Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Chapter 1:

When the Sky Cracked

The desert wind howled over the dunes, brushing fine sand against the cliffs of Sunagakure. A thin crescent moon hung above like a crooked blade.

Far from the village walls, in the fields of small plateuas, two figures stood atop a jagged sandstone outcropping. Cloaked in black and red, their arrival had been silent and peaeful. Their purpose, anything but.

"The walking is finally over," Deidara said, voice hushed beneath his long blond bangs.

"Was it really so bad of a journey?" asked Sasori.

"The return trip, flying, will be much more bearable," groused Deidera.

He retrieved his occular device and placed it over one eye, before surveying what they had to work with. The plan was to go in, hit fast and hard, grab the Ichibi, and fly out of there. Well, that was his ideal plan. There were plenty of backup options.

He began laying them out.

"Perimeter's thin. I can blow a hole through their wall before they even know we're here." he Suggested.

"Wholly unnecessary." dismissed Sasori. "I would suggest drawing the enemy out. I can draw out the peons, while you go in for the target."

"Oh, an old bull strategy vs my young bull strategy?" joked Deidera.

Even through it was not his true face, but a puppet body, Deidera could see confusion in his posture as his sensei glanced at him.

"You don't know the story of the old bull and the young bull?" asked Deidera incredulously.

He readied to tell the joke, when every hair on the back of his neck stood on end and he crouched low. Based on how Sasori crouched at the exact same time, he must have felt it too. Neither of them were even sensory types, so what the hell were they feeling.

"Is that Shukaku?" asked Deidera. "I'd heard that tailed beasts chakras are so potent and strange that even non-sensory types could feel it, but not form Jinchuuriki?"

He imagined more bloodlust and cruely. But he felt was more like a chaotic storm of glee and childlike brawling. Like an entire battlefield shouting directly into his soul.

"Not unless they unleash it, can you see a conspicuous giant demonic raccoon rising over the city?" asked Sasori.

Deidera turned his occular device and checked. The city looked fine. Nobody was panicking. There was no mass death or destruction. He did see shinobi on the ramparts looking around themselves in a panic, no doubt feeling the same sensation Deidera was.

"Shukaku is not unleashed." reported Deidera. "And I don't think it's coming from the village. It feels more like..."

Before he could say "above it" the source made itself visble.

The sky ignited, and far above Suna in the atmosphere a fireball descended upon the earth.

The streak of flames ripped across the heavens, trailing molten shards like bleeding stars. It streaked high over the village and flew far to the east towards the land of fire. It then did the strangest thing. It started to slow down, rather suddely, and curved northward. He'd never seen a comet or asteroid this big or close, but that struck Deidera as odd behavior for a cosmic object.

It vanished over the horizon and the world was silent. The world remained silent as a large plume of light, fire and earth flew kilometers in the air. The impact blazed with a flash so bright it turned the night into day. Despite the bright show, the silence all the way up until the shokwave, carrying with it great winds and sand, washed over them like a tsunami.

The ground buckled beneath their feet at the same time. Between the scalding hot winds,

A mushroom cloud of dust and fire climbed into the sky. From this distance, it looked like the heavens themselves had been pierced.

"…That's new," Deidara muttered, stunned into silence. Then his hand twitched. "Wait. Do you… feel that?"

Sasori, standing motionless in his ornate puppet body, didn't answer immediately. But even he turned his head toward the distant crater.

"Mission's ruined," Sasori said flatly.

Below them, Sunagakure had burst to life. Torches ignited. Shadows flickered along the walls. Ninja scrambled into defensive lines like fire ants pouring from a kicked nest. He was right. As powerful as they were, the chance of success with every single person in Suna on high alert was severely diminished. He was arrogant enough to believe that they could still get the job done despite this article, but not to think they should.

Deidera sighed.

"Let the walking commence again," he bemoaned.

"No. Let the running begin. We need to report this to the entire Akatsuki post-haste." said Sasori.

"Our failure?" asked Deiders.

Sasori looked at him.

"The impact, and whatever it brought with it. Best case scenario this is some Hoshigakure star bullshit." reasoned Sasori.

Deidera noticed a strange hopefulness in his sensei's voice. Like he wanted that to be the case but had a worse case in mind.

He didn't dare ask.

Gaara stood upon the highest tower of Sunagakure's central citadel, his gourd already slung over his shoulder. The red glow from the horizon painted his pale skin like war paint. Behind him, the village roared to life.

Seals ignited along rooftops. Messengers blinked out of existence in flashes of light. Falcons launched from aviaries with scrolls strapped to their legs. Wind-surfing scouts glided low across the sand dunes, their boards trailing wake like ships over water. It was not panic — it was war protocol.

"All field squads to forward staging positions," Gaara ordered.

His voice didn't rise, but it carried over the noise and the jonin around him obeyed like thunder to lightning.

The sand shifted unnaturally as he lifted into the air on a swirl of grains and dust. Beneath him, hundreds of Suna shinobi poured toward the desert's edge, mobilizing faster than any civilian nation could dream. They had been born of the sand. The desert would not claim them easily.

The trip was short, and their heading clear. Not thirty minutes later they arrived at the edge of the crater.
The landscape around it was vitrified, and still hot, glass for ten whole kilometers in every direction around the theing that impacted. He lacked the words to describe it.

It almost looked like a ship, say that it was an order of magnitude larger than Sunagakure. They could fit the entire population of the the great villages in it and do so comfortably. It was it's make that baffled him.

The sprawling, broken husk was of twisted metal thicker than the walls of Sunagakure. It was also wholly unsuited to the water, being all right angles and hard edges, no curves. It looked more like a giant cannon than ship. Entire towers jutted at impossible angles.

"Wind release users, cool the glass!" ordered Gaara.

They did so, stepping forward, and strong wins wafted heat away from the battlefield. What remained was hard, smooth, cold ground to walk on. And so they walked along in, weapons drawn and at the ready.

As they got close they saw new details.

Rotting, spore-covered fungal groths sprouted from gaps in the hull, gaps that hissed steam and smoke into the atmosphere. Green mist bled from broken hulls like the breath of some sick god. The air around it stank of corrosion and blood.

And it was alive.

Gaara looked up to the squads above, the elite scouts riding desert hawks who now circled the craft.

He signalled for them to go in for a closer look with his electric torch and they obliged.

They didn't last long. There was a loud bang, followed by dozens more, and one scout vanished mid-flight in a spray of red mist, his hawk spiraling down aflame. Another exploded in midair, hit by something loud and impossible — a roar, a flash, a streak of crude metal from a weapon too primitive to work… but it did.

Then the screaming began.

Green-skinned monsters poured from the wreckage, each one the size of two men, howling in laughter and rage. They carried massive weapons that roared with sound and light. Some were armored in scrap-metal plate and leaking pipes. Others wore bones, chains, and fungal grafts.

It was all very familiar, and Gaara thought Temujin had returned with his army of artificial soldiers. But no, this wasn't them.

"They have firearms! All shinobi incapable of supersonic speeds Fall back!" barked Baki, leading the next wave from atop a glider, sand swirling beneath him.

Most of the chunin and all of the genin did as instructed, not yet able to pass the movement speed tests Jonin were required to pass. Some were reduced to fine mist as they fled. Some Jonin had already fallen to the weapons, not expecting high caliber firearms.

A few nearly hit Gaara, save that his defenses caught them in time. Or at least, deflected them. One grazed his cheek and were it not for the stronger sang covering his skin it would have drawn blood.

He raised both hands and forged a large wall of sand between the retreating shinobi and the bullets, he also doubled the sand barrier protecting him.

"Form anti-siege lines! Use the wind wall jutsu! Contain the enemy!" Gaara ordered.

But the monsters didn't slow. They charged through kunai, through chakra-enhanced traps, through wind blades and fire storms — laughing the whole time, as if the act of being killed was just another punchline in a cosmic joke.

And then one spoke.

Not in a language. Not exactly. But in sound, in force, in belief.

"MORE HUMIES! MORE DAKKA!"

The initial shock had worn off and his soldiers were no longer flatfooted.

The chunin and genin who retreated to safe distance created a line of defense while the Jonin charge forth. They blurred from cover to cover, most only able to maintain such high speeds in short burts. Thankfully there was enough debris from the crash upturned outcropping to hide behind between bursts.

His men dodged the supersonic projectiles with preternatural grace by reacting to the sound and flicker of fire before the crude bullets ever arrived. But not all were so quick.

A young Chunin raised a sand shield too slowly and vanished into a red mist. Another tried to counter with a flame bullet, only to take a jagged hunk of metal through the shoulder — and then the chest — before he hit the ground. Blood soaked the dunes. Screams painted the wind.

Gaara focused his attention on grabbing and pulling away the injured, mostly Chunin whose skill was just below what they thought it was. They would be reprimanded terribly when they recovered, but for now they would be saved.

And the monsters only laughed as they were cut down.

Long-distance ninjutsu lit the battlefield. Firestorms roared through the gaps. Lightning cracked. Wind razors whistled like banshees across the lines. But the green things did not slow. Many burned. Many fell. None hesitated. Pain, to them, was like music.

The Suna lines buckled.

And then they reached melee.

That was when things turned truly grim.

A jonin blocked a blow with a chakra-infused kunai — only for the blade to snap as a massive, jagged axe cleaved through his arm and ribcage in a single stroke. Another fell beneath a wild green brute who bit through his shoulder and used the corpse to beat back his squad.

No amount of taijutsu seemed to matter when a single creature could shrug off a dozen shuriken and crush a shinobi with its bare fists. His men aimed true, delivering killing blows to vitals, but these things died slowly. He saw many, indeed, die from the wounds but they didn't slow down until death took them, and this allowed for them to achieve individual pyrhhic victories against their slayers.

"Retreat!" someone screamed. "Fall back! Regroup!"

But there was nowhere to go.

At the heart of the chaos, Gaara stood unmoving — sand already swirling high around him, his gourd long since broken. Shukaku's chakra bubbled up from beneath his skin, a writhing storm of malevolence and ancient power. But there was no transformation. Not this time.

Gaara raised both hands.

And the desert answered.

Miles of sand heaved as if breathing. The battlefield shifted — no longer passive, no longer dead weight. Chakra flooded every grain, every particle, binding them together in razor cohesion. The sky darkened as entire dunes lifted into the air like ocean waves.

The Orks didn't pause. They only screamed louder.

And Gaara crushed them.

Not with a blast. Not with a single technique. But with the entire desert.

Walls of sand closed in like jaws. Tunnels swallowed the screaming hordes. Buried alive, limbs snapped and bones shattered. He ripped them apart like the lefs of insects. All were engulfed. Those too strong were compressed under ten thousand tons of chakra-hardened earth. Screams became muffled gurgles. Blood soaked into the sand — and vanished.

In minutes, the front was silent.

Only Gaara remained standing at the edge of a battlefield turned mass grave. His hands trembled, but he did not fall. Around him, nothing stirred but the wind. A few moments later, his own men, dug themselves out of the shallow sands.

He had buried them too, but not shredded them.

Sunagakure had survived the first day.

But at a terrible cost.

The desert was silent as the sun rose on the next day.

Only the wind stirred now — hot and dry, as always — but even it seemed cautious, whispering low across a field of death.

Jonin squads moved through the aftermath like ghosts. Sand and glass crunched beneath their feet, but it was no longer just sand. The very earth had been changed — vitrified in places, molten and refrozen into twisted sheets of glass laced with blackened gore. Splintered bones jutted from dunes like broken stakes. Shattered teeth, slivers of metal, and scraps of green flesh were half-buried, scattered like confetti from a nightmare.

"Is this all… from last night?" a Chunin whispered, kneeling beside what looked like a torn arm — the fingers still twitching.

"There were more," his captain muttered. "The sand took them."

They had not seen the full scope in the chaos of night. Now, under the sun, the crater loomed.

They had never seen destruction like this, or at least never incurred in such a short amount of time— a jagged scar in the earth where the alien vessel had struck. The ship itself was less a ship and more a floating city, now embedded in the land like a rotting god's corpse. Fungal growths coated its sides, some pulsing faintly with sick green light. Pipes belched thin trails of steam. Metal plating creaked and groaned like something alive.

The entire crater was surrounded by high walls and soldiers. They had worked over time through the night to contain the threat.

Had it landed even a few kilometers east… Sunagakure would have been glass and ash.

"I don't like this," one of the older shinobi murmured. "This thing wasn't just built. It's grown. Like a tumor with a forge inside."

Gaara arrived at the perimeter on a platform of floating sand, flanked by Baki and two ANBU. His eyes swept the carnage without emotion.

"No one enters the vessel," he said.

The order rippled out instantly.

"Expand the perimeter. Ten layers deep. Nothing goes in. Nothing comes out. Kill anything that tries."

"But—"

"If something survived that," Gaara said, his voice like sand over stone, "you wouldn't survive it."

The teams obeyed without further question.

They raised wards. Traps. Summoned scouts and detection webs. Seals were etched into the very glass, and sentries patrolled in shifts, eyes ever trained on the dead steel mountain that still hissed and steamed beneath the desert sun.

The world had changed overnight.

They had no name for what they had fought. No understanding of what had arrived. For now, the enemy was just mulched meat and bone in the sands, and no longer a threat.

Notes:

Yup. They are so screwed.

As you no doubt guess, this story starts at the beginning of Shippuden. I did this because I wanted as many of the Naruto characters as possible to be alive and kicking. And useful. I may wind up making the story a little AU by having the sound shinobi and maybe even Haku still be alive, but we'll see.

There are some pairings, but they're minor characters. Like Kakuzu and Kuromo(Who you probably don't remember).

A fair warning about my Naruto fanfics. I count NOTHING after the 5 kage summit as canon aside from characters and kekkei genkai. Rinnegan being an evolution of sharingan? No. Juubi tree and fruit? No. Kaguya? No. Aliens? No. All of Boruto? No. Obito creating the Akatsuki when he wasn't even around yet when Nagato made it let alone in time to give Nagato the rinnegan? No.

I also always count all filler and movies as canon, aside from Naruto the last.

Concerning 40k I actually was too generous to the setting at first, before I went deeper into the NAruto lore and realized how competetive they are with things in 40k.

Slight spoiler:

Arc 1: Barely surviving an Ork invastion

Arc 2: Unification and militarization of the elemental nations while some shinobi go out to explore the stars for recon.

Arc 3: Minor necron invasion and near extinction.

Arc 4: Full grimdark, finally in the 40K universe at large.

Long story short, if the entire planet of Naruto came together and developed with the intent of competing in the 40K universe, they do both terribly and well. I will be as fair and canon to both settings as possible but please, no fanboying. I'm doing tons of research into orks to make sure their scaling to Naruto characters is accurate and am actually buffing them up a bit because 40k fanboys can be unbearable if I don't make squigs capable of killing super Saiyan god 85 Vageto with one punch.

Chapter Text

Chapter 2:

Spores Over Suna

The desert stretched endlessly beneath them, cracked and shimmering, but Naruto's eyes were locked on the thing in the horizon — the thing that made the air feel heavier just by looking at it.

They'd read the message scrolls en route. A celestial object. A battle. Casualties. But the words hadn't done it justice.

Now they could see it and even from this far away, it looked wrong.

A jagged crater ripped into the land like a wound in the earth itself, at least ten kilometers wide. And in the center, slouched and still steaming, lay a half-buried metal carcass — a ship, maybe, but twisted and hunched like a war machine that had died angry. Smoke bled from ruptures in its skin. Fungal masses bloomed across its surface like cancer. And around it, green mist drifted through the air, faintly pulsing.

"I was expecting something like with Haido's land ships, but that's way bigger and nowhere near as pretty" he said quietly.

Sakura hummed.

"Say what you want about that psycho, at least everything he made was beautiful." she said.

Naruto swallowed.

They moved faster after that. Whatever that thing was, they didn't want to be near it. It was noone by the time Suna's gates came into view, and it was sweltering.

When they reached Sunagakure's gates, the guards barely said a word. They recognized the Leaf headbands and waved them through with urgency. The city beyond was eerily quiet — no merchants, no children, no idle chatter. Just squads of shinobi moving in perfect coordination, seals glowing on rooftops and hawks circling above.

They were taken straight to the central citadel, where an elite ANBU ushered them into the war tower.

Inside the lobby they met the other delagates from rival villages. That there was a trio from every major village spoke volumes.

Closest to the door stood a trio in with headbands declaring their loyalty to Stone Village.

"I'm Kitsuchi," he said with a stiff nod direted at Kakashi in particular. "Represening Stone. This is my daughter, Kurotsuchi, and this is Akatsuchi."

He indicated a girl that looked like Sasuke if he were to use the sexy jutsu and a man that made Choji look svelte. The girl looked down at her feet with a slight nod and the Akatsuchi guy gave the biggest, warmest smile Naruto had ever seen in his life.

Next to him, an older woman with folded arms snorted. She was blonde with a short skirt. Her teammates were a dark-skinned woman with red hair and a white-haired swordsman.

"Samui. These are my teammates, Karui and Omoi. Representing Lightning."

The redhead waved friendily, eyeing Naruto and Kakashi's clothes.

"Karui." She said simply.

A third figure stepped beside her — a tall man with a sword strapped across his back and an easy grin.

"Omoi. Also Lightning. And yes, I've already imagined seventeen ways this meeting could go horribly wrong. I'm not sharing any of them yet."

Naruto blinked at the man, who reminded Naruto somewhat of Shikamaru in a way he couldn't explain.

The last trio stood farther off and weren't a trio, but a duo. Their Mist headbands gleamed under the torchlight. One of them was a man with hair like a rhino's horn and an eye patch. He bowed slightly.

"Ao." He said simply.

His companion seemed more social, and closer to his age with what looked like a bandage pair of giant scissors on his back.

"Chōjūrō. Team Mist. Acting representative of the Mizukage," he said.

Naruto looked around and scratched the back of his head.

"Wow, you guys all got here before us?" he asked.

"They were probably out on missions nearer Suna when they requested aid. Whereas we were in Konoha and requested by name." Kakashi said, amused.

Before Naruto could ask more, another figure stepped into the room — tall, red-haired, and wrapped in Kazekage's robes. He looked so much more at ease than last time Naruto had seen him.

"Welcome," Gaara said, his voice even. "Thank you all for answering the summons. If you would please come with me."

"Hey, Gaara!" Naruto grinned, raising a hand.

Gaara nodded, faintly.

"Naruto. Sakura. Kakashi. You're just in time. Jiraiya is already inside."

"Sensei is here?!" Naruto brightened.

They were led upstairs to a large room with a circular table. Half of it was already filled with elderly war hawks and advisors to rival the grouchiness of the elders in Konoha. And sure enough, Hiraiya was seated in the middle of the empty half.

He turned around when they came in and smiled at them, pulling out the chair next to him for Naruto to sit in, which he did.

Everyone else settled around the war table. Seals glowed on its surface, and above it, a scroll projector had already been activated — floating illusory diagrams of the crashed object, symbols, even rough sketches of the enemy. Naruto's stomach churned at the sight of them.

"Let's begin," Gaara said. "Two nights ago, this object — possibly a ship, possibly a weapon — entered our atmosphere and landed near our city. It was not a meteor. It adjusted course mid-descent."

An aide stepped forward, flipping scrolls to display crude field sketches of the creatures within.

Naruto leaned in.

The green-skinned monsters stared back at him with too-wide mouths and iron-filled fists. Their weapons looked like junk — scrap and pipes and motors welded together — but in the sketches, those weapons were shredding shinobi.

"We don't know what they are called. For now we are simply calling them the Aliens, for that is surely what they are." Baki said, stepping to Gaara's side. "They arrived ready for war."

"They didn't just fight," Tamari said, frowning. "They enjoyed it. Laughed through it. Took wounds that should've killed them and kept going. We've dealt with berserkers before. These aren't just insane. They're… infected with war."

Naruto tensed.

There was silence for a long moment.

"Can we kill them?" Omoi asked, almost too casually.

"Quite easily, actually," Gaara said. "Even Genin can outpace them in speed, though their strength and toughness are far greater than any expected. Their tactics were equally unexpected."

Kankuro stepped in.

"Had we known to expect firearms, none of us would have died to them. Had we known how strong they were, none of us would have died from trying to block blows with too little chakra. Had we known they could take fatal blows and were immune to pain, none of us would have died from switching targets after killing one that didn't realize it was dead for another ten seconds." He explained.

Kakashi hummed.

"I have seen exceptional Jonin die to Genin due to overconfidence or misjuding the enemies abilities." He said.

