hands, or even getting within the necessary distance to do such a thing.
The answer didn't come from Suigetsu, but from a girl with bright red hair that was observing the battle from the head of the ship, "It's because of what you did! Because of who you killed!" The girl shouted, glaring at him with her red eyes from behind her glasses, "Did you think that you could just kill Sasuke-kun and nothing would happen afterwards?"
She seemed to be far angrier at him than Suigetsu happened to be. He seemed to only hold a small grudge against Naruto, but he was bloodthirsty enough and loved battle enough to go through with taking a shot at getting revenge since the opportunity was presenting itself. On the other hand, were it not for the fact that she knew she didn't stand a chance against him she would have tried to seek him out and destroy him within days of Sasuke's death.
Even with the blatant disadvantage she held, it didn't seem to matter a bit to her. Naruto could see it in her eyes, and he knew exactly what it was from years of fighting and even before.
Hate, the kind of hate that she was sending his way with her eyes. He hadn't seen anything like that in over ten years. The hatred from loss, and the need to find something as a scapegoat, something to blame for it, either rightfully or not.
Granted, she had more of a reason to outright blame Naruto for killing Sasuke than the people of Konoha had to see him as a loose cannon for having the Kyuubi within him as a child. Mostly because he actually directly contributed to Sasuke's death instead of being a bystander and then a container without getting the choice.
"That's why she wants you dead." Suigetsu said, jerking his thumb over in his female teammate's direction, "I want you dead because I can't think of a better way to test all of my training with the swords than taking down the guy that put Sasuke away."
You had to use strong people as a measuring stick. Kisame was dead, and the current generation of the Seven Ninja Swordsmen of the Mist were jokes. Suigetsu didn't just want to possess the seven swords, he wanted to be the most powerful swordsman shinobi in the world. The only way you could prove that you were powerful was by defeating powerful people.
He was at least twice as powerful as he had been back when Kubikiribouchou had been ripped from his grasp, and he needed something to prove it. Karin's grudge was a practical reason to do such a thing.
"Stop chatting and make him suffer already Suigetsu!"
It wasn't mere impatience in her desire to bear witness to Naruto's demise that prompted such a venomous request. Karin could sense chakra better than anyone in the entire world, and as she was, standing that close to Naruto was like placing a microphone right in front of a tower of active concert speakers.
There was something about his chakra… something familiar.
A roll of purple eyes came from Suigetsu before he held up Hiramekarei, prepared to fight again, "You see, she's incredible at sensing things, but she can't fight. She's good at healing, but that's kind of useless on a team with me and Juugo. If she could fight she'd probably be over here trying to claw your eyes out herself."
Well wasn't that just funderful? Why not? Add one more to the ever-growing list of people that had reasons to wish his head removed from his shoulders, "Let's see if you can make her happy then." Quickly sheathing his sword, Naruto started rushing through hand-seals before lightning chakra engulfed his hand and he snapped his fingers, sending large sparks flying at his water-elemental adversary, "Raiton: Kyuuzousekka (Lightning Release: Surge Flash)!"
With a grit to his teeth at watching Naruto try to take advantage of the clear elemental weakness that came with his clan techniques, Suigetsu manipulated Hiramekarei's form into a square wall exuding raw chakra that neutralized Naruto's forceful sparks. Through a small hole in the front that he deliberately created he saw Naruto move to flank to his side, "Tch."
The moment Naruto passed the side of Suigetsu's transformed sword, Sharingan awareness allowed him to limbo his way underneath a nasty wave of water sent his way that had stretched from Suigetsu's arm. With his other arm, he bulked it up to allow him to handle his legendary weapon with one hand as it turned back to its normal sword form.
Naruto quickly redrew his own sword and blocked Suigetsu slamming Hiramekarei down onto him with it, though it did press him flat down onto the deck of the ship, 'Trading sword moves with a guy that can kill one of the Seven Swordsmen and take his weapons? Not smart.'