"Exactly. And that is why we lost so many good fighters." Gaara said. "So, we tell you this, when you fight them be prepared for firearms, make certain to do enough damage that they cannot continue fighting instead of merely slicing a vital artery and assuming they'll go down. I also recommend foregoing blocks in favor of dodging, which is easy because of how slow they are."

Naruto, realizing there was blank paper and pens places in front of him, started writing this down. The others followed his lead.

"We're requesting each village assign a forward team to our quarantine zone," Baki said. "We need eyes, jutsu specialists, researchers, and backup. No one has entered the wreck yet, but we're preparing for infiltration."

Jiraiya nodded.

"Intel's the top priority. Before we can win anything, we need to understand what just walked out of the stars."

Then came the noise.

A thud of hurried footsteps. A gasp.

The doors burst open, and a sand-nin sprinted in, eyes wide with disbelief.

"Sir!" he shouted. "You need to see this—now!"

The council surged after Gaara to the citadel balcony.

Outside, the desert had changed.

It was cooler. Still.

Naruto stepped forward, and for a moment, he couldn't tell what was falling from the sky. The flakes were drifting, like ash… but not ash. Snow?

No. It was green.

Soft, glowing flakes fell through the air like shimmering pollen, settling on armor and rooftops. It melted on contact, leaving no moisture — only a faint tingle.

Sakura caught one on her glove and held it up.

"Pollen?" she asked herself in a whisper. "No. Spores."

Gaara stared at the sky, voice like stone.

Jiraiya muttered under his breath.

"This is either a biological weapon, or just a contagion they brought along, either way it is an emergency." He said.

He turned to Sakura and she took her cue.

"Prepare antifungal washes and inhalants." She said as she removed her headband and wrapped it around her mouth. "Steroidal to be extra cautious.

Everyone else followed her lead in masking up.

After that, the world moved fast.

One moment, they stood on the citadel balcony beneath a sky snowing green. The next, Gaara's sand surged beneath their feet, forming flat, rippling platforms that lifted everyone into the air. The desert wind roared around them as a dozen flying islands of sand carved a path eastward — fast and smooth, yet steady enough for each village's representatives to remain standing.

Sakura held tight to Naruto's sleeve.

Ahead, the massive outer wall of Sunagakure rose into view — fortified, covered in defense seals, and already crowded with shinobi. Gaara's sand arced them over the battlements before gently depositing the delegation onto the highest tier.

Dozens of Suna ninja were already there, forming lines and rallying formations.

Then came the noise.

A deep crack — like a mountain snapping open.

Everyone turned east, looking towards the crash site.

The dunes several kilometers away began to tremble. A few moments later, they erupted like a volcano. Massive rents tore open in the sand like wounds, geysering dust and heat into the air.

From the craters poured monsters.

The first wave looked like shark mouths on legs — giant, jawed things waddling forward on stubby limbs, their maws filled with rows of crude metal teeth. Behind them swarmed hundreds of tiny, green-skinned humanoids barely the size of children. They carried jagged knives, clubs, and crude guns, screaming in impossibly high-pitched voices.

"They're smaller than the last ones," Temari said.

"That doesn't make them less dangerous," Kakashi said grimly.

Gaara narrowed his eyes.

"They're coming directly at the wall."

He moved to leap off the battlement — his sand already forming into a lift — but Naruto stepped forward, hand outstretched.

"Wait!"

Everyone froze.

Naruto turned to Gaara.

"If it were me… and I could dig through the ground to attack a village…"

He pointed toward the approaching enemy.

"…I wouldn't stop just outside the wall and let the enemy see me. Unless it was misdirection."

Gaara's eyes narrowed, following Naruto's line of thinking.

"I'd make them think I stopped there… while I actually kept going…" Naruto slowly turned, keeping his finger in a pointed gesture as he turned around.

His finger stopped — not at the walls, but at the center of the village.

"Right… there."

As the word left his mouth, the center of Sunagakure exploded.

A massive plume of earth and green flame erupted from beneath the city streets, showering rooftops in molten glass and debris. A horde of the creatures burst forth from the ground like a geyser — the same jawed monstrosities, followed by swarms of screaming gremlins.

Then another explosion tore through the market district. And another near the aviary. Then six more — all at once.

The city was under siege from within.

"They tunneled straight through," Kakashi said in disbelief.

Naruto's knuckles whitened.

Gaara stepped to the edge of the wall, sand swirling violently at his feet.

"They studied our defenses." he said. "More intelligent than they've let on.

And behind them, Sunagakure burned.

The explosions were still echoing when the shinobi turned to each other on the battlements, eyes sharp, jaws set.

There was no argument. No formal strategy. Only instinct — and the need to avoid getting in each other's way.

"I'll make clones and rescue people," Naruto said, already forming the hand sign.

"I'll bandage up everyone you bring me," Sakura replied, pulling her gloves tighter.

"I'll go out there and deal with the ones still approaching the wall," Gaara added, his sand rising beneath him like a living serpent. "Where no one will get in my way."

"We'll head to the crash site," Karui of the Lightning Team said, unsheathing her blades. "If they're prepping a second wave from there, we'll shut it down."

"Count on it," Omoi muttered beside her.

"We'll move to the underground entrances," Kitsuchi from the Stone Team said, adjusting his goggles. "Cave in their tunnels from below."

Mangetsu of the Mist gave a tight nod.

"We'll join you — flood the tunnels before you collapse them. Let's drown the rats before they surface."

Jiraiya was already flipping through a summoning scroll.

"I'll prepare the evacuation, but I need time. Civilians, academy kids, injured — get them to me so I can get them out."

Kakashi's eye narrowed.

"I'm heading to the streets. Wherever they're thickest — that's where I'll be."

He turned slightly, nodding to the Sand shinobi already arrayed behind him.

"They'll be joining me."

There was a pause as they digested what everyone else said. They had all spoken pretty much at once. It took them one heartbeat to process.

Naruto clapped his hands together.

"Brrrreak!"

And just like that, they all vanished — scattering like fire across the city.

The city was chaos.

Explosions roared across the rooftops. Screams echoed down the alleyways. The smell of blood and fire clung to every stone.

Naruto stood at the heart of the whirlwind — and he moved.

"Shadow Clone Jutsu!"

A hundred Narutos exploded into existence across the rooftops in a golden flash, each one already in motion.

"Clear the west streets!"

"Form a human wall at the outer market!"

"Evac route B is blocked — reroute through the academy courtyard!"

Clones scattered in every direction, barking orders, grabbing civilians, and mostly avoiding the combat in favor of rescue. The city might have been in ruins, but Naruto's will spread through it like wildfire.

One clone formed a Rasengan mid-run and drove it into the side of a horned creature as it charged down the street, its boar-thick skull already smokingt. The impact sent ichor flying, but not before the beast's jagged horn skewered the clone through the chest — it burst in a puff of smoke and gore.

Another clone caught sight of a civilian pinned beneath rubble, only to be tackled by a squat, oil-belching one of the creatures. The thing gurgled once — then spat a stream of black slime that ignited midair. The clone screamed as it vanished in flame, but not before another clone yanked the woman free and hauled her toward the triage line.

On the rooftops, several Narutos worked with sand shinobi redirecting their fire jutsu into the fungal towers erupting from chimneys and gardens. The towers screeched as they burned, splitting open and vomiting spores that clung like leeches to anything warm.

A Naruto clone spotted a cluster of Genin, covered in gook and blood from the dead enemies around them. They were trapped on a sagging footbridge and a bloated one of the creatures, balloon-like and pulsing, waddled into view below them. His view, not in their sight line.

It popped.

The explosion flattened two buildings and erased five clones mid-leap. The bridge collapsed. The real Naruto, breath tight, blurred forward and caught the first child out of the air before he hit the rubble. The other four did not make it, and this one was burned badly, screaming.

Elsewhere, a clone was ripped apart by a saw-jawed creature that flailed on stubby legs and left a trail of shredded masonry in its wake. It was only brought down when Kakashi hurled a lightning kunai through its bloated eye and a Naruto clone followed up with a Rasengan to its underbelly, splattering its acidic blood across the walls and onto swarms of little green humanoids who melted along with the clone.

Still more clones worked rooftop by rooftop — shoving civilians ahead of them, blocking passageways, and coordinating tunnel evacuations. Every time one clone was destroyed, another reappeared somewhere else, running, shouting and saving lives.

Naruto's chakra was thinning. He could feel it. But his clones fought like they had one soul. Or more accurately, didn't fight, and for that they were felled. This was fine. These aliens would get theirs when the civilians were out of the way.

And even as they carved paths of salvation through the chaos, the creatures didn't stop.

They just kept coming.

In the medical district, Sakura crouched beside a bloodied Chunin, hands glowing with chakra as she repaired a severed artery. Dust and screams filled the air.

"Pressure here!" she shouted to a Suna med-nin, who rushed to obey.

Dozens of makeshift cots had been set up in the remains of a stone plaza — now riddled with craters, half-sheltered by fallen statues and chunks of broken wall. The medical tent had already collapsed once and been propped up again.

A scream ripped through the tent's far side.

Something massive moved between the craters — a full-grown green brute, easily eight feet tall and coated in rusted armor and fungal residue. Its yellow eyes locked onto Sakura.

It charged, yelling its war cry.

Sakura stood, walked towards it and crouched low to ground herself.

"I'm working, you piece of shit!" She yelled.

Sakura let fury fill her bones and chakra flood her limbs. She punched forward with all her strength.

The monster evaporated. Its chest exploded into meat and vapor, its lower body folding like a dropped puppet.

Blood and viscera sprayed across the walls of the building, but Sakura didn't flinch.

Within seconds, she was back with the wounded as shinobi reestablished the safe zone with fresh squads of Suna shinobi.

She didn't stop moving. Not for a second. Even as a Naruto clone dropped off a Genin covered in black burns before leaping away.

"Stabilize this one — lung puncture," she ordered, slapping gauze onto a torn chest. "Burns are third degree — rinse it now or the chakra'll react wrong—next!"

As the fires began to die down, Naruto — the real one — stood atop a crumbling wall near the city's heart. The wind blew ash across his face.

The streets still smoldered. Buildings were broken or in the process of collapsing. The scent of spores lingered in the cracks. Another clone dispersed in a puff of smoke beside him from a bullet he didn't see and whose firing he couldn't hear over the cocaphony of similar sounds.

He crouched clenched his fists. The enemies numbers had thinned, but only in the immediate area. He saw the stone and mist ninja crawling out of the nearby hole that the creatures had been swarming out of and htey gave the all clear.

"We beat them… right?"

A shape landed beside him — Kakashi, one arm bloodied, the other wiping dust from his flak vest.

He didn't look at Naruto.

"No," Kakashi said softly. "We bought time."

The battle raged for hours, and the sun was hanging low.

From one end of the city to the other, explosions lit the sky, smoke clogged the alleys, and green corpses littered the streets like discarded toys. Fires hissed against mist jutsu. Earth walls shattered under waves of green invaders, small and large. The larger brutes had mostly fallen, but the smaller ones kept coming.

They didn't stop.

They didn't think.

They just charged.

Naruto wiped his forehead, panting. Even his clones were slowing now, dispersing faster than he could cast them.

A swirl of sand dropped onto the roof beside him, and Gaara collapsed to one knee, chest heaving.

"Every direction," he said. "Tens of thousands. All weak. All easily killed. But… replenishing."

He swayed. His eyes were bloodshot. His hands shook.

Naruto froze.

He'd gone out alone and fought like the world depended on it. And now…

"Gaara…" Naruto said quietly. "Don't tell me you were going all out? It's a marathon not a sprint!"

"I couldn't stop," Gaara murmured. "Not while they were spreading. And new ones grow from the corpses."

The rest of them had noticed that too and took to burning the bodies, but they seldom had time to do so before new swarms came in.

A crash echoed across the rooftops as Kakashi landed beside them, dragging a wounded Suna shinobi over his shoulder.

"The shinobi can hold," Kakashi snapped. "Hell, we could win. But the civilians? They're dying by the hundreds. We're out of time."

Gaara looked up.

"Go." he ordered.

"What?" Naruto asked.

"Evacuate the civilians. Gather the foreign delegates. I trust whatever plan Jiraiya is cooking up. Once everyone is gone, I'll stay behind and finish the job. Without risking collateral."

Naruto's instincts screamed to argue — but the logic was airtight. It was the best plan. The only plan.

"…Okay," he said. "We'll come back for you."

They ran.

Kakashi moved like a phantom, his Chidori carving through a line of the shark-mawed beasts with a screech of plasma. Naruto and his clones didn't bother with the mouths on legs, merely stomping on the small green men and avoiding the large enemies. They turned a corner to find a wall of the gremlin-sized ones forming an organized phalanx in front of a troupe of spear and bolo throwers. The wall of spears lunged at them, he shattered them all with a rasengan that blew away the spears and stones before they could reach them. Of the survivors, he backhanded two, kicked a third into a wall, and flattened the fourth with a sweep of his heel.

"These things really are pathetic," he muttered.

Naruto and his clones flanked him, flitting from one path to the next, dodging known tunnel openings and sending shadow clones down each to spread the word.

"Evacuate! All civilians! Evac route Bravo!"

"Medical tents to the storage zone!"

"Grab who you can and MOVE!"

From every alley, refugees emerged, ushered by clones and shinobi alike. Suna forces fell into step with them, shielding flanks, directing flow. They were tired. Bloodied. But alive.

They reached the central tower where the battle had first exploded — and found thousands of people already waiting, huddled in waves of fear and exhaustion.

Naruto's eyes widened at the sight beyond them.

Jiraiya stood at the far end of the courtyard, arms folded, surrounded by dozens of bull-sized toads. They were pale bellied and marked with summoning seals, their backs bristling with spots and scroll-pouches.

Naruto recognized them immediately.

Storage toads. Not fighters. Not scouts. They were tanks for filling.

Some of them could hold entire apartment buildings inside their bellies. Naruto understood the plan.

Around the plaza, Suna shinobi had formed a tight defensive ring. The outer streets burned, but this final checkpoint held fast.

They waited, tense.

He noticed that the trio of Lightning shinobi were already returned.

"What happened at the crash site?" He asked.

"They have vehicles." Said Samui. "Fast ones. Big ones. Armored ones. Ones with VERY big guns."

"We evacuated to the safety of Suna thinking we could better defend here and leave the desert to Gaara." Said the redhead whose name escaped him.

The stone trio and Mist duo arrived moments later — bruised, tired, but intact. The Mist shinobi carried waterlogged scrolls and smelled of blood. The Stone ninja were covered in dust, eyes filled with fury, but alive and unharmed.

The younger Mist-nin, blood streaking his cheek, stopped short and frowned.

"Wait. Why are we retreating? These things are pushovers!" he said.

Heads turned.

Kakashi was in front of him before he realized it.

"It's not about how strong they are," Kakashi said, voice low but sharp. "It's their numbers. You're so caught up in the fight you can't see the battlefield. We are overrun, and we are leaving."

The young man paled, visibly shrinking back. Even Naruto winced. He'd rarely heard that tone from Kakashi.

There were no more questions.

Jiraiya stepped forward, raising one hand.

"Everyone brace yourselves," he said. "This next part is gonna feel weird!"

Naruto noticed the bumps on his face, the horizontal slits on his irises, and the orange markings around his eyes. He'd only ever seen the man use that power once before and he didn't like that memory.

He nodded to the storage toads.

And then it began.

The toads opened their mouths and began swallowing.

Like vacuums, they inhaled crowds of civilians, shinobi, and even equipment. Screams echoed as people were pulled into slick gullets. The Shinobi did not resist, but the civilians would be potentially more traumatized by this than the horrors from the afternoon.

One after another, the toads swallowed group after group. Rrows of villagers, full squads of ninja, and entire carts of supplies, all went down smooth.

Only Jiraiya and Naruto remained standing once the toads had finished.

The air was thick with smoke and silence.

Jiraiya glanced at Naruto.

"You ready?" he asked.

Naruto nodded once.

The toads all slammed their webbed hands into the ground and performed the signs in perfect unison.

"Reverse Summoning Jutsu!" They yelled as one.

In a burst of smoke, they all vanished — dozens of storage toads, and every soul inside them, teleported far from the battlefield.

Jiraiya and Naruto were left behind.

"So..." Naruto said. "Shall we get to work?"

Jiraiya chuckled at him as the barriers around them were overrun.

A sheer wall of the enemies, every type of the mouths on legs, little green men and the proper big ones, charged at them from every direction. They screamed as one. It sounded like the word "WAR!" but there were consonants in there that didn't fit.

"Not right now kid. We need to get out of the way for Gaara. We're leaving too." He said.

Naruto looked at him, utterly unconcerned with the club wielding maniac seconds away from splattering him.

"How..." he tried to ask, but the answer revealed itself a second later.

He felt himself cease to exist, like his entire body evaporated into a smoke. A second later, he rematerialized somewhere completely different.

It was a tropical place. Bright morning sunlight shone through croissant-shaped hills and giant versions of plants he knew to be small and to favor ponds.

Far to the south of Sunagakure, high atop a jagged sandstone outcropping, a lone figure stood beneath the darkening sky.

A breeze tugged at his cloak. Dust curled at his boots. War raged before him.

Obito's lone Sharingan stared unblinking through the hole of his mask, tracking the distant plumes of smoke and flashes of combat that lit up the early night sky. The city still smoldered across the horizon. From this height and distance, Sunagakure looked like a broken sun — flickering, twitching, bleeding green.

He said nothing.

Behind him, a figure peeled out of the rock itself like flesh from bone.

The two-chromed venus flytrap spoke.

"So," the white half muttered, scratching his chin, "I don't know what we were expecting…"

"I came here with no expectations," Obito said. His voice was as dry as the wind. "And I am still… well, not disappointed. I don't know what I feel right now."

"Existential horror?" offered the black half.

"Completely and utterly baffled?" suggested the white.

Obito didn't answer at first.

Then he exhaled, the breath barely audible behind the mask.

"Lost," he said. "We now have to drop everything and readjust. As to what we're going to do—"

A sound split the dusk.

A roar.

Low and primal. Ancient.

They turned back toward the dying light. From the heart of the desert, a mountain rose. But it was no mountain.

Shukaku erupted from the sands with a howl of incandescent rage, his form half-shifting and shaking with elemental fury. Sand twisted around him like a cyclone. His chakra boiled the sky.

He rampaged through the remains of the green tide, smashing twisted towers of fungal growth, devouring beasts whole, shattering the dunes with his claws. He didn't roar at enemies. He roared at the world.

The three observers watched in silence.

"…I," Obito said slowly, "have no. Idea."

It's been two and a half days since Gaara shredded and buried thousands of orks beneath the sands. Anybody familiar with how fast they multiply underground, knows how huge of a mistake that was. And this is the result.

And yes, there are a few more advanced orcs inside of the crash site directing all of this. I'm sure you already guessed.

The shinobi could have stayed and won the battle, but Suna was completely lost. It is now an eternal battlefield. Things only get worse from here.

Chapter Text

Chapter 3:

Oil and Fire

"We barely had enough time to cast it on our end, Jiraiya-boy." Said the oldest, smallest toad Naruto had ever seen in his life. Save maybe the one next to him.

"We spent all afternoon preparing everything to your specification. The storage toads are waiting for your next order." Said the female one.

"Spit everyone out into the oil! Naruto, get clones ready to fish out anybody who can't swim." Jiraiya ordered.

Naruto formed the hand signs, and his clones were running to the lake as soon as they appeared.

The toads hopped to the edge of the lake of oil and began vomiting. First came the civilians — wide-eyed, blood-smeared, half-conscious and not expecting a cold dunk into the shinobi — coughing, limping, dragging injured comrades behind them.

It turns out, a lot of people who grow up in the desert don't know how to swim.

They hit the surface in heaps. Tumbled. Sank. And as per Jiraiya's orders, his closed dragged each of them out until the beach was covered in survivors. Each was slicked in thick yellow fluid that smelled of incense and mushrooms and something worse.

Sakura was one of the last out, and before his very eyes she removed her top and bra in a single motion.

"Sanitize everything!" Sakura bellowed, throwing her clothes back into the oil. "NOW!"

Naruto watched as she removed everything from her bottom half too and looked to Jiraiya for confirmation, only to find him already disrobed.

The rest of the refugees got with the program, stripping down until fully nude and so Naruto relented and do the same.

The ground shook just as he finally had the courage to do away with his boxers.

Giant toads arrived — towering temple guardians with spiked gauntlets and scrolls embedded in their foreheads. They lumbered to the edge of the crowd, huffing, and opened wide.

From their mouths came a controlled spray of toad acid — fresh from their stomach. The cleansing mix hissed and steamed as it struck the crowd. It burned. Not deep. But enough to hurt.

"Yeah, it stings, bare with it." Jiraiya said. "You're gonna have a mild sunburn for a few days."

Cries rang out but people continued to strip, tearing off tunics, armor, and boots as the acid flared against their skin. Bags were flung. Weapons discarded. The oil burned off in visible tendrils of green and black smoke.

The stripped clothing and gear were hurled back into the pool. The only things they kept were wagons with what looked like large water tanks on top. They were then ushered away from the beach.

And then — with reverence and timing — one of the elder toad made hand signs and belched the smallest fireball Naruto had ever seen.

FWOOM.

The pool ignited, the sacred oil torching upward in a great fireball that painted the evening morning sky. Spores, fabric, and every remaining trace of the infestation burned to ash.

Jiraiya stood at the edge of the flames, completely nude, arms crossed, eyes narrow. He was thinking. Surrounded by nude people, including the bodacious Samui, and he was deep in thought. He never knew his sensei knew how to turn it off.

He lifted a scroll and slammed it down.

POOF.

A hundred messenger toads burst into being, each one with scroll pouches and urgency already in their stance.

"Go!" Jiraiya barked. "Tell every Kage, every Daimyō, every village leader on the continent what happened here! Tell them to send fire shinobi — dozens! Hundreds! I want the entire desert turned to glass!"

The toads bowed. Then vanished, one after another.

Jiraiya turned and began walking off toward the mountain path, still completely bare, still issuing commands to junior toads and quartermasters in the distance. One final spray of acid misted his back, scrubbing away the last of the contamination.

"I'll be right back. Do not leave this area." Jiraiya ordered.

He then performed the hand signs for the reverse summoning jutsu and vanished.

The air calmed. The bonfire at their back burning bright and hot.

What remained of the survivors stood in the twilight breeze, smoking slightly, their nerves raw and clothes gone.

His cheeks burned red.

He tried not to look as Sakura approached. But he'd already seen the tuft of pink hair down below and two perfect brown discs against pale, flawless ivory skin.

She seemed completely composed. She was leaning forward with her hands clasped behind her back — a position which, Naruto couldn't help but notice, only further emphasized everything he was desperately trying not to notice as he looked everywhere except at here.

She tilted her head with a smile.

"What? Not even a peek?" she teased. "Some student of Jiraiya you are."

He felt himself redden. He wanted to say he'd already gotten more than a peak when she first stripped down but kept that thought to himself.

She glanced down and smirked.

"I can see that you at least want to look."

Naruto immediately sat down and pulled his knees to his chest — arms wrapped tight, body hunched, like he was cold. Having a public erection was bad enough with clothes on, but this was humiliating.

Sakura laughed — not cruelly, but amused — and finally relented.

She stepped behind him, still barefoot on the mossy stone, and sat with her back pressed to his.

Facing away.

Letting him breathe.

He exhaled, slow and grateful. Little him did not calm down, not with a fully nude Sakura sitting behind him with her back pressed to his. But he tried.

They were like that for a few moments before hordes of smaller toads, all female, entered the clearing and hopped around them with quiet dignity. They offered woven robes crafted from lotus petals and magnolia leaves, cinched with strips of bark and spider silk.

Naruto took one and quickly put it on.

No sooner did he do so than did Jiraiya's voice echo through the clearing.

"Alright! I have good news and bad news." He said.

But when Naruto looked up, he saw a hairless man in a hospital gown flanked by people in hazmat suits.

"Good news is we'll all be leaving here today. The bad news is we're all getting buzz cuts and we'll be doing some medical procedures that none of you will enjoy. Or at least I hope not." Jiraiya said.

Naruto and Sakura both looked at each other, and their eyes trailed to each others hair. Sakura lifted up a petite hand and plucked something from his hair. She held it in front of him so he could see what it was. A single green spore.

And so, the shaving began. And it was thorough. Men and women were lined up towards two different, hastily raised tents. They went in with hair and came out bald. It wasn't until Naruto went in until he discovered they were removing ALL of the body hair, and that the medical nin insisted on doing it themselves. First with clippers, then with chakra enhanced razor blades.

The single most humiliating moment of his life had happened not ten moments earlier, and it was already supplanted by this new one.

With that done they were rubbed down with antifungal powder and handed inhalers.

"Keep sucking on that until it runs out." Said a med nin. "It should last until moment."

Naruto took a deep puff and almost choked on it. It tasted like battery acid! But it felt like a cup of coffee.

After that they were made to walk single file through an area with four people without Hazmats. It wasn't until he was up close that he recognized them.

"Hinata?" He asked. "Shino! Kiba! Where do you guys get off growing so much taller? And wow, Kurenai. You haven't aged a day since I last saw you."

"Jiraiya trains you well." Kurenai said with a bashful smile.

Ah, the rare lady who at least pretended to be flattered.

"Naruto..." Hinata said, ever the quiet one. "We have to check you to make sure no spores or worse got into you."

She then activated her Byakugan without warning and Naruto flinched away, instinctively covering his groin.

Hinata burst out laughing, louder than he'd ever heard from her before. She did her best to stifle the laughter with her hands.

"Naruto!" Hinata gasped through her giggles. "I have the byakugan. I've seen you naked many times. I've seen everyone naked. Every time I use it."

Naruto blanched.

"Right. Duh. It's just, you're always so pure and sweet that I feel bad about anything indecent around you." He admitted.

He couldn't quite place the look she gave him, but it made him feel things. Things he also couldn't place. Her lips slightly parted, her eyes vulnerable, and cheeks flushed. Flattered maybe?

She averted her gaze.

"I, um. I need to look you over." She repeated, reactivating her byakugan.

He held still in a t-pose as she looked him over while Kiba and Akamaru, who Naruto registered was now a wolf, sniffed him over.

"He's clean." Kiba said.

Hinata nodded her agreement.

Naruto turned to Shino.

"Do you have to check me over next?" He asked.

"No. I'm here for where somebody is found to be unclean." He said in a way that made Naruto fearful for his life. "Why you ask? Because when somebody is found with spores in their wounds my insects can burrow in and remove the infected flesh."

His explanation made the vague threat even more terrifying. Kurenai took pity on him.

"Relax Naruto. I sedate them first. We've only had a few and it was all shallow wounds." She promised. "Now keep up with the inhaler and be on your way."

He recalled the device in his hand and put it back to his mouth. The second time inhaling that crap was just as bad as the first.

"Good luck Naruto. See you soon." Hinata said.

He waved goodbye to her through his coughing fit.

He walked out of the small clearing, noticing jars full of mold covered beetles being examined by more hazmat wearing medical nin as he did so.

So even Shino's beetles couldn't handle the spores. Hopefully his creepy friend didn't run out of them.

It was nearing nighttime again when it was all said and done and Naruto was knackered. He sat down near the still burning lake of oil next to a bald man with an eye patch.

"Hey Ao." Naruto said.

"Huh?" The man beside him said, confused.

Naruto recognized the voice, but not the face.

"Kakashi!" Naruto said.

He recalled that he hadn't spotted his sensei for the entirety of the day, and realized now he must have ditched his mask and headband very first thing. With the oil taming his gravity defying hair he would not have possibly recognized him. With that hair gone? Doubly so.

"You seem surprised. Did you think I didn't have a face?" He asked.

Naruto drank in his master's real face. It was about what he expected the man to look like. Save for one blemish.

"I wasn't expecting the beauty mark." He said, pointing to the mole near his chin.

Kakashi smiled.

They were quiet after that, waiting for the last of the work to be done. It was well and truly night once it was. The crowds of survivors, all however many thousand of them, were all seated and barely conscious. When the leaf medical ninja came with sleeping mats and blankets, they all sighed in relief, but they were not handed out until Jiraiya had the last word.

"In the morning, we start getting everybody one last check up then getting you out of here." He said. "Through toad travel again. Leaf, Stone, Lightning and Mist Shinobi first. Then sand. Noncombatants will have to walk. It's a long journey."

There was mixture of groans and sighs of relief. Groans of people who didn't want to walk. Sighs from people who didn't want to be eaten by toads again. Naruto could relate to both.

But his real frustration is that he was here, and he wanted to be in the fight. With Gaara.

Asuma Sarutobi brushed the last of the clippings off his shoulders, his bare scalp still tingling from the shock of the clippers. His head felt lighter. Exposed. Vulnerable.

Around him, every other shinobi being deployed was being fitted with the same uniform: skin-tight tan jumpsuits, full facial masks, and thick gloves. The red insignia of the Leaf was emblazoned across their backs and chests in oil-based paint, bright against the neutral fabric. It was the opposite of camouflage — but they weren't here to hide.

They were here to burn. Each and every one of them was a fire or wind style specialist.

They approached the transportation point. There, standing in front of a giant blue slug, was Tsunade and the FTG trio. The three students of the fourth Hokage, trained in the use of his teleportation technique.

Each and every one of them was handed a smaller version of that same slug which they stuffed into their shirts for it to latch onto them like leaches.

Tsunade waited for them to gather, her eyes sharp, coat flapping in the wind.

"You will arrive with injuries," she said flatly. "The Flying Thunder God technique has never been used like this — mass, long-range, with non-volunteers. You'll feel it. Katsuyu will do her best to keep you from dying."

She pointed to the slug fragment on her shoulder with her thumb.

"She'll also serve as a relay. She will relay to me and everyone else any information that needs relaying. Coordinate through her. You get separated; you yell. Someone will come for you."

No one nodded. They just understood.

Behind Tsunade, Genma, Raido and Iwashi adjusted glowing kunai in holsters strapped to their thighs — each inscribed with the Fourth Hokage's original formula. The Flying Thunder Corps, they were called now if the words on their chests were any indication. His last students. Apprentices in everything but name.

They didn't speak. They just had everyone walk single file into the circle and did their thing. One by one they vanished. Teleported hundreds of kilometers in an instant.

Asuma landed with a scream. He felt a sharp pain in his spine, and most of his limbs.

"Hang on." Katsuyu said in her soothing voice. "I will stabilize you."

The pain faded, probably from some toxin the slug released, and he felt the odd sensation of healing chakra flowing through him, stitching his numb body back together while he got on task.

He surveyed his surroundings.

The forward staging zone lay just outside the twisted remnants of Sunagakure's border, a cracked saltpan clearing where tents had been thrown up in organized chaos. It had once been forested — sparse desert woods, but alive.

Now?

A green fog hung low in the air like rot-scented soup. The ground glistened wet where the spores had congealed. Trees bent under their own weight; their bark already blistered with fungal tumors the size of fists. Veins of green-black mycelium crept up trunks like a disease made visible.

The sound was worst of all. Not screams. Not gunfire. Just… breathing.

The first wave of evacuees dropped out of space with howls of pain, their jumps sloppy and near-fatal. Bodies hit sand and stone with thuds, limbs twitching, chakra burned from the strain of dimensional folding.

Med-nin, the shinobi sent before him, surged forward, already slathering salves and funneling green chakra through trembling limbs. Katsuyu fragments swelled and hissed as they reknit muscle and nerve endings.

Then another flash — and another group dropped in. And another.

The pain was expected. The peace was not.

There were no enemies. Not the green giants, not the green midgets, and not the myriad of mouths on legs they had been warned about. There was no fight to be had yet. But everything else was already infected.

Asuma stared across the mist-choked treeline. He sighed at the ruination of the beautiful forest he loved so much. He sighed because the other option was to weep.

He lit a cigarette and brought it to his mouth — and immediately thunked it against the mesh of his faceplate.

He sighed again. Right. Inhalation of spores was not acceptable.

He waited a few moments for an acceptable number of shinobi to be

"Burn the forest down."

Dozens of fire shinobi stepped forward — some already priming their chakra, others mid-seal.

They were not quiet.

They did not hesitate.

And when the jutsu released, the world became light.

At the southern border between the Land of Rain and the edge of the Great Desert, the Animal Path of Pain landed with a soft thump on cracked earth. The air was still dry here — brittle and silent — but it carried the faintest tang of something wrong.

He moved quickly, running through the hand signs of the summoning seal and slamming one palm to the ground.

In an instant, seven figures surrounded him — the remaining Paths of Pain, the stoic form of Konan, and Nagato himself, cocooned inside his mechanical throne, suspended by cables and steel limbs.

The spores had not yet reached this far. But they would soon.

A wall of humid pressure rolled in as Nagato's chakra flooded the region. The cracked sands quivered. Dust trembled. Deva Path stepped forward, barefoot, the wind of his own presence rippling outward.

Behind him, Konan hovered like a silent wraith, wings of razor-edged paper catching the thermal winds.

At his side, a spiral of warped space twisted into being — and Obito stepped out of the void.

"They're not like anything you've seen," Obito said without greeting. "They breed like Zetsu. You don't kill them — you contain them. Think of it as a plague. A plague that fights back."

Konan's voice was soft, but firm.

"What course of action do you recommend? What is our top priority?"

Obito didn't hesitate.

"Shukaku is handling the fighters — for now. Our concern is the spread. The 's what we stop."

Deva Path gave a short nod and moved forward, performing the seals for the Rain Tiger at Will technique.

Above them, the sky darkened. The cloud banks over Amegakure migrated southward in an unnatural formation — massive storm systems drawn along like beasts on a leash. Heavy droplets began to fall across the borderlands, sizzling faintly on the sand.

"That ought to do it," Obito said.

Pain did not respond immediately. His Rinnegan eyes swept the horizon, measuring invisible variables.

"What of the others?" he asked.

"I've already deployed Deidara and Sasori to the western flank of the desert," Obito replied. "I'll retrieve the rest. All missions are canceled. Their only job now is containment."

It made sense. With no major nation bordering the western edge of the desert, it was logical for the Akatsuki to fill the gap.

Pain turned slightly toward Konan.

"Return to the Village. Deploy everyone here," he ordered. "Leave only a skeleton crew — just enough to keep Amegakure running."

Konan nodded silently and took to the air, her wings expanding as she disappeared in a flurry of drifting sheets.

Moments later, Zetsu rose from the earth.

Only his mouth moved.

"Shukaku's only clearing what's on the surface," he said. "But they're spreading beneath the sand. Burrowing. Feeding. Mutating."

That was most unwelcome news.

Orochimaru hummed quietly to himself as he leafed through the latest report from Guren, fingers tapping against the table like a metronome. Her handwriting was getting sharper. Less petulant. Progress.

"Cursed seal survivability improving. Adverse mutations down. Compliance stable. Morale low."

Predictable.

He sipped from a porcelain cup of herbal tea, clicked his tongue in disapproval, and made a small note in the margins:

"Sedate and re-educate. Apply music therapy."

Then came the unexpected sound.

Ribbit.

A squat, familiar shape landed on the windowsill — squat body, bug eyes, bright orange skin. A messenger toad.

Orochimaru stared at it for a moment before letting it in.

Jiraiya's little amphibian telephone. This was the one line of communication they kept open with each other. They usually used it to exchange chess moves or gloat over small moral victories.

This one hopped toward him and croaked again.

Orochimaru arched a single thin eyebrow.

The toad opened its mouth.

"Alien invasion. No, not a joke. The entire Land of Wind is as good as gone. Send help. All you can send."

The image crackled and vanished.

The toad gave a last, dismissive ribbit before it disappeared in a puff of smoke.

Silence reclaimed the room.

Orochimaru blinked slowly.

He looked at the tea. Then at the window.

Then slapped himself across the face.

Hard.

Still awake.

He smacked his lips. Rubbed his tongue across his teeth. He didn't taste any toast, so he wasn't having a stroke.

He stood up, paused, then drew in a long, slow breath.

"KABUTO!"

I have to admit, I'm both annoyed and impressed by how you guys keep guessing the next parts of the story. I left out the part where Jiraiya told Naruto that he reverse summoned directly into the containment ward of Konoha hospital because I thought it would break the flow, but I want to assure you no spores escaped that room and Konoha is safe... For now.

This chapter was a breather after the all out violence that preceded it and will proceed it.

Thanks as always to my patrons and commissioners. And to fans leaving feedback.

Chapter Text

Chapter 4:

Bulwarks

Naruto sat cross-legged on a mossy rock as a toad handed him a steaming cup of bitter tea and a rectangular ration pack. Around him, the survivors stirred — shinobi and civilians alike unwrapping their identical breakfast boxes, silent save for the occasional groan.

Naruto dug in, the dry chalklike food doing nothing to satisfy, though it was better than the insect soup the toads tried to offer them.

He ate with gritted teeth, his thoughts on the battlefield and the excitement welling up in him. With it came anger at his failures in Sunagakure, the lives he could not save, the enemies he left standing because he was focused on evacuation.

These thoughts fled him when a soft voice interrupted his reverie.

"Um... Naruto?" He heard Hinata ask.

He turned around to see the quiet girl holding a steaming bowl in two hands, her body language the picture-perfect definition of hesitant.

"I, um… thought you might want something warm," she said shyly, lifting a container of ramen.

Only as she remove the paper from the top could Naruto smell the unmistakable aroma of pork broth.

"You're amazing," he blurted out as he accepted the bowl.

He placed it into his lap only for Hinata to offer him a soup spoon and a pair of chopsticks, which he also accepted. She was beaming the entire time.

"I have to go now; we're preparing for a last medical examination of everyone." Hinata said.

"Alright. See you there!" Naruto told her.

She made to leave but paused.

"And Naruto?" She told him.

"Hmm?" Naruto said, mouth full of noodles.

"Please don't fight too recklessly." Hinata pleaded. "You only just got back to Konoha and I didn't get the chance to see you. I want you to come back for good when this is over... and that means alive."

He laughed so hard at her concern that he nearly choked. The next words out of his mouth were sheer hubris, but he meant every word.

"You don't need to worry about me. Recklessness is what gets me through the fights, and I always come out on top!" He told her.

His words seemed to only make her look more worried, but she smiled all the same before leaving.

As she left, she passed by Sakura, who looked between the bowl of ramen Naruto was eating and the shy girl before giving the latter a vicious glare. Hinata kept her head down as she passed her.

Naruto didn't even want to know what that was all about.

Once Hinata was gone Sakura turned her anger on him.

"We have to get ready to leave." His bald teammate said.

Later, once the tea was drained and the toads had finished cleaning up, Jiraiya stood near the still-smoldering lake of oil and clapped his hands for attention.

"Alright! We're moving out."

He pointed at the assembled teams — Leaf, Stone, Lightning, and Mist.

"Each group is being taken to a border of Suna. I'll be personally escorting you. Each team will also be accompanied by one of Naruto's shadow clones."

Naruto blinked.

"Why?" he asked dumbly.

Jiraiya glanced at Kakashi. They exchanged a look. A weird one.

"So those clones can make more clones," Jiraiya said, "and cover more ground. Spread wider, faster. And more importantly—share information."

"Share information? Wouldn't hawks be faster?" Naruto asked.

Kakashi gave him that you sweet idiot look.

"Shadow clones return their memories when dispelled," he said. "To you. And to every other clone currently active. You didn't know that?"

Naruto scratched his head.

"You know what, I think I noticed that… but it never clicked. So, what—you're saying if a clone hears something important, it can just… poof, and I know it?"

"Well," Kakashi said, "it should make another clone first to replace itself, then poof. Instant field intel. Every front. Across a continent. Only you can do this."

Naruto stared at his hands, slowly connecting the dots. This wasn't just multi-tasking. This was something bigger.

The teams lined up in front of their toads, fully armed with tanks of antifungal sprays. Armor donned. Hair shaved. Faces hidden.

But before anyone moved, Team Kurenai stepped forward — flanked by the same squad of medical-nin in full hazmat gear.

"No one leaves until you're cleared one more time," Kurenai said. Her voice was kind, but firm. "Visual and chakra-based scans. We wand no spores. No root infections. No surprises."

They had Naruto and Jiraiya go first.

Hinata activated her Byakugan, her eyes glowing faintly as she moved swiftly between groups. Shino stood off to the side with fresh jars. Kiba and Akamaru sniffed them from head to toe.

Nobody dared complain. They'd seen what the fungus could do, so none dared accuse anybody of an overabundance of caution.

"Clear," Hinata called.

"They're all clean." said Kiba

Only then did Jiraiya clap his hands together.

He gestured for Naruto to follow, stepping off to the side while the rest of the four teams got checked over.

A few moments later, Kakashi joined them.

"Listen, kid," Jiraiya said. "You're not going with them."

"What?"