Suigetsu's watery arm returned to normal and grabbed onto his sword's second handle to let him lift it easier in order to slice Naruto in half. Taking advantage of the sword being lifted off of him, Naruto stabbed his sword forward through Suigetsu only to see that he had turned the area of the wound into water.
A smirk crossed Suigetsu's face at Naruto's seemingly desperate attempt to impale him. Rookie mistake, "Sorry, but you can't injure me like thaaaaaa-!" His boast turned into a cry of pain when he felt electricity course through his body centering from where he had been stabbed.
On his back Naruto rolled away from Suigetsu and rushed past him, snatching his sword back and cutting him in half, rendering both parts to water that fell onto the deck "Only people in my bloodline can hold onto the sword or that'll happen." Naruto let go of it while it had been stuck inside of Suigetsu's body, thus the sword perceived Suigetsu as trying to wield it.
A strange void feeling, something of a sense of blankness, crossed Naruto's sense of awareness and instinct told him to do something evasive which manifested itself in the way of jumping to the left. On his right arm he suffered a rather deep and long gash from a near-miss that could have been far worse as Karin had attempted to stab into him from behind with a kunai.
Was she insane to think that she could really pull that off? Maybe so, because wasn't she having Suigetsu fight him because she couldn't?
But then again how did she get that close to begin with? She wasn't that fast to reach him so quickly from a dead stop, and Naruto had remained aware of her positioning even though the more present threat had been Suigetsu. Around her Naruto couldn't feel any sense of a life signature, which should not have been right. When she had first revealed herself she had one of the most prominent auras on the ship. She'd been able to hide it all, even the early-warning of her incoming killing intent. If she'd been faster she would have gotten him.
It was probably some sensor-nin trick to hide her presence, it was something that Kusa shinobi were apparently quite good at even thought it made them unable to use ninjutsu for its duration, and she apparently really did want him dead if she put herself at risk the way that she did to use it. But due to retaliatory reflexes she was destined to pay for it. The moment Naruto saw his own blood fly from the open wound on his person he lashed out with a swing of the Sen'nenki no Ken in return, and his attack hit home.
Karin knew she was dead from the moment that she didn't feel her kunai stab into something solid. Her ability to suppress and hide her chakra would only let her get one strike on such a high level opponent, and she thought she had picked her spot wisely. That had not been the case. She whiffed on the strike, and Naruto managed to procure a free strike at her back that he took freely with a downward slash of his deadly-looking weapon.
The razor-sharp instrument of destruction cut cleanly through the back of Karin's clothing, from shoulder to opposite hip, and hard blue and red eyes stared at her as her body dropped on the wooden surface of the deck with a thud.
But there was no blood.
That was impossible. He could see her skin underneath where he cut her. There wasn't any way that she had reinforced herself somehow, she didn't have any armor on underneath. There wasn't anything that would have saved her from being gravely wounded.
Even she seemed completely surprised as she quickly popped up and rolled over onto her butt, staring at her hands in shock as if trying to reason with herself that something had saved her.
Naruto hoped that he didn't have just as stunned of a look on his face as he looked down at the petite redhead, but the chuckling in his head set him off to something being wrong, "Well isn't this a fine situation? And here I thought there were only two people aside from you that could touch the damn thing and not suffer for it."
'What? Tsunade-baachan and Hamako-chan? That's because they're-.'
"-Distantly related to your bloodline? Yes I'm aware. The sword won't harm the servant girl, which is how she could study the seals on it. It can't harm you either, aside from the chakra drain when you transform it. Even the Tsunade woman can touch the weapon safely due to her lineage, and now you can't cut this girl with the blade of it. What does that tell you?"
The Sen'nenki no Ken would not harm a member of the Uzumaki bloodline in the slightest.