"You're staying here. Escort the civilians once we're ready. Your clones go with the other teams." he explained.

Jiraiya rolled out a crude scroll map. It showed the Land of Wind and its borders with Mist, Leaf, Stone, and the western edges. Four red arrows pointed outward, drawing a ring around the territory.

"I'll go with the Mist team to the southern border," he explained. "You send a clone with us. Once there, the clone makes two more and sends them east and west."

"Then the Leaf team to the eastern border," Kakashi continued. "Same deal — clone goes with, splits into three and two go north and south."

"Stone border after that, north, same thing. Then finally the western edge with the Lightning shinobi."

Naruto blinked.

"That covers the whole desert."

"Exactly," Jiraiya said. "You won't be moving. They will."

"But… why aren't you just summoning them around like before?"

Jiraiya exhaled and rubbed his neck.

"Because I'm wiped out," he said. "Kid, I haven't recovered from pulling several thousand people out of a war zone in under a minute."

Naruto looked closer and finally saw it — the sagging posture, the dryness around Jiraiya's eyes, the slight tremble in his chakra. The old man had been hiding it. But not well.

Naruto scratched his head, looking over the map.

"So… after I send clones with every team, I just hang out here? And then what—escort the refugees back to civilization on foot?"

Jiraiya barked a short laugh.

"Not a chance, kid. You realize how far out we are?"

Naruto blinked.

"It's a one-month trip for shinobi," Jiraiya said. "We're over 2,500 kilometers from anything resembling human infrastructure. You're not walking anyone anywhere."

That explained why it had been morning here, but early evening in Suna when they first arrived.

"So… then how do they get back?"

"You wait," Jiraiya said. "You rest. Recharge. Once we've established and confirmed safe refugee camps, you reverse summon yourself to them."

Naruto's eyes widened.

"…and then I summon the others there."

"Exactly. One toad-sized evacuation route at a time. You're the bridge, kid." Jiraiya said.

"We'll also be staying behind with you." Kakashi said. "Sakura and I."

That would make the wait significantly more bearable.

The ocean waves beat softly against the southern edge of the Sunagakure desert, their gentle rhythm a mocking contrast to the chaos farther north. On a rocky bluff overlooking the coastline, Mizukage Mei Terumī stood behind her forward division.

She watched as the Genin and Chunin dug trenches a few hundred meters inland, to avoid

She surveyed the dunes in silence. There was no sign of the enemy here yet — no spores, no movement — but they all knew it was only a matter of time.

A sudden BOOM of displaced air cracked the silence, followed by a brief swirl of chakra-laced smoke.

A bald man appeared atop the bluff, a little winded, but upright. It was only his clothes that clued her into his identity.

"Jiraiya?" She called out.

"Whew… alright. Hey Mei. You made good time." he told her.

"Sea travel is faster than land travel." She told him. "Are you by yourself?"

He shook his head.

"I brought the vanguard." He told her.

Jiraiya bit his thumb, formed the seals, and slammed his palm down.

A massive toad erupted from the summoning circle — round-bellied, scroll-banded, and already gagging.

Moments later, it spat three shinobi onto the sand like water from a burst dam. All fo them were as bald ad Joraiya. A boy in orange, and two people who she also only recognized by their clothes.

"Ao? Chojuro?" She called out.

They both stood up at attention.

"Ma'am. Ready for debriefing." They said as one.

She motioned for them to wait.

The boy in orange formed a hand seal and created two shadow clones. They were running the second they poofed into existence in opposite directions. Charging east and west along the coastline.

Mei raised an eyebrow at the sight and turned to Jiraiya.

Jiraiya wiped his brow before explaining.

"That is my protege. He is to make shadow clones and spread them out, so they can share information instantly when they pop. One dies, and every other clone — and the original — knows what it saw."

She nodded.

"So, we just update the clone, and it spreads to every front?" she surmised.

"Exactly. And vice versa. If something new happens on the eastern, western, or northern lines — you'll hear about it before the hour is out." Jiraiya assured her.

She looked the young boy over. He was sizing her up too. It wasn't until his eyes drifted to the hat on her head that recognition dawned on him

"And does the protege have a name?" She asked in her sultryest voice.

The boy seemed oblivious to her attempt at teasing because he stood at attention and actually saluted her.

"Naruto Uzumaki, future Hokage, at your service ma'am. I look forward to working with you when I eventually claim the title." He said without a hint of humor. "And during the fights to come."

Jiraiya grinned, then turned serious.

"I need to know your plan."

Mei gestured toward the desert, where her teams were already forming ranks.

"We're digging a swale — trench and embankment — all the way across the southern border. Once it's finished, we'll fill it with saltwater and bleach."

Jiraiya raised an eyebrow.

"And then we'll cast wide-field Mist Jutsu, spreading a toxic cloud northward. If any spores drift this way, they'll choke before they hit sand."

Jiraiya let out a low whistle.

"Good plan. Defensive, chemical, sensory — covers most bases."

"I know," Mei said dryly. "That's why it's mine."

He chuckled, then pointed to the Naruto clone.

"Feed him everything. Reports, sightings, theories — all of it." He clarified his earlier instructions.

She rolled her eyes but nodded.

"Agreed. If even a single spore hits the ocean…"

"The world dies in weeks," Jiraiya finished.

They stood in silence a moment, watching the waves. Then he clapped his hands together.

"Alright. Three more drops to make. Don't let the tide turn green."

With that, Jiraiya vanished in a puff of smoke, leaving the clone behind, where he waited patiently.

She turned on her subordinates.

"Now. About that debriefing."

The forest was nothing but flame, a towering inferno licking at the sky like the breath of a dying god. Charred trees crackled and collapsed; the underbrush was reduced to black sludge beneath a carpet of ash.

Asuma stood at the tree line, hands clasped in a sign before releasing another gust of Smoke Style: Contaminant Push. The dark haze billowed outward in a roiling surge. Every eddy of soot he directed swept southward, into the desert's embrace, where the burning sands consumed it like a furnace starved of fuel.

Beside him, Ibiki was crouched low, two fingers pressed to the damp soil. His jutsu was a subtler one—Mist Binding Technique—a cooling vapor that kissed the ash midair and condensed it just enough to weight the spores down. They sank sluggishly to the ground, dense and clumping, no longer free to drift on the wind like silent death.

"We need this to work," Ibiki growled, sweat rolling down the side of his temple, mixing with the ash on his skin. "Or this whole forest becomes a corridor for the invasion."

"We've bought time," Asuma said, biting down on the last cigarette he would burn today. "Now we trap the bastards in it."

They moved quickly. The chūnin and jōnin behind them had already begun carving trenches into the soil with chakra-enhanced tools and earth release techniques. Tripwires were strung between charred trunks. Paper bombs were buried in clusters. Clones moved without orders now, digging, laying traps, shaping the terrain to bleed green.

Asuma exhaled a long plume of smoke, watching it rise and drift. Somewhere beyond the smoke curtain, the desert raged. Shukaku howled. And still the spores came.

A sudden splash rang out behind Asuma, and Jiraiya appeared mid-step—only to immediately double over, coughing violently as the acrid haze clawed at his throat.

"Damn it—!" he wheezed, waving the smoke from his face. "What the hell are you burning out here?"

Asuma raised a hand.

"Cease smoke flow!"

The Smoke Style users dispersed their hand signs, and the thick black curtain began to thin as the wind carried it south. Jiraiya straightened slowly, eyes watering, and gave a raspy chuckle.

"Thanks for that."

Asuma came up and did his best to waft the smoke away from his elder. He used a very weak wind jutsu, one providing a mere gust.

Jiraiya stepped forward and dropped into a crouch, pressing one hand to the charred earth.

"Time to make our drop."

A large storage toad exploded into being with a cloud of steam. It blinked once, then spewed out a cascade of bodies onto the ash-strewn soil.

Kurenai, Naruto, Hinata, Shino, and Kiba all tumbled out, soaked and sputtering from the abrupt exit.

"Ugh—it's like breathing a campfire!" Kiba hacked, brushing soot from his arms.

Naruto stood quickly, already forming hand signs through the haze. Two clones puffed into place and darted off — one north, one south — with barely a glance.

"We're in place," the original Naruto muttered, wiping his brow.

Asuma approached, one hand resting on the hilt of his trench knives.

"What's the plan?"

Jiraiya motioned toward the new arrivals.

"Clones at every major border. We're setting up a relay network — intel travels instantly between clones and back to Naruto. He's the only one who can do it."

Asuma gave a slow nod, already processing logistics.

"And what does everybody else need of us?"

"We're distributing them across the region," Jiraiya said. "Hyūga for internal and underground detection, Inuzuka for scent tracking, and Aburame to clear spores off of wounds and gear. We want them embedded with every village's forces, not clumped together."

"Smart," Asuma said. "We've already set up staging zones for the rest of Konoha's forces. We'll sort assignments as soon as we've regrouped."

He looked skyward, watching the smoke trails spiral into the atmosphere.

"The rest of Konoha will be here within hours. Had to leave in waves."

Then, quieter, "Where are Kakashi and Sakura?"

Naruto glanced at him, a faint smile forming under the soot on his cheeks.

"They're hanging back with the real me," he said. "Until it's time for us all to come home."

Asuma just nodded, then turned back to the flames.

The fire still roared at their backs, but the smoke had thinned enough to speak clearly. Asuma stepped up beside Jiraiya and Naruto, arms crossed, his expression unreadable.

"This'll hold the line," he said, voice low. "But only while the fire does. Once the fuel's gone, the spores will come back—carried west on the winds."

Naruto frowned.

"So, we're buying time but not stopping it."

"Exactly," Asuma said. "We need a way to cut them off at the center — stop the infection in Sunagakure itself before it spreads again."

Hinata's voice cut through the grim haze.

"It looks like… someone's already doing that." She said.

She stood rigid, Byakugan active, staring westward past the trees and smoke. Her eyes shimmered faintly, focused far beyond what the others could see.

Kurenai turned sharply.

"What do you see, Hinata?"

"There's a storm coming in from the northeast. Heavy rainfall. But it's not natural—it's full of chakra. A lot of it."

"Artificial weather?" Kiba asked. "Who the hell can pull that off?"

Jiraiya's brows knit tightly.

"That's jutsu on a level we don't see outside of legends. Either the Village Hidden in the Rain just revealed they've got the Three-Tails, or…"

"Or they've pulled together hundreds of shinobi," Shino said flatly. "Enough to cast a collaborative weather spell."

Jiraiya nodded.

"The Mizukage is planning something similar on the southern line. A bleach-laced mist to kill the spores in the air."

Naruto scratched the back of his head.

"Maybe we should send someone over and tell them to seed their rainclouds with chlorine too? Get the same effect?"

"Later," Jiraiya said, already forming hand signs. "First we finish the mission. That rain alone will keep the spores grounded once the wall of fire dies down."

He glanced at the group — Kurenai, the specialists, Naruto's clone — and gave a tight smile.

"Good work. Keep the line."

With a flash of smoke, the toad sage vanished once more — leaping to the next edge of the storm.

High above Sunagakure, Obito emerged from a spiral of warping chakra onto unsteady, rain-slicked feathers. Thunder cracked overhead. The sky wept in sheets. Wind howled from every direction, spiraling violently around a massive bird-shaped summon. Its wings spread wide like the storm's conductor.

Atop its back sat Nagato, cradled within his mechanical throne, eyes closed in grim focus. The Six Paths of Pain stood in a ring around him, each facing outward, arms raised, hands clasped in unison as they channeled the storm.

Rain fell upward, sideways, down in whirlpools of chakra-laced pressure.

Obito stepped lightly across the slick hide of the bird, the wind tugging at his cloak.

"How is Shukaku holding up?" he asked without preamble.

"Not well," Nagato replied, his voice distant, strained. "He is directly below us now, but I doubt he will last through the night. He's been raging nonstop and is starting to t ire out."

Obito folded his arms.

"Should he collapse, retrieve Gaara. Take him to safety to recover. Not for extraction."

Nagato nodded slowly.

"Understood. I will cease the storm come morning and allow the sun to evaporate the moisture. The moisture in the air during the day should stop the spores, and Tomorrow night, I will resume the storm."

Tactical. Obito approved. Rain by night, mugginess by day. Minimal chance of spores spreading, and just enough for Pain to recover.

Sunagakure would be a tropical jungle by the end of this war.

"Excellent," Obito said. "I'll inform the others."

He vanished into a spiral of darkness.

Far to the west, the desert stretched into a vast, broken field of dunes and fractured plateaus of verdent grasses and trees. Puppets—hundreds of them—stood motionless in a deadly lattice, spaced hundred-meter intervals apart.

Obito emerged beside Sasori, who waited with arms folded and face half-hidden in shadow. His cloak rippled like a banner in the heated wind.

"Pain will maintain the storm through the night," Obito said. "And retrieve the Kazekage once Shukaku collapses. Spores will only move during daylight hours and even then, not well."

Sasori didn't reply. His gaze shifted slightly.

"What of—" he began, then paused.

Something was behind them.

Obito turned.

There, no more than twenty meters away, stood a broad-shouldered man with a bald head, back turned, completely unaware—or uncaring—of the two watching him.

With a flick of his hand, the man formed seals and slapped the ground. A summoning seal bloomed beneath him.

Obito's eye narrowed at the creature that arrived.

A storage toad. He had not seen one since his old master had used it in the third great war. There were only two people that could do it.

From its gullet, it spat out four bald figures. Two were young women, two were young men. He recognized the one in orange instantly, the three others wore clothes identifying them as belonging to the land of lightning.

Obito recognized the last one instantly.

"Okay," the bald man began. "You four lock down this section and—"

"Uh, Jiraiya?" Naruto said, blinking and pointing directly behind him.

The legendary sage turned.

There stood Obito and Sasori, side by side.

Jiraiya stared at them in silence for a beat, eyes narrowing. Rain and wind lashed the edge of the plateau.

Obito raised a hand casually.

"Good evening, Jiraiya." Obito said.

"Good evening, Madara Uchiha." Jiraiya said back, his voice deadly.

"In the region of space known as the Halo stars, there was once an empire of humans with strange powers not of the warp. They called themselves the Children of Gelel, after the source of their powers.

They crafted with their magic jewelry, weapons, and other objects of crystalized Gelel which was the source of their power. One day, without any warning, the empire and its people disappeared. But their creations were left behind, scattered across the worlds of their empire.

Eons later modern peoples would find their creations and give them a new name.

Halo Devices."

- Lord Orochimaru, 250 AW(After Waagh)

Thanks as always to my patrons and commissioners. And to fans leaving feedback.

Chapter Text

Chapter 5:

Synchronicity(Please don't sue me, Sting)

Obito stared at the man, only now realizing he had instinctively activated his sharingan when the unexpected guests arrived.

"Wait, Madara?" Naruto uzumaki asked. "The guy whose ugly mug is carved into the Valley of the End?"

"Oh no, you're thinking of my buddy Hashirama. My handsome face is carved opposite his." Obito said, keeping to his character.

The two girls from Lightning stifled laughter from his joke while Naruto openly grinned.

"Okay. That one was good." Naruto admitted.

"Humor aside, I am very impressed by your information gathering skills Jiraiya." Obito said. "I suppose I'd be more impressed had I not know Itachi was your spy since day one, but impressed all the same."

"Wait, what?" Sasori asked.

"Wait, what?" Naruto asked at the same time.

The verbal match that Jiraiya had started, was now lost to him and he deflated in defeat.

"Are you willing to work together with the elemental nations for this crisis?" Jiraiya asked.

"Indeed." Said Obito. "We have been trying to lock down the western borders of Suna, but we are few in number and could use the extra hands. We'll share our plans if you share yours?"

Jiraiya nodded and motioned for him to begin.

Very well. Obito wasn't above putting his cards on the table first.

"Sasori and all three hundred of his puppets are stationed along this three kilometer corridor. One every hundred meters. Sasori and Itachi are holding up the southwestern front. Their fire and water combos will prevent spores from reaching the rivers that feed into the ocean. Kakuzu and Hidan are holding the northwest, forming a six man squad."

He saw Naruto confused by the math and was visibly trying to count how two people worked as six.

"What of Deidera and the other members?" Jiraiya asked. "I know you are ten in number.

"Ah, Deidera is running interference." Sasori said. "With his flying constructs he has the mobility to move between our teams and keep a watch on the battlefield as a whole. As for your former students, one of them is there."

He pointed to the flashes of lightning in the distant night sky.

"Former students?" Jiraiya asked.

"Ah. Your intelligence network failed to deliver you the identities of our organizations originators? Nagato Uzumaki and Konan. The former is there creating and controlling that storm. The latter as returned to the city hidden in rain to bring the forces therein to the northeastern front." Obito continued.

Both Jiraiya and Naruto were left speechless by the reveal he burried in there.

"Nagato is alive? And an Uzumaki to boot?" Jiraiya asked.

"There's another Uzumaki out there?" Naruto himself asked.

"Indeed. Two besides you, to my knowledge. Unless you count lady Tsunade." Obito finished.

"Grandma Tsunade is related to me?!" Naruto asked, still just as shocked as before.

"Focus, Naruto." Jiraiya said. "And what is your role in this fight? And what of the venus flytrap cannibal?"

Obito narrowed his eye at Jiraiya. So he knew of Zetsu, but had no information on him. Very well.

"The venus flytrap cannibal, is named Zetsu. His abilities to operate underground are invaluable. He is currently out there monitoring the enemies continued movement and mutations happening in the subterranean water ways and sewage from Suna. It is substantial." Obito said.

Jiraiya's eyes widened and he looked to Naruto, giving him a nod. The boy created a shadow clone before disappearing himself.

"Ah. You are spreading shadow clones to every corner of the battlefield. Information network?" Obito asked.

"Correct." Said Jiraiya. "Now everyone knows that they're burrowing and multiplying. And that the Akatsuki are allies in this."

"Perfect. I would hate for us to have any... misunderstandings." Obito said, allowing an edge to drip into his voice.

Naruto did the strangest thing then. He raised his hand.

"Um. Why are you trying to be intimidating? We're all kinda allies here... and you're not intimidating." The boy said.

Were it anybody else, Obito would have taken those as fighting words. But they boy said with with such earnest and genuine honbesty that Obito knew he meant it as an olive branch.

He couldn't help it. He laughed. A fully belly, keeled over, laugh overtook him.

"You... are absolutely right." Obito admitted between attempted at catching his breath. "This entire conversation has been posturing between us ancient men and it is ridiculous. Very well. I have a space warping ability that surpasses even that of the late fourth Hokage. I will take the boys clones o advantageous potisitons across the continent and he can propogate from there. Right now we are focused solely on keeping the infection here in the desert and gathering intel. Once the entire country is locked down on all sides, we go on the offensive and purge the alien invaders."

Jiraiya nodded.

"That's essentially our plan as well. We're nearly all in position on the north, west and south borders. Lightning nation may take another day and a half. Until then we intent to bring in the remaining Suna Shinobi here to cover the west with reverse summoning." Jiraiya said.

"Good." Said Obito. "We are woefully undermanned here, despite the higher quality of men we have. In the meantime, let me move the shadow clones into poisition. I am greatly diminished since my glory days, so I can't bring all of the Suna shinobi into their respective positions. But individual shadow clones? I can manage that."

Jiraiya motioned for the shadow clone to step forward where he created a new one to go with obito.

Sasori sends all of his puppets on his left side northward by 100 meters.

He tells the clone staying behind to take the position one hundred meters to his left, and now they will have a full coverage of the three kilometer area.

Jiraiya gestured for the Naruto clone beside him to step forward. It created a new clone, which nodded to Obito.

Nearby, Sasori raised one gloved hand and commanded half his puppets — those to his left — to shift north by one hundred meters.

"Clone," he said, turning to the one staying behind. "Take the now-empty slot a hundred meters out. That gives us full coverage."

And with that, the west was sealed — or at least, held.

The rain battered the plateau like a war drum — hard, fast, and without rhythm. Obito materialized in a silent swirl of space beside the orange-clad clone of Naruto. They arrived on solid stone slick with runoff, a windswept rise jutting from the badlands south of Rain.

Three figures stood at its edge. Teenagers, clearly shinobi. One was tall and stocky, with a fighter's stance and a stubborn chin that jutted like a challenge. He had the scars of somebody who fought recklessl. The other two — a sharp-eyed kunoichi with two hand fans at the ready and a shorter girl with pigtails and thigh highs in a wary crouch. She looked like healer.

They turned as one and Obito saw their headbands declaring them as sand ninja.

"You don't look like messengers," said the big one, fists clenching. "Why are you here?"

"We could ask the same," Obito said flatly. "This isn't a vacation spot."

The tall boy stepped forward.

"We're from Sunagakure. Got orders to return to the village three days ago. We set out but then we got a second hawk with different orders: Do not return. Stay away from the city at all costs. No explanation. No intel. Just a contradiction."

The kunoichi added to his explanation.

"We figured someone would come find us eventually. We just didn't expect…" She gave Obito a once-over. "…this."

Naruto's clone scratched his head.

"Huh. Weird place to leave a team with no updates."

"They were probably forgotten," Obito said, tone neutral. "Or someone assumed they were already dead."

That got a visible reaction — a stiffening of shoulders, a narrowing of eyes.

Before they could speak, the clone held up a hand.

"Hang on. Let me save us all some exposition."

He slapped his palm to the ground. With a burst of chakra, a storage toad appeared in a cloud of mist and oil. A beat later, it belched three slick, oil-covered figures onto the muddy rock.

All of them were bald, robed in hastily fashioned garments of bark, petals, and thread. A girl with a ponytail stood first, blinking the rain from her eyes. Behind her, a tall boy muttered curses and rubbed his head, while the third — a small, quiet girl — simply took in the scene.

The kunoichi archer froze.

"…Matsuri?"

The lead girl blinked, then smiled in recognition.

"Yome? Sen? Shira?!"

Obito finally filed the names away. So the brawler was Shira, the tracker Sen, and the archer Yome. Forgotten edge pieces in Suna's military puzzle.

Naruto's clone created another with a pop and motioned to it.

"This one's staying with you. Listen up — he's got the whole download."

Obito turned to leave, already tugging space loose around him.

"Wait—what's this all about?" Shira called.

As Obito vanished in a spiral of chakra and wind, he heard the clone left behind shout over the storm:

"So anyways... Aliens!"

They arrived at the edge of a wound.

The plateau gave way to a vast depression in the earth, a crater miles wide and unnaturally smooth — as if some colossal, celestial hammer had smashed the world flat and then carved it clean with surgical precision. The stone was scorched black around the edges, but toward the center, it pulsed with a sickly green glow.

Spores. Faintly luminescent and already budding from the crater walls like malignant fruit. Fungal vines curled along cracks in the bedrock, their tips twitching unnaturally in response to the falling rain. The crater had reached all the way to the water table. It steamed faintly where moisture met still-warm stone.

In the far distance, the outline of Tonika Village — or what remained of it — stood as a ghostly silhouette. The buildings there had either collapsed or been overtaken by the green rot, the fungal infection now climbing rooftops like ivy.

Obito landed silently beside the clone, his single eye narrowing.

"This wasn't here a week ago," he said flatly.

"Nope," the clone replied. "But we're here now."

He formed a quick sequence of hand signs and slammed a palm to the rocky lip of the crater. A storage toad exploded in a puff of steam — and from its mouth came six shinobi, all bald, all clad in lotus-weave robes.

Ameno emerged first, already directing the others before her feet hit the stone.

Koji followed with that loose-limbed walk of his, cracking his knuckles.

Shishio and Saya came next, sharing a quick glance before spreading out.

Sana pulled a scroll from her robes and unsealed several misting devices.

Mamushi, true to form, was already testing the soil, crouched with one hand deep in the muck and the other adjusting a vial of bright blue reagent.

They moved without needing instruction. The entire squad began working in silence, setting up containment, misting the walls, inspecting spore clusters, and coordinating with hand signs. Their movements had the crispness of those who had trained for this exact catastrophe — even if none of them had ever seen anything quite like it.

Obito gave a low hum of approval.

"Competent."

"They've been through the wringer already," the clone said, watching them with pride. "Suna survivors. They don't need babysitting."

Obito didn't respond — but he didn't argue, either.

Rain hissed against the growing heat from below. More spores began to glow. Far below, something shifted in the green.

"Time to go," Obito said. "We're on a clock."

The clone nodded, made one last hand seal, and summoned a new clone to remain behind. Then he turned to Obito.

They vanished in a blur of motion — swallowed again by swirling space.

The storm churned around them like a living thing — not natural thunderclouds, but something forged from will and chakra. Lightning flickered in rhythmic pulses, not erratic bursts. Each flash was in time with a subtle shift in the six figures surrounding the central throne, suspended in the air upon the back of that eerie avian summon.

Obito stepped lightly onto the beast's back, followed by the latest Naruto clone. The bird hardly reacted — long accustomed to its master's passengers.

Naruto gazed around in awe.

"Whoa… This is all you? That storm?"

The man seated on the throne — gaunt, pale, gaudy red hair still somehow regal — looked down on him with eyes like concentric voids.

"I am sustaining the central seal," Nagato said simply, "but the Paths of Pain maintain the jutsu's continuity."

Obito inclined his head and gestured between them.

"Naruto Uzumaki, meet Nagato Uzumaki. You'll serve as his personal relay for clone updates and intel transmission."

Naruto blinked, staring. Then he tilted his head.

"Wait, wait. So, you're one of Pervy Sage's old students?" he asked.

Nagato nodded, unfazed.

"Indeed. I walked his path… for a time."

"And you're one of my two living relatives?" Naruto asked, squinting.

Nagato gave a small smile.

"Quite. Myself and Lady Tsunade. If your next question is why I never retrieved either of you, it's because your loyalties to Konoha, and status as a Jinchuuriki, excluded you from being inducted into any potentially revived clan."

Obito did not like where this was going.

He felt it coming when the clone's brow furrowed.

"Nah, hold up. Madara said there were three — you, someone else, and Tsunade."

Nagato turned his gaze to Obito.

Naruto did too.

Obito sighed, already turning away.

"Orochimaru has possession of a girl with Uzumaki blood. I didn't tell you because I didn't want you wasting your energy or starting a war over bloodlines. You had enough weight on your shoulders."

The silence stretched.

When Obito glanced back, they were still staring.

"We will have a long talk about this later," they said in unison.

Obito did not wait for further comment. With a swirl of chakra, he slipped into the void. It was a strategic retreat. For all of their safety.

The storm had finally broken.

Dawn rose over a desolate stretch of earth. The firebreak carved into the Land of Wind was now a graveyard of trees — ten kilometers of scorched forest, blackened and stripped to ash, as if nature itself had been burned out of existence.

Beyond the field of fire, the edge of Konoha's territory waited like a breath held too long.

Then, the cavalry arrived.

First came Inoichi Yamanaka, his signature ponytail tied high despite the fatigue in his eyes. Behind him, Shikaku Nara and Chōza Akimichi strode side by side, their clansmen following in quiet solidarity.

Hiashi Hyūga emerged next with Neji and a dozen elders in formal robes, their expressions unreadable but their presence unmistakable and the remaining adults of their clan flanking them.

Gai, and Rock Lee charged in on foot from the southern bend of the trail, their bandaged hands and matching grins making them look like they'd sprinted the entire way for fun.

Genma Shiranui, Yugao and Raido Namiashi took up the rear Guarding Anko Mitarashi and Ibiki. The former wasmuttering curses and chewing something sweet, her coat stained with sweat and travel dust.

They gathered in the field beyond the firebreak, just before the healthy treeline. Wordlessly, campfires were built. Tents were raised with practiced movements. Rations were distributed — salted rice, dried fish, pickled plums. A few med-nin heated canteens to make tea.

There were no war cries. No cheers. Only quiet relief from a long journey made far too quickly.

Naruto's clone — stationed there since the night before — watched it all from the perimeter, arms crossed. He smiled faintly at the sight of Rock Lee hugging his sensei, of Chōji devouring three meals in a row, of Ino handing out cups of tea while gossiping in hushed tones with Tenten.

A warm breeze passed through the broken trees. Naruto tilted his head toward it, feeling for once like the reinforcements had arrived not a moment too soon.

Then came Hiashi.

The Hyūga clan head approached with the grace of nobility and the stiffness of a man who had seen too much. His pale eyes fixed on the Naruto clone like a hawk measuring its prey.

"Mister Uzumaki," he said. "Where is my daughter?"

The Naruto clone snapped to attention, caught off guard by the tone.

"Oh. Uh — right on top of that ridge, sir." he said, pointing to a rocky outcropping overlooking the desert.

He wasn't sure why, but something about Hiashi made him want to be extra polite. Maybe it was the posture. Or the voice. Or the fact that this was Hinata's dad and Naruto had once seen him cut out a man's heart with wind-elemental infused strikes that didn't break the skin. Entirely internal.

Seeing a man perform a full heart surgery on an enemy in the middle of a fight inspired fear even in the bravest of men.

"Take me to her." Hiashi demanded.

Naruto obeyed, conjuring a shadow clone to replace himself and guiding Hiashi to his daughter.

They walked together in silence. Until Hiashi broke it when they were finally out of earshot of the camp.

"It pleases me to see you develop into such a competent young man, and playing such a pivotal role to this war effort." Hiashi confided in him. "I wish Fugaku and Mikoto were still here to see it."

Naruto had no idea how to respond, thankfully, his confusion and eternal need to resolve said confusion asked the questions for him.

"Who and who?" He asked.

Hiashi stopped and Naruto almost walked into him. The older man turned around with more anger on his face than Naruto had ever seen on the usually stoic Hyuuga clan.

"Fugaku I could forgive, but Mikoto? You don't know who Mikoto is?" He clarified.

Naruto shrugged.

"Should I?" He asked.

Hiashi's jaw actually dropped.

"Mikoto Uchiha. The woman who nursed you as a baby. The woman who almost became your legal guardian. Your. God. Mother." Hiashi asked with an increasingly pointed tone.

Naruto was reduced to gibberish trying to come up with an answer to this revelation, but all he could provide was another shrug.

"I'm going to kill some people when i get back to Konoha, I swear." Hiashi said under his breath before turning around and continuing back up the hill.

They returned to walking uphill.

Naruto was consumed with conflicting thoughts and emotions. Bouncing from positive to negative. He had a godmother! She was dead. He almost had a family! That family would have included Sasuke. That last thought made him shudder.

They soon arrived at the top of the ridge overlooking the prepared battlefields. From there they could see the spider web of trenches, traps and fortifications.

Hinata stood at the edge, her byakugan flaring and her entire focus on the horizon.

For somebody with eyes on the back of her head, Hinata sure was easy to sneak up on. Could Hyuuga only use telescopic or panascopic vision at once, not both at the same time?

"Hinata?" Hiashi called out.

She jumped, flinching more from surprise than fear. She turned and instantly bowed, lowering her gaze.

"Father," she said, respectful and warm. "You've arrived safely."

"I have." Hiashi nodded, before giving her a long, unreadable look. "Your duties here are concluded."

Hinata's face faltered.

"The rest of the Hyuuga clan adults are here. You are to return to Konoha with Neji." Hiashi told her. "And act as clan head in my absence."

For the first time in Naruto's life, he saw anger on Hinata Hyuuga's face.

"I can fight!" She insisted. "I am ready for his war."

"I know you can, and I know you are." said Hiashi. "I am not sending you away for your safety. I am sending you back because leading the clan would be a greater challenge and test for you than this fight. I am aging, and should this war become greater than either of us imagined, it is better that I should die than you or Neji."

The young woman cooled off from that explanation, deflating of her righteous anger in an instant.

Naruto could relate. If anybody told him he couldn't participate in this battle he would have exploded. What counted as an explosion for sweet little Hinata was calm by Naruto's standards though.

She relented, nodding her agreement and walked between them. She stopped just after passing them. She then turned around.

"I am acting clan head?" She asked.

"Indeed." Hiashi said.

"As of right now?" She clarified.

"As of ten seconds ago." Hiashi confirmed.

"I see..." She said.

She then became lost in thought for a few moments, as if she were trying to come to terms with the power she now held or else how to wield it.

She then locked eyes with Naruto.

"Naruto... Could you pass a message to all the other yous for me?" She asked.

He gave her his award winning smile.

"Of course! Lay it on me." He told her.

She pointed to his left, at Hiashi. Naruto turned to look at the man only to feel soft, warm lips on his cheek.

He turned back to the woman who just bussed him on the cheek, his hand holding the place of contact like a mortal wound. For once her eyes did not leave his.

"Come back to Konoha alive." She said, repeating her message from the morning before. "Come back to me... alive."

She then turned tail and fled, hands over her face as if she couldn't believe what she had just done.

Naruto and Hiashi shared a confused look.

"I think I might have missed some things." Naruto confessed.

Hiashi held up a hand, his index and thumb close together as if to indicate a small amount.

"I was this close to sicking my matchmakers on you with an invitation to court her." He told Naruto. "This close!"

Apparently, Naruto had missed a lot of things. He sat down to try and digest what he'd just learned.

"Well? Aren't you going to pass the message onto the other yous?" Hiashi pressed.

"Hm? Oh no. I'm holding onto this clone for an emergency. If morale drops down enough, I'll dispel." He confided.

The real him could be dying on an icy wasteland, freezing to death and bleeding out. Should that happen the memories of the last ten minutes would get him up and fighting again in a heartbeat.

"I'll leave you to your meditations then." Hiashi said as a way of excusing himself.

He left Naruto then. And he made himself busy staring out over the horizon.

Was he smiling? He felt like he was smiling. Thank goodness nobody was around to see it because he was sure it was a very stupid looking smile.

That smile faded from his face when he saw plumes of sand and mud in the distance. It was soon followed by the ringing of bells in the camp below.

The enemy was approaching, the trenches were filling, and the weapons were being drawn.

The fight was here at last, hopefully all of their preparations would matter.

Finally! We can get back to the violence. The fire and the blood and the dying.

I need to go watch a ton of filler episodes now to get more familiar with the Suna locations and characters. Starting with the Fu arc, because I have NO idea who Ameno, Koji, Shishio, Saya, Sana, Mamushi even are, just that they're from Suna. I didn't even describe them, just mentioned their names and that they were there, which is bad because Obito doesn't know them from his ass and elbow and the scene is from his perspective. Will have to rewrite that after watching the arc.

And I never fully watched the filler arc with Shira, Sen and Yome. Just the episode where rock Lee and Shira had their showdown that I think I caught on Toonami. I was lost but it was good stuff.

Also, hopefully I'm not putting too much humor in this story? It does get REALLY grimdark later, but for this first arc its orcs... I can't not make it hilarious!

Thanks as always to my patrons and commissioners. And to fans leaving feedback.

Chapter Text

Chapter 6:

Defense on Most Fronts

The sun crested the ashen ridge behind them, casting long shadows across the shattered battlements and trenches of the eastern front. Naruto stood atop a hastily raised watchtower of scorched timber and chakra-reinforced stone, his jacket fluttering in the morning breeze. His clone, stationed there since the night before, squinted across the desert horizon.

They were coming.

In the far distance, a thunderous rumble echoed across the dunes. Not the rhythmic pounding of marching feet — no — this was deeper. Wilder. The growl of crude engines, sputtering and shrieking like wounded beasts. The green tide returned, and this time, it came not on foot, but in machines!

The first of the alien warbands crested the slope riding rusted monstrosities—vehicles cobbled together from scavenged metal, barbed spikes, screaming horns, and glowing fungal growths that pulsed like diseased hearts. Some had wheels, others were spider-legged walkers, and a few rolled on logs that burst into flames from friction as they spun. Each was crewed by massive green brutes in metal scraps, bellowing in a language of roars and violence.

Naruto could only stare.

"Who builds a car out of a water tank, a slab of stone, and a flaming wheelbarrow?" he asked himself.

The question went unanswered. The ground shook. The wind screamed. The first wave hit the trenches.

Konoha was ready.

The lead vehicle—a roaring, tusked monstrosity spewing black smoke—tore through the outer defensive barrier, iron prongs aimed downward like a battering ram.

Then it stopped. Abruptly. As if time had frozen. Because it had been kicked in the face.

Might Guy dropped from above like a thunderbolt in green spandex, both feet smashing into the nose of the vehicle with a crack loud enough to rival the engine's death knell. The machine crumpled beneath the impact, front axle folding in on itself.

"Behold the power of youth!" Guy bellowed, rebounding backward in a spinning arc.

"Dynamic—entry!" Rock Lee shouted, his voice a split-second behind his master's arrival. He spun from the right flank, sweeping through the now-stalled enemy formation with a perfect Leaf Hurricane, catching two of the brutish aliens mid-charge and tearing them apart as if his legs were fan blades.

The green soldiers poured out of the wreckage like ants, shrieking and armed with jagged cleavers, guns held together with nails and spite, and bizarre fungal cannons that belched spores on impact.

Gai and Lee used them as training dummies, but they turned out to not be of material strong enough to handle their fists and kicks. Thankfully, there were plenty more of the training dummies on their way to the slaughter.

Flanking squads emerged from side trenches, launching coordinated barrages of kunai, explosive tags, and wrathful elements.

Lightning crackled across the trench lines, jumping from metal-bound vehicle and creature in beautiful arcs.

Another surprise came in the form of beast riders.

The aliens had found even more new pets. They were not like the mouths on legs, for they had four legs and looked like a cross between an elephant and a rhinoceros. These ones did not go down easily, tanking explosive tags almost better than the vehicles.

There was an explosion in one of the trenches, but Naruto didn't see what had caused it. He did see a couple dead Chunin who had been caught in the blast and strewn human body parts.

"Don't let them cluster!" he warned. "They burst!"

He wasn't wrong. One of the new mouths on legs—bloated and twitching—charged the battlements like a living grenade. It barely made it halfway up the incline before Asuma sensei threw one of his glowing fist kunai right into its eye.

It exploded instantly, but nobody was within range this time. The only casualty was the charred remains of an already dead tree.

More of the lumbering beasts resembling elephants came, this time with patchworked armor plating and fungal tumors. Shinobi fire teams opened up with coordinated jutsu: torrents of flame from Fire release users and blasts of compressed air melted them and the sands into sludge and glass in a storm of heat and gale force winds. Many continued to fight despite the injuries, but never for long. One of the stomping creatures staggered under the assault—then was lifted into the air by the combined weight of five Shadow Possession Jutsu, courtesy of the Nara clan's finest. They held it long enough for a Hyūga trio to strike it at every part of its exposed flesh, sending it crashing to the sand paralyzed.

The darndest thing happened then. Somebody sealed the steed inside of a scroll.

Naruto marveled at it all. Even while fighting the shinobi of his village were experimenting, testing out different tactics with a strange combination of caution and incaution.

These weren't the half-panicked scrambles of the day Sunagakure fell. This was war. Real, organized war. Every squad knew their place. Every jutsu had a purpose. One of only two, though sometimes both. Kill or test.

And despite the chaos, the casualties were minimal. There were wounds — there were always wounds — but this was different.

They were winning! And overwhelmingly at that.

"Let them come," Naruto yelled over the chaos.

Seeing as he couldn't fight he could at least cheer lead. His war cry inspired similar shouts from his allies.

He formed another shadow clone and dispelled himself, intent on sharing the information on this battle with the other battlefields.

On the southern border, another Naruto clone stood at the lip of a trench with arms crossed, hair damp with seawater and mist.

Before him, the desert stretched like a breathing corpse. But here—on the southernmost border of Wind Country—the line had been drawn. And this time, they dug it themselves. The trench he stood over stretched as far as the eye could see to the east and west.

Lady Mizukage hadn't been joking about her plan; it really did stretch the whole width of the land of wind. It was five meters deep and twice as wide, fortified by earth release and filled to the brim with seawater hauled in by a trench to the sea that had already been filled int. The stench of bleach hung heavy in the morning air.

Above it, rolling across the dunes, was the mist. Chlorine-infused. Controlled by Kirigakure's elite. Pale yellow vapor curled and drifted over the desert in thick, lazy coils—soft and pretty, but deadly to all life.

Then the information arrived.

He formed his favorite hand seal and sent out ten shadow clones to every team leader nearby to share the new information on enemy variants and ally tactics.

The Naruto clone took a deep breath.

So far, the enemy hadn't shown up here, but they were due to arrive any minute. The first sign was a confusing one, as a few minutes later the trench began to… drain?

It was subtle at first. The clone only noticed because the tide mark on the far ridge dipped half an inch in less than a minute.

He blinked. Narrowed his eyes.

Then he heard the gurgle.

Water spiraling somewhere deep beneath the sand.

"Oh no," he muttered. "No no no—"

A loud CRACK echoed across the trench line. Not from above, but below. And then the entire central portion of the trench sank by half a meter.

He turned away from the misty ridge to see Mei Terumī, flanked by a handful of Kiri swordsmen, standing on a lookout. Her face twisted in alarm.