And that had to have meant… 'Don't tell me… she's a descendant too.' Kyuubi's deep laughter in his head was all the confirmation from an outside observer that he needed, "If my life were any more retarded it'd be a book or something." Naruto said out loud as Karin started to come down from her near-death experience, returning her glare to him, "Who are you?"
"Probably your fucking cousin, or don't you listen?"
'Shut up. I want to hear it from her.'
"Karin." She replied venomously, "What, you like getting names with the faces that you kill?"
Naruto ignored the biting remark since it wasn't as if they were friends or anything. His team had stolen a priceless weapon from her team, her boytoy of a squad leader almost killed a girl that he was quite close to, and he wound up killing said boytoy of a squad leader in completely unrelated cataclysmic combat. He and she were still just about to murder each other for all he knew, "What's your surname? Your clan name?"
"I don't have one."
"Yeah you do. It's Uzumaki."
"Your jokes suck."
"My jokes rule, but this isn't a joke. My sword can't cut you. That means you're family."
That managed to throw Karin off quite a considerable bit. She could sense his chakra with her Kagura Shingan (Mind's Eye of the Kagura) to a perfect degree and he was telling the absolute truth. No fluctuation of his sizeable chakra levels at all, "…That doesn't mean anything to me. I'm still killing you."
"I didn't think it would."
Whatever. He did his duty of informing her of such. If she still wanted to fight him to the death that was alright with him. Other than a name that she didn't know she had and clan ties that had vanished decades before they were born they didn't have a lick of attachment to each other.
"Takai Umi no Uneri (High Seas Swell)!"
The ship began to rock violently before anything more could be made of this. Both Naruto and Karin stuck themselves to the surface of the vessel with chakra, but one of them had a smirk on their features while the other one did not.
The reason being that the ship had been lifted clear out of the water by a titanic version of Suigetsu that was looking down onto the diminutive form of Naruto in return, "S'up?"
Naruto just stared up at him, dwarfed like an action figure on a playset in comparison to a little boy, '…Kyuubi?' He felt the senjutsu chakra filling his system and felt the shift in his body from entering Sage Mode, 'Thanks.' Without saying a word to Suigetsu he blazed a trail toward the edge of the ship and jumped over the side, 'What am I doing? He turns into water and I'm jumping down into the ocean!'
"You do have your fair share of window-licker moments…" Kyuubi pointed out, still an internal observer to the battle as Naruto took to saving himself.
Suigetsu just laughed as he set the ship and Karin back down and stepped over it as his body continued to grow in size, "You don't get it do you? I don't just use the ocean as my weapon. With my clan's jutsu I am the ocean! There's no one more dangerous in the open water than a member of the Hozuki Clan."
There was a reason that the larger Shinobi World War conflicts never took place on the soil of Mizu no Kuni, because getting there back in those days had been something nearly insurmountable due to who was running the show in Kirigakure back in those days. The ultra-dangerous Hozuki Clan, fronted by the leader of the village in the then-Mizukage.
The only reason the Nidaime Mizukage was killed in battle against the Nidaime Tsuchikage was because their final battle was fought on dry land, and even then both men wound up dying, still ending it in a stalemate.
XxX
Kirabi managed to maneuver Juugo a ways away from the ship but even he had to stop for a moment when he saw Suigetsu grow to over ten stories high. He wasn't close to being as big as a biju, but it didn't stop him from wondering if he should bust out the transformation anyway.
"No B." Hachibi warned his container from inside of his head, "The technique is imposing, but didn't you want to watch the boy fight his own battle? Isn't that why you didn't defeat the enemy after protecting our ship?"
That was true. He was kind of jealous really. A had seen Naruto fight a real battle against an Akatsuki member. Yugito had seen him fight a bunch of times. He'd only seen Naruto fight once and he'd been a brat when that encounter occurred.
Thus Kirabi really wanted to see what kind of absurd crap Naruto had to his name, and he wasn't long for waiting when he saw Naruto literally standing on the air before he could fall onto the ocean and into an awaiting trap that Suigetsu had been preparing once he touched the water, "Daaaaamn. I didn't know Mister Nine could fly."
He had to come up with a few rhymes for that.
But first…
"Chill out alright?" Kirabi shouted, dodging a spiky body barrage by a fully transformed Juugo, his entire body grey and his eyes black and horrid, "I'm watchin' a fight!"
XxX
"You can fly…" Suigetsu's voice boomed even though he was speaking normally, "That's so lame. I had all kinds of fun stuff planned to tear you apart with once you touched foot on the water."
"You don't look like you're that broken up about it." With his airborne position high above the surface of the sea due to his Sage Mode refined Burst Limit abilities, Naruto could swear that Suigetsu was still getting even bigger. What the hell kind of jutsu was this?
In his right hand, Suigetsu held onto the Hiramekarei sword that was reflective of his own ever-increasing size, "You're not going to be able to stop me now." He said with a shark-like grin, "I might wish I had all of the swords to myself, but a combination of two of the swords that I have along with my clan's jutsu… heh, it's pretty awesome if I do say so myself."
If he could get Naruto onto the water the battle would be over. It was as simple as that. Entire ships of water-elemental ninjas from Kiri had fallen to the slaughter like cattle, thinking that they could defeat him just because they had high-level suiton ninjutsu en masse. It only made things worse. Way worse.
'Two swords? He has one sword on him. And even if he didn't, how would Kubikiribouchou help him in this situation?' Since Maki and Sai had taken Kubikiribouchou from Suigetsu already and he said that he had gotten it back from Kiri, it was obvious that two of the swords he spoke of happened to be Hiramekarei and Kubikiribouchou. He didn't know which third one he had.
Be that as it may, Naruto scrutinized giant Suigetsu's form heavily, but he couldn't see anything. Still, that was fine.
Water was still water, and Naruto still had the electricity to shock him back into a goddamn puddle. He'd done it once already. Unsealing a pair of large fuuma shuriken from his seal tattoos, Naruto opened them and hurled them both around Suigetsu's head from opposite sides, not getting anywhere close to hitting him, "Kaminari Shuriken (Lightning Shuriken)!"
Due to the size of the shuriken generating the electricity, and the potency of ninjutsu while in Sage Mode, the forceful jutsu looked like lighting shooting from the clouds during an electrical storm.
And with such a sizeable target in Suigetsu there was no way it could possibly miss, nor did it.
But that was where the good news ended.
Naruto watched in complete shock and horror as the lightning struck Suigetsu's body with no visible effect presented despite the fact that he had been shocked by one of Naruto's most reliable ninjutsu.
Suigetsu's body seemed to course slightly with electricity before it all subsided and he chuckled, "You really thought that I'd let you work such an obvious advantage after what I already saw you do earlier? I've got your number, and I'm not taking any more chances against you ninjutsu specialist. I'm going all out." As he spoke he continued to grow even more, "I'm taking the legend of the Seven Ninja Swordsmen of the Mist to the next level!"
With a heft of the titanic Hiramekarei blade, Suigetsu gave it a mighty swing, not lacking a hint of his previous speed despite his deftly increased size. It was a thankful point that Naruto had full availability of all three dimensions of movement and all of the physical advantages that Sage Mode presented him, because he definitely needed it now.
Naruto's hair blew wildly with the wind shear that came from Suigetsu's blade missing its strike against him. Seriously, someone that big shouldn't have stayed so fast. Luckily he'd been faster to begin with and that had only been magnified by Sage Mode.
He was about to prepare another jutsu when a voice in his head chewed him out, "No! No more chakra attacks! Electric or not it doesn't matter right now! He literally absorbed your lightning! I felt it!" Kyuubi coached from within Naruto's mind. It didn't feel like dying along with its container in the middle of the ocean, "Figure out what he's doing!"