"They're under us!" the Naruto clone shouted. "They've tunneled to the trench!"

A blast of steam jetted from a distant section of the trench. And then another. Tiny black shapes were surfacing in the foam, skittering, clawed. Green and wet.

"Back!" Ao barked. "All units fall back from the center line!"

Before the order could fully travel, the clone formed a hand seal intent on making a clone and doing some rasenganing. But then he himself was forces to step back when he heard multiple people to his left and right all enunciate the same jutsu.

"Lightning Style: Thunder Pulse!"

Electricity arced into the trench. Water exploded into white light. The stench of burned flesh and fungal ash erupted upward as alien shrieks echoed through the waterlogged tunnels.

And then—

BOOM.

The water convulsed. Many more sounds of explosion reached him the the earth beneath his feet. The middle of the trench lifted, then collapsed. Lines of earth in front of him, leading a way from the trench, formed in the sand in the form of depressions. The clone staggered as the shockwave rocked the ridge.

The trench stopped draining. The burrow had caved in. Hopefully sealed.

"Self-detonating troops," he yelled to the sounds of confusion. "They got electrocuted and popped like paper bombs."

He then got another message from the clone with the Konoha troops.

He didn't wait. A quick breath, a trio of hand seals, and a puff of smoke erupted beside him.

A storage toad appeared before him, and it immediately spat out four figures who quickly stood up at attention despite being covered in slime.

"Glad you could join me," the clone said, brushing water from his sleeve. "We've got company beneath our feet."

Hyashi Hyūga was a surprise, but with information on the Mist having a Byakugan user it made sense that he'd want to be here. He was stoic and sharp-eyed as ever, already activating his Byakugan with a grimace. Shibi Aburame, silent and composed, had already uncorked his gourd to unleash the swarm within. Tsume Inuzuka, wild-haired and flanked by a snarling Kuromaru, both baring teeth at the trench like it owed them money.

"We need subterranean scans now," Naruto said. "Start sniffing, seeing, and swarming."

Tsume crouched low, fingers to the dirt.

"Already picking up sulfur and blood."

Torune's insects scattered into the damp sand like living smoke.

Hiashi's pale gaze narrowed.

"They're massing in pockets. Waiting. Still moving." he said. "Only a few small tunnels within my range. And all dug right into the canal. Larger subterranean pockets lie beyond where they are preparing."

"Waiting for the mist to lift?" Naruto guessed.

"Or for us to assume it's over," Hiashi replied.

"Well," said the clone, cracking his knuckles, "We still have ten kilometers between us and the ocean so we still have plenty of room to intercept them. In the meantime could you get a move on and scan areas further along the coast?"

"We already dispatched many of our family from the east, they're scanning the border along the way." Hiashi said, indicating Shibi and Tsume. "We'll head west."

"Ao is already starting from the far east, he wanted to give Itachi and Kisame the heads up they need first if the enemy was approaching them." Naruto told him. "You should stop once you meet with him. He has one of my clones with him."

"Send one with us too." Tsume ordered.

It was done, and he watched the five figures run off.

The Land of Stone had turned the border into a graveyard.

Artificial canyons sliced across the desert floor — narrow, jagged corridors dug by Earth-style masters throughout the night. The layout was brutal in its efficiency: trap zones, kill boxes, and funnel points carved into the earth itself. It wasn't elegant.

It was a slaughterhouse. It was meant to be ugly.

From the high cliffs above, the shinobi of Iwagakure rained death without mercy.

A team of six unleashed a wave of kunai, their steel payloads crashing down like hail. A trio of veterans launched molten projectiles that burst in arcs of lava over fungal targets. One massive Jonin simply shoved a boulder off the edge, watching it bounce twice before pulverizing a swarm of writhing green things in the trench below.

Naruto's clone crouched behind a hastily raised bulwark, eyes narrowed as he monitored the ebb and flow.

It wasn't a battle. It was a flood. And the flood had no fear. Neither did the stones it crashed against.

There was good news and bad news, and they were the same bit of news. This was the undermanned section of the northern front. This was both heartening, as they were still winning despite their low numbers, but also bad news because backup was far away. The teams to the east and west, whose copies of him ought to be informing them of their being needed here by now, would take up to an hour to arrive.

They were all a little too evenly spread out in anticipation of not knowing where the main battles would be. Now they knew.

Wave after wave of the alien horde poured into the trenches, scrambling up blood-slick walls, biting at the air with teeth too wide for their faces. They exploded when pierced. They bled mist when burned. And still they came.

The stone shinobi were winning, handily, but they were tiring.

"Fire teams! Move in! Burn the corpses!" barked a squad captain.

Flamethrower-style Jutsu ignited the trenches. The smell of burning mold and boiling blood carried into the air, thick and choking.

But even as they purged one canyon, fresh shrieks echoed from another. A new swarm skittered over the dunes, slamming into the canyon mouth like floodwater against a levee.

"They don't stop!" someone shouted. "They don't even slow down!"

The Naruto clone exhaled through his nose. Then the clone with Konoha's forces sent him the green light.

He formed a quick seal. Poof.

A storage toad appeared, already bulging at the throat. It opened its mouth and released three familiar figures, all soaked but alert. Hoheto Hyūga, tall and broad-shouldered, her Byakugan already active and scanning the battlefield with calm detachment. Muta Aburame, silent and hooded, a constant drone of insects humming beneath her cloak. Hana Inuzuka, fierce-eyed and flanked by her trio of medical ninken — all three growling low at the scent of blood and mold.

"Glad you're here," the clone said. "We're neck-deep in fungus and just ran out of neck."

Hoheto stepped forward, squinting into the distance.

"They're using deep burrow tactics again," he said. "Splitting under the canyon floor. Trying to rise between waves."

"Then collapse the damn floor," muttered Hana. "Come on, girls."

Muta was already deploying clouds of kikaichū, the bugs fanning out into the canyons like scouts reporting to a silent general.

A captain from Iwa dropped down beside them, panting.

"You coordinating this sector?" he asked.

His team must have been the closest to the west as they were all winded. A scout team that just happened to be closer? Good on them for making double time.

"I'm coordinating the entire northern line. Me and a hundred copies of me," the clone said. "But I guess this sector is mine until more of the backup I called gets here."

The man nodded.

"Then I'll defer to you. What's the call?"

Naruto was a little taken aback. He was more used to relaying other peoples orders and sharing information, not coming up with his own. But between Hiashi and this guy it seemed people were willing to defer to him. Not due to his rank, not due to strength, but simply due to his being the most knowledgeable and composed.

It was a good feeling.

"Stop working so hard." Naruto said. "They're down below, and we're up here. Let gravity do most of the work. Marathon, not sprint. Just keep the pressure from above, scan from within, backups in the rear to relieve the front when they tire out,"

He then thought on it.

"Burn what's left. Then salt the earth."

He turned to the new arrivals.

"You three are going to be the eyes, nose, and nerves of this fight. Plug any hole before it opens, and no matter what, don't let a single one of those bastards dig past this line." He ordered.

"Yes, sir," Hoheto said flatly.

"You're bossier than I remember," Hana muttered with a wink.

The clone grinned.

"Yeah, well. You'd be cranky too if you were stuck on the sidelines while everyone else got to fight."

From the cliffs above, another massive stone rolled.

Another canyon screamed. And still, the enemy surged.

"Shukaku is down!" the Naruto clone shouted, his voice cutting through the storm like a thrown kunai.

Nagato's real body, suspended atop the airborne chimeric bird, reacted instantly. At his command, the Paths ceased theor seals and the great thunderstorm — maintained for nearly a full night — began to fade. The clouds broke like shattered glass in the sky, and sunlight cut through in fractured beams.

Below, the desert was no longer a desert. It was a swamp.

What had once been dunes of blistering sand was now a field of mud, steam, and ruin, soaked through by the relentless artificial rain. Green corpses — shredded, twisted, fungal monstrosities — lay in heaps, many buried halfway in the muck. Their unnatural biology had proven no match for the full wrath of a Tailed Beast paired with apocalyptic weather.

The mountain of sand that was once Shukaku now collapsed under its own weight.

Nagato's flying summon descended in a tight spiral, wind shrieking around them. The collapse was accelerating, the chakra that once bound the One-Tail's form now dissipating in the wake of its berserker battle. Sand fell in sheets.

"There!" the clone pointed.

A lone figure — pale, unmoving — was cradled at the heart of the devastation. Half-buried already, on the verge of vanishing forever beneath his prisoner's dying remnants.

"Gaara!" the clone cried.

With a flick of his fingers, Nagato sent the fat Path down in a blur of motion. The body landed with surgical precision, scooping Gaara from the slough just as the last of Shukaku's body gave way. It placed a hand on the collapsing mount and Naruto saw chakra drain from it into his body, and then into Gaara.

Just like Samehada then? Nifty.

A final rush of sand surged over where he'd been seconds earlier.

Back atop the flying beast, Nagato accepted the unconscious Kazekage into his arms.

"Take us to the western line," he ordered his steed.

The bird summon obeyed, and they flew off to the west with such speed that it took chakra in his feet for Naruto not to fall off.

They reached the western border within an hour, near the still-unmolested edge of the desert. The atmosphere here was starkly different. The dunes still stood tall, the wind swept gently, and the air lacked the fungal taint that hung heavy elsewhere.

Chiyo was already there, awaiting them at a mobile triage tent positioned on elevated stone. Around her, medics worked rapidly — most of them from Konoha — setting up treatment wards.

The flying summon landed and Gaara was lowered carefully onto a padded stone slab where they were all sprayed down with antifungal powder.

Three elite support shinobi arrived almost instantly:

Kō Hyūga, Byakugan already pulsing with pale chakra, scanning for internal trauma and foreign contaminants. Tōu Aburame, his kikaichū gently crawling across Gaara's, Narutos and Nagato's many bodies. They probed for microscopic invaders and ate what they found. Tsume Inuzuka, flanked by her ninken, sniffing the air around them for unnatural scents or fungal decay.

Their collective verdict, a few breathless momets later: no infestation. No lingering corruption. Only chakra exhaustion, mild contusions, and one hell of a dehydration crash in the case of Gaara.

They hooked him up with an IV drip and waited.

Then they waited some more. The morning passed with no sign of enemies approaching. The western front really was that far away from the action. It was nearly noon when Gaara woke; groggy, but lucid.

"What… happened?"

"You won," Chiyo said quietly, placing a hand on his forehead.

His friends eyes turned to him.

The clone grinned, relieved.

"You bought us a whole day, Gaara. You and that raccoon of yours. You held the center line better than anyone." he complimented.

He sat up, wobbling slightly, but his eyes sharpened as they took in the defensive layout, the shifting sands, and the growing influx of shinobi.

"What now?"

Nagato answered.

"Now we shift tactics. The desert is soaked. The spores won't spread easily. It's the perfect battlefield for Lightning-style." he said. "I wanted to wait for the enemy to get above ground before heading out with Kakuzu."

Gaara blinked, clearly not recognizing the man or the name he said.

"Then send in the lightning users of Suna as well, Kage's orders." He said.

Naruto's clone turned toward the staging lines and created a new shadow clone, only to dispel it. He heard his counterparts to the north and south repeat the same orders.

"All Lightning shinobi — frontline. The desert's yours!"

Across the far encampments, the response was nearly immediate. Dozens of Sunagakure shinobi, already equipped and prepared for their moment, poured into the sand like thunderclouds crashing to earth.

Raiton chakra sparked across blades and fingertips. They vanished into the dry dunes towards the wet— finally, their moment had come.

Nagato, meanwhile, raised a hand and offered it to Gaara.

"I am Nagato Uzumaki. The Amekage. I am loaning my forces, and my Akatsuki, to this war effort."

Gaara shook his hand.

"I think I need rest." Gaara admitted. "And food. And water. In reverse order."

"I need the same." Nagato confessed. "How long until you think you'll be recovered?"

Gaara thought on this for a moment. He turned to lady Chiyo.

"At least two days, then the desert will be yours to wield fully again." she said.

"Then we shall buy you two days. And then, this war will be ended." Nagato promised. "Tonight, I'll go back out there and pick up where you left off."

Naruto's clone arrived in a spiral of chakra, landing with a soft tap on the canyon floor. A second pulse of warped space followed as Madara appeared beside him.

The rocky gorge of Kurosuki village echoed with the clatter of pots and the bubbling of oversized cauldrons. Great rectangular tents lined the winding paths, erected along narrow shelves carved into the canyon walls. Dozens of tables had been assembled, and over them hung the scent of turmeric, pepper, and garlic — the unmistakable aroma of Sansho's legendary Curry of Life.

Rain had recently passed through, leaving the stone damp and the air cool. A

Waiting for them were five familiar figures: Neji, arms folded in crisp composure; Tenten, adjusting the straps of a fresh supply satchel; Karashi, wiping his hands on a stained apron; Ranmaru, seated quietly near the edge of a cookfire; and Old Lady Sansho herself, standing proudly at the head of the encampment with her hands on her hips.

"Thank you all for agreeing to help," Naruto said, already smiling. "You have no idea how much this means."

"Oh hush," said Sansho with a wave. "You know I'm always available to feed the hungry. Speaking of which—" she turned her attention to Madara, eyeing the tattered edges of his cloak and the fatigue in his posture "—isn't teleportation jutsu the most taxing kind of ninjutsu?"

Madara studied her for a long moment, as if unsure how seriously to take the question.

"…Among the most taxing, yes," he admitted. "But I have a few more jumps in me before I'll need to rest."

"Who said anything about resting?" Karashi chimed in cheerfully. He plopped a full plate of steaming rice and pitch-black curry into Madara's hands. "One bite of my special blend and you'll have enough chakra to teleport across the continent. Or your money back!"

"Uh, you guys know he's Akatsuki right?" Naruto asked.

"I don't even know what that means, boy." Sansho said. "From what I gathered he's an ally and clearly working himself to the bone!"

Madara looked at the plate. Then looked at them. Then — with visible resignation — he lifted a hand to the side of his mask.

Everyone leaned in just a little.

He peeled the mask upward with exaggerated slowness and then removed it all at once to reveal... another mask underneath.. This one was a tightly fitting black mesh hood, like a ninja ski mask, with soot-darkened eyeholes and a single, wrinkled eyelid partially visible beneath the left side. His right eye looked oddly youthful for a hundred-year-old.

A beat of silence. Then he took a bite.

"Oh! That's a little spicy," he said, chewing slowly.

Then he swallowed and his eyes widened.

"That's a LOT spicy," he choked. "Ohhhhhh, it's in my sinuses—!"

He doubled over, hand fanning his face, as Naruto and the others – save Neji - burst out laughing. Karashi offered him a gourd of water. Madara snatched it, swishing aggressively before swallowing it down in gulps.

"It feels like I'm dying!" he wheezed. "You can't feed this to refugees!"

"We can and we will," Sansho declared with matriarchal authority.

"You're all assholes!" Madara continued to choke. "And that's coming from a guy whose only friends are mass murderers and war criminals!"

Tenten clapped her hands together.

"Speaking of refugees," she said, "you going to bring them out now?"

Naruto nodded.

"Yes, ma'am."

He turned around and formed a quick sequence of hand signs.

A massive storage toad appeared in the middle of the canyon. Its mouth opened wide and out poured hundreds of people — families, elders, genin, toddlers, civilians with blank eyes war veterans with longer stares. Genin helped one another out of the toad's belly. Some wept. Others vomited from motion sickness. All looked grateful for the ground underfoot.

Temari was among the first to recover. She waved frantically at Neji and Tenten, who moved quickly to help guide her group toward the tents and cots set up along the cliffs.

"We've got food ready," Karashi called out. "Hot curry and water for anyone who can hold down solids!"

As they moved to organize the crowd, Naruto rejoined Madara — who was now dumping spoonfuls of sugar into a steaming mug of milk.

"How many more stops do we have?" Madara asked, his voice still hoarse.

Naruto pulled out a scroll and unrolled it.

"Next is the Village Hidden in the Waterfall. Princess Koyuki and the Land of Springs agreed to take a few hundred. Lady Haruna's people can support maybe a hundred each across five different towns in the land of Vegetables. The Fūma Clan's territory in the land of rice can take a few dozen."

Apparently Jiraiya had thrown Naruto's name around when sending messages asking for help relocating refugees. Is this what it meant to call in favors? Because it felt like Jiraiya had just cashed all of his in for him.

Madara sighed.

"Alright. Let's hit Waterfall next."

He threw back the mug of milk, gargled it, and swallowed. He did this two more times until it was gone and shoved it into Karashi's hands. He put his outer mask back on before grasping the Naruto clone by the shoulder.

They both vanished in a swirl of space.

I had to end the chapter on a lighter note, as the relocating is supposed to be happening right now and I don't want to waste the whole of chapter 7 covering that.

Thanks as always to my patrons and commissioners. And to fans leaving feedback.

Chapter Text

The gates of the subterranean prison groaned open.

Guren snapped to attention at the first scent of perfume and rot. That unsettling chakra, like oil in water, oozed into the chamber before he even arrived. The guards stiffened. The mutated prisoners lurking in their cells hissed and retreated from the bars.

Orochimaru had come in person.

She bowed low, hair brushing the stone.

"Lord Orochimaru. You didn't announce your arrival." greeted Guren.

"No," he said, voice velvet and venom. "I don't need to."

He glided past her, pale fingers trailing across the cold stone of the wall. His golden eyes swept the cells with casual interest, as though inspecting tools rather than men.

"You're to gather them all," he said. "Every prisoner. Every experiment. All of them."

Guren looked up, startled.

"You… wish to transfer them?"

"I wish to release them," Orochimaru said, smiling faintly. "The world is at war, Guren. And we have an army locked in cages."

She straightened, unsure.

"They won't obey me. Not all of them."

He turned, amused.

"Of course not. But they'll obey me."

She hesitated a moment longer. Then gave the order.

Cells hissed open with bursts of chakra. The prisoners stumbled into the dim prison yard, blinking through the pain of cursed seal suppression. Dozens of them — some hulking, others spindly, many bearing grotesque remnants of failed transformations. Slitted eyes, blackened veins, partial wings or talons that never quite receded.

They stared at Orochimaru with the unease of dogs remembering the lash.

"You're free," Orochimaru said, spreading his arms. "Free to fight."

There was a pause. A twitch of movement among the prisoners.

Then one spoke — a broad-shouldered man with teeth filed to points.

"We ain't your pawns anymore, Snake. You made us monsters. Now you want us to die for you?"

The others grumbled in agreement. Some cracked their necks. Others let their cursed seals flare.

Orochimaru didn't blink.

"I see," he said. "Still clinging to the illusion of choice."

He raised a single hand and rubbed his face, before bringing it down and pulling his eyelids down with them. The genjutsu came without fanfare — a wave of pressure that passed over the room like a shadow through bone. Suddenly, the prisoners fell silent.

Each of them saw it: their own deaths.

Skulls crushed. Flesh rotting. Limbs removed with surgical precision. Their screams echoed in a world only they could see — screams even they couldn't hear aloud.

They dropped to their knees, one by one. Some whimpered. Some just wept. All obeyed.

The illusion passed. Orochimaru exhaled softly.

"Now," he said, voice light. "Stand up."

They did.

"You'll march east, through the deadlands. You'll rendezvous with Kabuto's column before sunset. From there, the desert. And glory."

Guren glanced at him.

"Kabuto and Sasuke?"

"They're freeing the other two facilities," Orochimaru said. "The prisoners there will listen. Kabuto has… cultivated loyalty. And Sasuke inspires awe."

Guren said nothing. She turned to her men and gave the order to equip the prisoners.

And Orochimaru?

He began to walk. No longer toward the exit, but to the front of the line. To lead.

The prisoners followed. Hesitant at first. Then in step.

He didn't have to teach them how to march. They simply did.

Snow crunched underfoot as Naruto and Madara emerged from the spiral of space-time, the last teleport of a long and exhausting day.

The frozen landscape stretched before them, gleaming like polished crystal in the midday sun. Wind tugged at Naruto's cloak as he turned to survey the area. On the distant hills stood five-pronged monuments — towering arrays of mirror-like panels that caught the light and refracted it downward. These were the Spring Makers, terraforming engines powered by energy within the earth and focused sunlight. Around each one, the land bloomed green with warmth, forming radiant oases of trees and grasslands that stretched for kilometers.

Here, though, at the edge of their reach, winter still ruled.

Snow Shinobi bustled about, erecting clusters of heat-insulated domes. They resembled igloos in theory, but in practice were elegant structures of reinforced chakra-laced ice and mirrored tiles, glittering like jewels against the barren ice fields.