'Okay, just keep the senjutsu chakra coming and keep those senses open.' Naruto thought to Kyuubi before thinking to himself as he ascended higher into the skies with jump after jump to avoid Suigetsu's ever-increasing reach, 'I will never swat flies with the same hatred ever again.'
XxX
(Mountains' Graveyard)
Damn that boy. He had the heirloom blade of Uzushiogakure that the original Madara Uchiha had clandestinely instigated strife against them just to bring about the village's downfall and take that dangerous element out of his plans.
Damn that sword. He was hoping against hope that in their small skirmish Naruto had failed to notice that the end of the sword had been the only thing that had actually made contact with him when he dodged the rest of the his deadly attacks. Did he even know what he had?
The short conflict was still fresh in his mind even days later and it kept playing through his head.
The only thing keeping Tobi from pacing around in thought was that he currently had company, and he needed to keep a level head for the sake of his underling(s). Right now was the time to get things of importance, such as a weakness to the thing that could serve to be a liability for him. While the world was shrouded in confusion and its own mayhem he could do what he needed easier than ever.
"What's the plan now Tobi?" The white half of Zetsu asked as the plant-like man followed his masked leader through the caves of their base, "I still say we could have and should have taken the Nibi and the Kyuubi when we had the chance." The dark half said thereafter.
"And then what? There are only the two of us with the rings to extract the Biju." Tobi snapped in return. With only the two of them to run the ritual to extract the biju, it would take so long that they would be found and attacked by both Konoha and Kumo before they finished, "Pein is too busy playing his little war game, and even if he weren't and we were still on the same side it would still take several days."
Yes, he had an army to defend himself in such an instance, but compromising his favored base of operations and many of his thousands of forces did not sit well with him. He would rather put that army to use in another way.
"Right now we need to turn everything else back into our favor by eliminating the most dangerous advantage that our enemy does or does not know that they possess against us."
There was more to that damned weapon. There had to be more. Hashirama and Tobirama were bastards and what that thing was really meant to do wouldn't be as evident as negating space-time techniques. It wasn't created during the Senju-Uchiha Clan Wars, it was created decades afterwards. There was a real reason for it.
"That sword? Aren't you overreacting?" White Zetsu asked before being rebuked angrily by the black half, "Didn't you see that thing? How many arrays comprised the designs engraved in it? In the sheath? In the hilt? On the blade? It was made by Senju and left in the hands of their clan's most trusted allies."
"I would show you real overreacting, but I still need your help." Tobi stated coldly to Zetsu as they wound up standing out on a ledge overlooking a vast cave chamber filled with White Zetsu Clones, "Pein has neglected surveying the Gedou Mazou due to his wartime concerns. With the window given to me I've been able to use enough of the chakra stored within it by the biju captured to form 4000 clones. You will use them and raid Konoha from within."
Zetsu didn't need to hear anymore than that. He knew what his weaker clone brethren were capable of and knew what abilities he could count on to get the job done, "You can count on me." He said with a chuckle, "What are you going to be doing?"
"Getting some much needed information." Tobi said, creating a dimensional rift to transport himself through, "From what will prove to be a very reluctant source."
Jutsu List
Takai Umi no Uneri (High Seas Swell). Hiden ninjutsu. Supplementary. This jutsu is a powerful technique in the wheelhouse of the Hozuki Clan's Suika no Jutsu (Hydration Technique). Like the aforementioned parent jutsu, the user liquefies their entire body at will and bonds with a body of water that allows them to recreate their own form only magnified to a degree corresponding to the amount of water used to build the form. Due to the constant drain on one's chakra, the growth of the user is only advised to a certain extent and the use of more ninjutsu after this is ill advised, although in theory a user with a large enough store of chakra and source of water can grow to an inestimable extent and fight with their full breadth of skills. Can be compared to the Akimichi Clan's Chou Baika no Jutsu (Super Multi-Size Jutsu), but its use is far more situational along with many other differences.
週次パワーステータス
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