At the center of it all stood Princess Koyuki Kazahana.

She turned as they arrived, wrapped in a silken white cloak lined with fur, her royal crest woven into the front. The years had aged her into her role — no longer just an actress or a reluctant heir, but a monarch in truth. And still an actress.

"Naruto!" she called, beaming.

Her guards parted like a curtain as she swept forward.

Naruto grinned and stepped up to meet her halfway.

"Princess Koyuki! It's been a while!"

The two embraced briefly, warm breath fogging in the cold air. A camera crew stood at a polite distance, lenses pointed but quiet — this moment, they knew, would be on every newsreel across the continent by morning.

Koyuki pulled back and gave him a long look, frowning.

"Your beautiful hair…"

Naruto scratched his nearly bare scalp, a sheepish grin on his face.

"It'll grow back. Give it a week."

"You had the best hair of all the Five Nations, you know," she said, mock mournful. "I had hoped you would grow it long like your master, but now you look like a monk."

"I've been fighting like one," Naruto said with a shrug, then turned to the task at hand.

He slapped his hands together and summoned the massive storage toad in a puff of steam. The toad opened its mouth and hundreds of Suna refugees poured forth: tired, cold, hungry — but safe. Snow Shinobi immediately moved to guide them into the prepared shelters. Blankets and warm soup were already waiting.

Princess Koyuki watched them go, her eyes soft.

"You came through," she said quietly. "Like always."

"We all did," Naruto replied.

There was a long pause. She glanced up toward the sky, which had finally cleared of stormclouds.

"And the war?" she asked. "How goes it?"

Naruto's smile dimmed slightly.

"Slow, methodical. We're not charging in — we're building walls, spreading scouts, creating firebreaks and sealed zones. But… it feels like winning. We've got the entire Land of Wind locked in. By earth and by sea."

She nodded, but her gaze remained skyward.

"And above? What of the skies?"

Naruto glanced over.

"Only two flyers — the Amegake and the rogue ninja Deidera. They're covering the skies as best they can. They work in shifts, but they can't cover that much land."

Koyuki's expression brightened.

"Then allow me to fix that."

She turned and gave a subtle hand signal to one of her royal guards. The man bowed — not to her, but facing away from her — revealing the reinforced metal box strapped to his back. Koyuki stepped forward and picked up the receiver.

She spoke only one word into the radio.

"Launch."

For a second, there was only silence.

Then came the roar.

Not from the sea or the harbor — but from above, echoing across the frozen cliffs.

Dozens of aircraft emerged from hidden mountain hangars, rising on powerful steam-thrusters and chakra-woven wings. Each resembled the airborne warship once piloted by Dōtō Kazahana — her treacherous uncle. Boxy steel bodies with four stabilizing fins and massive exhaust pipes puffed like chimneys into balloon-like gasbags above.

They were both elegant and functional.

"They're—" Naruto began.

"Identical," Koyuki finished for him, "to the one my uncle used. We captured it, studied it, and improved it. The Land of Spring now boasts a fleet of thirty-six airborne support vessels, each manned by our best sky-nin."

That would mean she'd made nearly three per month for the last two years since he'd been here.

She folded her arms with regal satisfaction.

"The Land of Spring will be contributing our air superiority to this war."

Camera flashes lit up to capture the moment in print just as the film crew was capturing it for television. Naruto wondered where the microphones were for the radio broadcasts.

Naruto slowly turned to Madara.

Even behind the mask, he could feel the man's raised eyebrow.

"You look impressed," Naruto said.

"I am," Madara replied, voice dry. "And that doesn't happen often."

The light of morning filtered through the high misty peaks of Mount Myōboku, casting a soft golden sheen over the mossy stone and winding toad paths. Somewhere in the distance, a flute played — slow, ceremonial — but its serenity was shattered in an instant.

"Alright! We can finally leave!" Naruto shouted, practically bouncing to his feet.

Sakura and Kakashi, seated nearby on an outcrop of toad-shaped stone, stirred from their moment of stillness. Even Kakashi, with his usual languid posture and half-lidded eye, perked up.

They had been there a day and a half, but it felt longer. No threats. No orders. Just rest and recovery — a rare gift in a world at war. Naruto's shadow clones had kept working tirelessly on the front, but the original was fully recharged now. He had been for some time.

All three wore fresh clothes brought from Konoha — neat, unbloodied, and civilian-clean. Their foreheads were banded with Leaf headbands pulled down low to cover their recently shaved scalps like bandanas, a modest attempt to reclaim dignity after the oil-and-acid debacle.

"Ready to get eaten by a toad again?" Naruto asked, turning toward Kakashi with a grin.

Kakashi sighed.

"Not really. But it's that or risk bringing the Akatsuki into this sacred place. I'll take digestion over disaster."

"Where exactly are we going?" Sakura asked, stretching her arms.

Her knuckles cracked like fireworks. She'd had time to rest. He knew she was itching to hit something.

Naruto turned, suddenly serious.

"Kakashi-sensei, you're needed in the southwest, just outside Suna. All the Lightning-style users are converging there, but there's a problem — shipwreck terrain. Sand, mud, twisted chakra metal. None of them can navigate it safely. And lots of enemies."

Kakashi's visible eye squinted.

Naruto gave him a thumbs-up.

"You're the one with a thousand jutsu and a whole mess of chakra control tricks. If anyone can clear a path, it's you." he said. "And we sent all the lightning users we could to take advantage of the wet terrain and enemy metal. So you're doubly suited to the task."

Kakashi groaned and stood up, brushing off his pants.

"Well. At least I'm not being assigned babysitting duty this time."

Naruto turned to Sakura.

"You, I'm sending where Konoha's catching the brunt of it. Central front. The trenches near the firebreak. Most of our heavy hitters are stationed there — but they're tired. You're a brawler and a healer. That combination makes you critical."

Sakura nodded without hesitation.

"Good. I've got a few bones left unbroken. Can't let those go to waste."

Kakashi raised a brow.

"And what about you?"

Naruto grinned — but there was something behind the grin now. A flicker of resolve. Of knowledge. He tapped a finger against his temple.

"I'm going spelunking."

Kakashi and Sakura traded glances.

"Deep tunnels," Naruto clarified. "We know they're spreading underground. Nobody's mapped how far yet. I'm going to find out."

"You're going alone?" Sakura asked.

"Technically? I'm going as backup to myself," he said. "The clones are already deep. One of them reported movement from under the river systems near the Wind-Lightning border. We think they're aiming to break containment."

"And if you're wrong?" Kakashi asked, arms folding across his chest.

"Then I come back smelling like cave mold," Naruto said, already forming the seal for summoning. "Either way, we learn something."

There was no more argument. Only a final moment of stillness between the three.

"Stay alive," Kakashi said simply.

"Hit them twice for every one they land," Sakura added.

Naruto grinned.

"I'll be sure to leave some for you."

With a flicker of chakra, the massive toad-summon appeared again — mouth wide, tongue unrolling like a red carpet.

And one by one, they stepped forward into the darkness.

Deidara swooped low across the desert, his clay bird descending with a wheeze of deflating chakra. The moment its claws kissed sand, the creature crumbled into dust, and the blonde bomber hit the ground with less grace than usual.

He staggered toward the nearest cot and collapsed onto it like a falling tree, throwing one hand skyward.

"Pain. Tag in," he muttered, voice raw with fatigue.

The summoner path of Pain approached without ceremony and slapped Deidara's hand like a wrestler switching partners. Without a word, the other five paths followed, leaping onto the newly conjured bird as Animal Path performed the summoning jutsu. The grotesque creature let out a warbling cry, then took to the skies with all six riders in tow, vanishing into the growing storm over the desert.

Only then did the medics descend.

Chiyo was first, her hands glowing with soft blue light. At her side stood the usual trio: a silent Hyūga activating his Byakugan, a cloaked Aburame loosing a few scouting insects, and a sharp-eyed Inuzuka sniffing the air and listening for anomalies.

None of them found any.

"You're clean," Chiyo confirmed, withdrawing her chakra threads with a skeptical expression. "Not a single spore. Notr scratch."

Deidara scoffed

"Well yeah! I spent my day flying above the battles and carpet bombing everything."

She gave him a wry look.

"Are you sure we can't cut that mop of yours? It's a liability in spore zones."

He didn't even blink.

"If any of you come at me with scissors, I'll kill myself and then all of you. In that order."

They backed off.

A Sand shinobi stepped forward, offering a small tray full of steaming rice balls.

"Bakudan, hot." he said.

Deidara sat up, interest piqued.

"Ah. My favorite. How'd you know?"

"Your sensei told us," the shinobi said.

Deidara paused just long enough to look vaguely sentimental before snapping open the lid.

"Tell Sasori-sensei I said thanks."

The shinobi left without asking for clarification.

Naruto's clone stood nearby, arms folded, watching the bomber devou his meal like he hadn't eaten in days. Overhead, the new Pain storm rolled in fast — dense black clouds roiling across the horizon, obscuring the last streaks of sunset like ink blotting parchment.

Naruto turned toward it, uneasy.

Then a jolt ran through him — a message from another clone snapping into place. He shot upright.

Deidara froze mid-bite.

"What? What is it?"

Naruto whipped around with urgency.

"Okay — stupid question, maybe. Do you know how to sculpt?"

Deidara stared at him like he'd just committed an act of war.

Naruto raised his hands defensively.

"No — I mean accurately. Like, artistically and anatomically."

The look of sheer offense on Deidara's face could have melted steel.

A shorter chapter than I intended, but so much happened I figured it was good enough. Also I originally had Deidera's favorite food be soba but then I remembered... Wait! Don't we actualyl have canon information on every character's favorite foods, blood types and the like? I recalled Sasuke loves Tomato's, Hinata loves cinnamon buns, and indeed, we know Deidera's. Bakudan. Rice bombs. The more you know.

For those of you who never watched the movies:

Spring Makers are geothermal mirror arrays developed in the Land of Spring after the events of Naruto the Movie 1, used to terraform and warm the frozen terrain.

Also, A guest left a great review. I hate guest reviews because I can't respond to them directly, but I love them because they're often the best. So dear guest I hope you see this.

Guest chapter 3 . Jun 17

Did you leave something out on the FTG technique? Tsunade said it was being used on non-volunteers, but but wasn't Asuma and everyone else volunteers or at least aware of what they were doing?

It's the non-volunteer part being important that didn't make sense especially since they all went into it knowingly so how were they non-volunteers and why did that matter? The important thing that it was experimental, caused damage and was unstable for moving a large group was good. It's Tsunade's comment that was confusing.

My Response:

The significance of "Non-volunteers" isn't to do with the function of the jutsu, but the legality of the Hokage's orders.

The flying thunder god is a dangerous, and in my headcanon forbidden, technique and Tsunade is ORDERING them to be subjected to it. This is beyond the bounds of her authority, and she is admitting to this and trying to be apologetic about it. It's the equivalent of ordering your soldiers to cast the death reaper seal like the third Hokage did on Orochimaru, or be subjected to Hashirama cell treatment. If I were ever ordered to do any of these things I would give her a two-finger salute and say "Go FUCK your own face! ... respectfully, ma'am."

In real life if you're ever given such orders, like being subjected to inhumane experiments or orders to commit war crimes, you shoot your commanding officer. Or punch him in the face and get demoted to a station on Mars.

The importance of this scene is the shinobi knowingly accepting this order and their Hokage overstepping her bounds due to the severity of the situation. This is poignant for later when more horrific and grimdark orders are issued, including the two examples I mentioned earlier.

This scene is probably the most important I wrote so far, and I should rewrite it to make these points clear. The first true degradation of what few moral qualms shinobi have on the path towards grimdark.

Chapter Text

Chapter 8:

Horrors for All to See

The shadow clone stationed in the eastern watchtower stood with his arms crossed, staring down at the field of ash that had once been forest. It wasn't much to look at now — just a windswept flatland of soot, cinders, and the faint shimmer of smoke curling upward from the last of the embers.

A hundred or more shinobi of Konoha loitered around, enjoying the lull in combat. Or else cleaning up the body parts of the aliens they had utterly dismembers. What few got beyond the line, mostly from being flung by explosions in front of the line.

Then, he got the message from a clone dispersing and leapt down.

A few quick hand signs and the storage toad appeared before him. It opened its mouth and lowered its tongue like a slide. Out of it walked three figures appeared below in the clearing, waning sunlight glinting off their forehead protectors.

"Yo!" the clone called as his original reached him

"Hey, me." Naruto grinned at his double before looking to the side. "Kakashi-sensei, Gai's over at the western ridge with his team. They're expecting you."

Kakashi gave a lazy wave in acknowledgment.

"Then I'll go keep the fire burning."

With a quick nod to Sakura and Naruto, he disappeared in a swirl of movement, headed for the front.

"I'll head to the field tents," Sakura said. "We've got wounded coming in from the tunnels."

"Thanks, Sakura. Be careful out there," Naruto said.

Sakura gave him a brief smile before darting off, her footsteps already fading into the distance.

Naruto turned to his clone and nodded before moving westward.

"Alright, I'm going under. Got a few things to check out down in those tunnels. I'll gather anyone who thinks they're to tag along."

He raised his voice to the surrounding shinobi.

"I'm heading into the tunnels beneath the ash zone. Tracking, sensing, brute force — anything that helps down there, I want it!" He yelled.

Choji Akimichi stepped forward first, wiping his mouth and thumbing a pill case at his hip.

"I'm in."

Kiba and Akamaru followed without hesitation.

"You'll want a nose down there. And we can at least dig the team out of any danger" he said, "Let's go, Akamaru!"

And then came someone quiet — a Hyūga Naruto didn't recognize. Young, maybe Genin or low Chunin, with pale eyes already focused ahead. The silent nod he gave was all the commitment Naruto needed.

"Alright," Naruto said, forming three hand seals. "Let's keep this moving."

He made a single hand sign.

Three more Narutos appeared in bursts of white smoke. Without a word, one of them dispelled.

The original clone who had held this position snapped to attention as the plan filtered in through sudden memory. His face lit up.

"Oh, that's clever," he muttered.

The real Naruto nodded once and turned to his chosen group.

"You've got two minutes. Then we move."

With that, he jogged off, disappearing toward the tunnel mouths in the west.

The clone rubbed his hands together and turned back to the lingering shinobi.

"Alright. Now, I need any and all artists. Drawing, painting, doesn't matter. If you can visualize and replicate, I need you."

No sooner had the words left his mouth than two shinobi appeared as if summoned. One wore a porcelain-white mask with red feather-like slashes on either side — emotionless, clean, precise. ANBU, no question. The other, far more unexpected, was Ibiki Morino. Scarred, silent, and holding — of all things — a worn sketchbook and pencil.

"…Ibiki?" the clone asked.

"I draw under stress," the interrogator said flatly. "It helps me remember where people scream."

"I'm both glad and deeply disturbed to hear that."

The ANBU set down a scroll and calligraphy kit with practiced grace, kneeling over it in silence. Then he spoke, soft and clipped.

"I am proficient in terrain sketching and architectural perspective."

" Great! That's exactly what I need. We just need one more, anyone?"

He turned toward the shinobi in the area, raising his voice.

"Anyone else? You don't even have to be good — just passable!"

He was answered by silence.

"Mr. Uzumaki," said the ANBU without looking up. "You might try asking your other selves."

"Right, good idea!"

One of the new shadow clones dispelled instantly.

"Okay," one of the remaining two said a second later. "Plan's pretty simple. The real me is going into the tunnel systems. He'll create clones at forks and intersections. Each one will explore a new branch, and when something important happens — landmarks, enemy contact, collapse — they'll dispel."

All two remaining clones suddenly went stiff, like someone just flipped a breaker. They straightened in unison.

"What was that?" asked Ibiki.

All three burst out laughing.

"Deidara killed a clone!" one of them said, doubling over. "He thought we were mocking him. I think the phrasing came out wrong."

"Oh man," another said, wheezing. "We're gonna need a good apology."

The ANBU made a soft, amused sound behind his mask — barely a chuckle.

Ibiki arched a brow.

"You sent Deidara a clone to ask for help?"

"Yeah! For sculpture," the clone said, still catching his breath. "It's a whole thing. Anyway — tunnels."

The clone straightened up, gesturing between Ibiki and the ANBU.

"Here's what we're going to do. I'll stay here and send clones to report. You two each take a different clone to map what the others see. Three main tunnels. Three maps."

"That's an outstanding idea," Ibiki said, already flipping his sketchbook to a blank page. "We'll need separate workstations."

"Exactly. We'll ask the supply squad for two field tents — isolated, covered, secure. Each tent gets one clone and one artist."

The ANBU nodded.

"This is acceptable."

The clone gave a small, satisfied nod.

"Then let's get to work. Operation 'Draw Me a Warzone' is a go."

"We're also going to need large sheafs of paper," the ANBU added. "Proper cartography stock. Preferably something durable enough to hang on a wall."

One of the clones raised a hand.

"On it!"

He dashed off toward the makeshift logistics outpost, shouting as he ran.

"Anybody got two private tents with big tables? Or giant sheets of paper?! Maybe a scroll the size of a futon?!"

Another blur landed silently beside them, the soft thump of his boots muffled in the ash-laden soil. This ANBU's mask resembled a cat — or maybe a tanuki, it was hard to tell — with dark, slanted markings and small pointed ears. He exuded calm, like a man who never raised his voice because he never needed to.

"Come with me," the new ANBU said, pointing toward a low, sloping hill behind the medical tents. "I have a better solution."

They followed in silence, weaving between healers tending wounded and runners exchanging sealed scrolls. The hill provided natural cover — earth pushed up and shaped by chakra into barriers, useful for repelling debris or surprise attacks. It was quieter here, buffered from the chaotic thrum of the battlefield.

The tanuki-masked ANBU raised his hands and formed a rapid sequence of hand seals. The ground beneath them shifted with a groan — and from the soil rose two wooden buildings, constructing itself like jigsaw pieces sticking together. The end result was compact but sturdy, shaped with perfect symmetry.

"Whoa," said both remaining Naruto clones at once.

"Tables are inside," the ANBU said casually, as though manifesting architecture from dirt was just part of the morning routine. "You said paper, too?"

"Yes, sir! Big sheets. For mapmaking," one clone confirmed.

"Come on." The ANBU motioned to the left cabin.

Inside was dim but spacious. The floor was clean-cut wood grain, the walls smooth and polished like cedar. At the center stood a massive table, big enough to serve as a battlefield war desk for ten — easily wide enough for four shinobi to pitch camping tents on it and still have room left over.

The ANBU reached into a pouch at his waist and retrieved a sheet of material that looked like parchment fused with cloth — off-white, slightly fibrous, and surprisingly flexible.

"Paperbark tree bark," he said, placing it down on the table.

Then, with a few precise hand seals, he touched the table — and the entire surface transformed into the same substance. A single, seamless sheet, matte-textured, faintly brown-streaked, and perfectly smooth.

"Will this do?" he asked.

Ibiki ran his hand over it slowly, nodding in approval.

"It's perfect."

"Exquisite," the white-masked ANBU added.

Naruto tilted his head.

"What else do you have in that chakra tree toolbox of yours?"

The ANBU actually checked inside, pulling out wood sample after wood sample. Some of it was wrapped in cloth, others in glass..

"The basics. Ibuloke for strength and hardness, cork and rubber trees for soft cushioning. Eucalyptus and juniper when I need to set areas on fire. Gympie for when I'm really pissed off. Machineel and strychnine for toxins. Ironwood for moisture extraction from the soil. Morimba, poplar, and red cedar for purifying water and air. Black persimmon for ink. And paperbark for, well… this."

He tapped the table again, satisfied.

"That's about it."

Ibiki just stared at him for a beat.

"I want to fight beside you," he said at last.

"Me too," Naruto added, arms crossed and eyes wide. "That was awesome."

"I am certain that opportunity will come," the ANBU said curtly. "Today you're cartographers."

"Right," Naruto said, grinning. "So here's how it breaks down."

He pointed to the giant sheet.

"Ibiki, you and I will map the eastern tunnel — the one the real me just went down. Clone number two, you'll partner with Sai in the second house and cover the southern tunnel. We'll each update in real time as our clones feed us new intel."

"What about the northern tunnels?" Ibiki asked.

"Good news," Naruto replied, "Deidara finally agreed to help — well, after murdering the first messenger clone. But we're friends again now. He's going to sculpt the entire northern network in sand and detonation clay as he goes."

The two ANBU tilted their heads simultaneously.

"That will work," The ink painter said simply.

"We're still short a map, though," the tanuki-masked ANBU pointed out. "The western tunnels?"

"Still unfound," Naruto admitted. "Once we locate an entrance, I'll assign a fourth artist and a fourth team. Until then, these three are priority."

The ink painting Anbu gave a short nod, already moving toward the second house with the other clone.

Ibiki flexed his fingers, took out his pencil, and glanced at Naruto.

"Well, let's sketch ourselves a war zone, shall we?"

The projector on the walls of the old Konoha Academy cafeteria was usually reserved for pre-recorded lectures, weather updates, and morning announcements about cafeteria menus. But today, the entire building had been herded into the room for another purpose.

Every genin not currently deployed in the war effort, being most of them, was seated cross-legged on the wooden floor watching over the academy students while the usual instructors were out securing the village. The students in question leaned forward at their desks, eyes glued to the massive projection screen hanging from the front wall.

The grainy footage stabilized just in time to reveal a snowy landscape with spots of green and blue. A voice, theatrical and unmistakably over-practiced, rolled out over the speakers:

"At the far edge of the Springmaker zone — nestled between glacier walls and verdant oasis — we witness a historic moment. Princess Koyuki Kazahana of the Land of Spring greets one the four Heroes of Snow, Naruto Uzumaki… and, to the world's surprise, a representative of the Akatsuki terrorist organization."

The camera panned as Princess Koyuki stepped gracefully down a polished steel ramp, her royal robe trailing behind her like fresh-fallen snow. Her silver earrings sparkled as she offered a gloved hand to the camera's left.

The feed zoomed in — and there he was.

Naruto Uzumaki stood beside her, his signature orange outfit unmistakable even with his head freshly shaved, his Leaf forehead protector tied boldly over his brow. His grin was wide, almost bashful. Princess Koyuki brought him in for a hug and said something to him that the camera's didn't catch.

Beside him, towering and silent, was a figure in a swirling black cloak with red clouds painted on it. He wore an orange spiral mask covering his face. He said nothing. He didn't need to. His posture spoke volumes about how dangerous he was.

Konohamaru's eyes narrowed.

"That's him? The Akatsuki guy?"

"Looks like it," Moegi murmured, her eyes wide with curiosity rather than fear.

Udon adjusted his glasses.

"Naruto doesn't seem worried. If anything… they look like they're working together."

Konohamaru sat back with a scowl, arms crossed.

"I don't like it." he admitted.

"He did save that princess during that whole snow mission," Moegi pointed out. "She probably trusts him. And if Naruto trusts that Akatsuki guy then so should we…"

"That's a big if," Konohamaru muttered.

Onscreen, the masked figure stepped aside as Naruto and Koyuki spoke briefly with someone off-camera. The narrator's voice returned — none other than Dōgen, the eccentric film director who'd once chronicled their snowbound mission. His dramatic tone had mellowed over the years, but only slightly.

"We are witnessing not just a diplomatic gesture — but a symbol of unity. A princess of peace. A hero of war. And a former enemy now standing together under one banner. The elemental nations have turned their eyes toward survival — and perhaps, for the first time, toward genuine collaboration."

"Still feels weird," Udon admitted. "Even if it's working."

Moegi tilted her head.

"Do you think we'll get to fight soon?" she asked,

Konohamaru didn't answer right away. His gaze lingered on Naruto — the boy who used to prank the village, now standing shoulder-to-shoulder with heads of state and walking war criminals. He clenched his jaw.

"Only if things get really bad," he finally said. "Seeing this cooperation though? They must already be really bad. So I can't imagine the levels of bad to come that would require us."

The warm scent of steamed rice and miso soup filled the small kitchen of Tazuna's seaside home. Outside, the waves lapped gently against the rocky shore, the tide high under a silver dusk sky. Inside, however, the atmosphere was anything but calm.

"Inari, volume!" Tsunami called from where she stood by the stove, ladling soup into bowls.

"Got it!" the boy shouted back, hopping over to the old wooden dial on the small television.

He turned it up just as the footage shifted from icy mountain airstrips to a wide, frozen coastline peppered with domed structures.

"—and here, on the southeastern edge of the Land of Spring," said the narrator's voice, still unmistakably Dōgen, "we witness the reception of refugees from the Land of Wind — victims of the alien infestation now gripping the western nations."

Tazuna grunted from his seat at the table, a cigarette pinched between two fingers.

"Aliens. Never thought I'd live to hear that word on the news without accompanying laughter."

Onscreen, footage showed a long procession of weary travelers — sun-scorched men, cloaked women holding sleeping children, adolescents too exhausted to speak — all spilling forth from a giant toad's mouth with wide eyes and slower feet. They were guided toward large igloo-like shelters.

Spring Ninja in white and gray uniforms directed people to bunks, delivered blankets, and handed out warm bowls of soup and grain.

"These structures, known locally as Frost Domes, are part of the Land of Spring's new humanitarian initiative," the voiceover continued. "Funded by the Kazahana royal treasury and reinforced by medical teams from the Hidden Stone, this growing encampment is now home to over four hundred displaced civilians."

Inari's eyes didn't leave the screen.

"They've got enough supplies for that many people?"

"Looks like it," Tsunami said, setting down a tray. "Princess Koyuki really went all out."

Tazuna exhaled a long breath of smoke.

"Good. It's about time the world stopped thinking small."

They watched as a young girl was handed a scarf by a Spring shinobi and immediately burst into tears — not from fear, but gratitude. An older man behind her bowed low, pressing his forehead to the snow.

Tsunami's hand tightened around her cup.

"It's like watching our village all over again," she said quietly.

"And Naruto is there to fix things again." Tazuna said, smirking. "Kid always was stubborn."

"As the situation in the Land of Wind continues to spread," the narrator added, "more refugees from surrounding areas are expected to arrive in the coming days. And thanks to joint efforts like this one — the future, while uncertain, is no longer without hope."

The image faded slightly, the footage transitioning to something new.

The projector flickered and hummed softly as it cast its light onto a stretched sheet of linen strung between two stone pillars. The entire center of Takigakure's main square.

The shade of their giant tree was sufficient to make the projected light display visible to all even in the daytime. Now that night approached and the torches unlit it was nearly pitch black like a theater. To both natives of the village, and the refugees who'd spent the day sleeping comfortably in the homes shared with them.

Elders sat near the back on woven reed mats, while children huddled near the front, their wide eyes reflecting the pale blues and whites of the image above them.

Gasps rang out as they saw the launch of dozens of airships. Even Shibuki couldn't believe his eyes.

"As part of the unfolding crisis, the Land of Spring has launched a fleet of aerial battleships to assist in the war effort. Each vessel is capable of carrying up to fifty shinobi."

The voice of Dōgen, the familiar filmmaker-turned-documentarian, brought a hush over the crowd.

A dozen sleek, heavy-lift crafts took off in staggered formation. A mix of chakra-based propulsion and warm air buoyancy carried them higher and higher. Sunlight glinted off their wooden and metal hulls. The glass-covered cockpits sparkled, giving them the look of airborne temples or great migrating birds.

An elderly woman beside him spoke up.

"Those fly with chakra?" she asked.

"Some chakra, some steam. The Spring engineers are smart," he replied in awe.

The scene changed to show a wide shot — airships dotting the sky like drifting lanterns, each heading south.

"The Land of Waterfall has already pledged support for incoming refugees, with riverside settlements preparing to house several hundred displaced families."

A cheer rose from one corner of the square, where a group of volunteer carpenters and farmers stood. A few thumped their chests in pride.

But Shibuki was not pleased. He kept his arms folded and watched intently. Beside him, a local Waterfall-nin whispered something about border coordination and supply checks. The leader simply nodded, never taking his eyes off the projection.

But his mind was elsewhere.

He'd had no idea the threat foreign powers had become during this unprecedented time of peace. Waterfall village, with its isolation and lackadaisical attitude toward training, had fallen behind.

He was to blame for that. And now even the Land of Springs was an existential threat to them. What did this say about the alien threat or other great nations?

A light drizzle fell in lazy sheets outside the canvas walls of the long, low shelter. The roof above them drummed softly with each drop — not a storm, just the kind of gentle, gray rain that made the world feel far away.

Inside, the air was warm with steam from rice gruel and medicinal herbs boiling over a pair of makeshift stoves. Dozens of refugees huddled on padded mats or old bedrolls, their cheeks ruddy from food and warmth.

Ranmaru kept a watch on all of them, and all of the people in other tents, all at once. Neji, with his similarly impressive occular powers, was stationed atop the cliffs surrounding them. He was to watch the horizon for approaching enemies, while Ranmaru was to watch the going-ons within.

There wasn't much to see. But there was much to hear.

Tenten was trying to manage a long distance radio, tuning it to a newscast that the Naruto clone had told them was airing. It crackled for a bit.

Then the broadcast came through — clear and calm, the voice of Dōgen again, as steady as ever.

"And your eyes do not deceive you, Princess Koyuki is now shaking hands with the leader of Akatsuki."

Gasps and murmurs rose in the room. A few of the younger refugees turned their heads at the name — some smiling, some whispering.

"…and, I'm sorry what?" The voice said, and Ranmaru could practically see him listening to an earpiece. "This just in, the leader of the Akatsuki claims to be none other than Madara Uchiha."

The murmurs stopped.

Someone in the back stood abruptly.

"Madara?!" the child said. "That guy was Madara?!"

A mother near the corner pulled her child closer, but said nothing.

Ranmaru, ever composed, raised a hand.

"He's working with us," he said softly. "Naruto wouldn't stand beside him otherwise."

"How do you know?" asked a teen in a tattered scarf.

Ranmaru hesitated.

"Because we met him, and he ate our food. And because people like Uzumaki Naruto… they don't share a stage with monsters. They change them."

But he wasn't so sure that he believed his own words. Even with Tenten giving him the thumbs up for it.

The Naruto clone stood just behind Princess Koyuki as the first airship descended from the clouds.

It was exactly as he remembered it up close. The rectangular chassis supported by steel ribs and four massive engines. A balloon-like structure of armored canvas and chakra-threaded silk billowed overhead, etched with the crest of the Kazahana royal family. Another made to land nearby while the others floated through the clouds like migrating birds of war.

A cheer rose from the nearby refugees as the ships began their slow descent. Each one released long boarding ramps that clunked down into the snow-packed earth, steam hissing from their flanks.

"Man," the Naruto clone muttered, shading his eyes. "When she says 'air superiority,' she doesn't hold back."

Behind him, Madara crossed his arms.

"That's not air superiority," he said. "That's an air navy. At least now Pain and Deidera can be spared for more important roles."

Koyuki turned, her cloak fluttering in the wind.

"The Land of Spring will not be a backdrop in this war," she said simply. "We intend to win it."

The airship landed and a ramp lowered before them. Koyuki stepped forward and turned to Naruto, gesturing to follow her.

"This one's ours."

As Naruto started walking, the clone glanced back to see the film crew boarding the next airship. Dōgen, the mustachioed director from the old Snow Country shoot, was barking orders as he adjusted a wool-lined coat and secured a portable camera rig to his shoulder.

Naruto leaned closer to Madara as they reached the top of the ramp.

"They're not really bringing a film crew to the warzone are they?"

Before Madara could answer, the man spoke loud enough to the camera's for them to hear.

"And with this, Princess Koyuki departs alongside the Hero of Snow and an alleged member of Akatsuki board for their journey south. Our cameras will follow every major development of this unprecedented alliance, bringing the truth of war to every village across the continent—"

Both Madara and Naruto turned toward the sound in perfect synchronization, then looked at each other, eyes wide.

Neither of them put words to the miscontent they had with that decision, but every newly growing hair on Naruto's neck stood on end.

In the coming years and decades, both he and the man he would one day know as Obito would regard this moment of inaction as the greatest mistake of the War With the Waagh.

Most of the scenes in this chapter and the previous one were happening at around the same time. I probably should have ordered them differently, but I want to keep some variety between chapters.

Next chapter we get back to some serious action in the tunnels, and nothing else.

For those of you familiar with history, and the history of broadcasting in particular, you know exactly how much of an "Oh shit" moment this is. The elemental nations may not have 30,000 confirmed soviet spies in the government and media manipulating information to turn citizens against veterans, but they do have enemies in each other who take part in informational warfare against one another. Worse, all of them have taken part in informational warfare against their own populace and the naked truth of war will do a lot of harm to the cohesiveness of the Shinobi system. Not least of all because the average person will be able to SEE how powerful shinobi are.

How many of them do you think ever suspected that Shinobi were straight up black mages on top of spies and assassins? Exactly. A lot of morons in the Naruto universe never would have stepped up to fight shinobi if they knew a tenth of what they were capable of. That secrecy gave them power, and that secret is out now. The arms races to come won't just be between nations, but between groups of people in society, normal men and women preparing themselves for threats alien and domestic.

Thanks as always to my patrons and commissioners. And to fans leaving feedback.

Chapter Text

Chapter 9:

Into the Depths

The real Naruto trudged across the dead earth, flanked by his team — Lee, Kiba, Chōji, and a Hyūga whose name he still hadn't bothered to learn. Twenty kilometers of silence, broken only by the crunch of scorched stone underfoot and the occasional hiss of still-smoldering alien corpses.

War machines, twisted and blackened, jutted out of the terrain like forgotten titans. The air reeked of metal, smoke, and something far fouler — the alien stink of a dying invasion.

They approached one of the many tunnel mouths dotting the battlefield like scars. It rose before them like a blister carved into the ground, jagged and unnaturally wide. A pale mist seeped from it, clinging low like breath from a sleeping beast.

"This one leads right into the heart of it," Naruto said, nodding to the others. "Everyone ready?"

"I was born ready!" said Lee.

"Ugh. Of course you were," Kiba muttered, adjusting his jacket ato cover his nose the stale wind. "Let's just hope whatever's down there doesn't smell worse than up here."

Chōji said nothing. He reached into a pouch and popped a protein pill into his mouth, chewing solemnly.

Naruto looked to their Hyuuga friend as if to ask if the coast was clear. He nodded wordlessly, his pale eyes already flaring with Byakugan.

They entered single-file, descending into the dark. Kiba dismounted Akamaru even thought the tunnel was more than large enough.

The first corridor sloped gently, its stone walls strangely smooth. The only light came from glowing fungi spaced intermittently along the floor, their bioluminescence casting long shadows behind them. The path was so steep that they had to use chakra in the soles of their feet to keep from slipping down.

Then, without warning, the tunnel dropped away into a vast chamber.

Naruto stepped into the open and drew a sharp breath.

It was massive.

The space could have housed the entire village of Konoha — maybe more. Hundreds of meters overhead, a curved ceiling of dark stone glittered faintly with condensation. All around them, tunnels identical to the one they had entered opened like gaping mouths into the central basin. This had been a staging ground — a subterranean fortress built by the enemy, hidden for who knew how long.

Shinobi were already here. Teams from Konoha, easily four dozen strong, were methodically burning the remains of alien spores and corpses with focused bursts of Fire Style. Their flames lit up the chamber in stuttering pulses. Burn teams moved in circular patterns, sterilizing every crevice. One section was cordoned off where researchers, including Anko Mitarashi, were examining remains.

Naruto spotted Asuma near a cluster of Jonin.

"Asuma!" he called, jogging over.

The bearded Jonin turned, wind-scarred and clearly tired.

"Naruto. You made it."

"How far in have we pushed?"

"We've already cleared this chamber and begun advancing through the next tunnels," Asuma said. "Minimal resistance. Too minimal. Doesn't feel right."

"It's like they left the front porch open," said Kurenai.

Naruto nodded.

"Any sign of where they might regroup?"

Shikaku Nara stepped into view from behind Asuma, his fingers pressed thoughtfully to his temple.

"We suspect there are more chambers like this one," he said, eyes tracing something invisible on the cave wall. "Larger, deeper. A layered formation. Either they're prepping new wave assaults or digging in for a long siege. We're trying to figure out which."

Naruto took a breath.

"Then we're going to map it all. I'll break those defensive lines before they're ready."

He formed a seal.

"Shadow Clone Jutsu!"

Dozens of Narutos exploded into being. Each clone saluted, then rushed down a different tunnel like white blood cells swarming through capillaries. Behind them, various squads surged forward into the tunnels, ready to push deeper into the alien stronghold.

Naruto left two clones behind to assist the research effort.

"Talk to Anko. Ask them everything about their weapons, armor, anything. Then dispel. We'll sync intel across the front."

"Got it," the clones echoed.

The real Naruto turned toward the central tunnel — the largest of them all, positioned dead center like a main artery.

"Lee. Kiba. Chōji. Hyūga — let's move."

"Right behind you, Naruto!" Lee said, hopping excitedly on the balls of his feet.

"Don't get us killed," Kiba grumbled, though his grin betrayed excitement.

Chōji gave a quiet "Mm," then followed.

"My name is Ko." Said the Kyuuga.

Ko it is then.

They vanished into the shadows, the echo of their footsteps swallowed by the earth.

They walked for what felt like hours.

The tunnels no longer followed the logic of a warpath — they twisted like veins, layered and interwoven like the inside of an ant colony. They sloped upward and downward without reason, curved in maddening spirals, or flattened into tight chokepoints only to widen again unexpectedly. At times, they had to leap down sheer drops, only to climb back up winding paths that reconnected at odd angles. More than once they passed other shinobi teams, some reporting in, others breaking off to explore new branches.

Naruto pressed his hand to the wall at one junction, feeling the subtle vibration beneath the stone. There were engines at work here — alive things, not just biological but mechanical, humming with foul purpose.

He got updates in flashes — his clones dispelling from the north and south borders with Stone and Mist.

The northern tunnel system mirrored this one: tight, erratic, and dry, like a termite mound carved in haste and rage. But the southern one… the clone's memories painted a picture of order. Wide burrows sloped smoothly, interspersed with natural water catchments. Cavities shaped like cisterns. Gravity-fed drainage and even basic filtration systems. As if they expected to reach water.

That could only mean planning was put into it. Which meant there were brainy aliens among the brutes. Planners. Commanders. And the fact none of the forces had encountered them yet was concerning.

Finally, the path ended. But not with a wall. It opened. The tunnel gave way to a vast vertical space — and Naruto's breath caught in his throat.

It made the last staging chamber look like a storage closet.

The walls fell away into an abyss, descending level by level like an inverted tower. Tier after tier of platforms and bridges spiraled downward, the center hollowed out like the gullet of some buried god. Glowing blue growths lit the pit in rings, revealing a world carved in descending chaos. On every level, the enemy teemed — more than Naruto had ever seen.

The other shinobi had already arrived, and the fighting had already begun.

The green-skinned monsters moved in swarms, but their weapons and machines were what truly turned his stomach.

Towering bipedal constructs stomped in half-circles, each limb ending in different weapons — claws, drills, flamethrowers, buzzsaws. One had a belly cannon that churned with fire, belching molten metal. Another rolled on pillbug-like wheels, launching caged beasts into the air like cannonballs. Dozens of smaller machines skittered alongside — crude tanks with jagged teeth for plows, walkers with blades that spun like fans, beetle-shaped bombs that hissed as they rolled toward the edge of the platform.

And creatures. So many creatures.

Grotesque beasts of every shape imaginable — some armored like siege engines, others frothing and twitching with explosive sacs strapped to their backs. One squig leapt the height of three stories just chasing a kunai. Another roared as multiple riders jabbed it forward, steering it into a tunnel mouth like a battering ram.

Naruto's gut twisted.

They'd built an army in the dark.

Behind him and to either side, the rest of the allied forces emerged from the tunnels. One by one, they filtered out onto ledges and platforms, trying to tcatch their bearings and plan what to attack first. The options were plentiful.

Then, from below… a sound.

A chant. No… not a chant. A scream.

"WAAAGH!"

It rose like thunder. It echoed off every wall, vibrating through Naruto's chest like a drumbeat of madness.

The enemy surged. And the allies leapt to meet them.

Explosions rocked the upper levels. Fire jutsu arced into the darkness, followed by blasts of water and waves of sharpened wind. Lightning carved trenches into metal skin. Claws tore into chakra-infused kunai.

Lee punched his palm.

"Let's go!"

"Not yet!" Naruto said.

They froze.

"We're not fighting from the top down," Naruto said. "Leave that to our allies. We're going straight down to the bottom and fighting our way up."

He turned to Ko. The silent observer had followed without complaint this whole time. The man's Byakugan was still active, his eyes scanning the chaos below.

"You," Naruto said, forming a clone beside him. "I'm leaving a shadow clone with you. You watch. You feed him what you see. Every other clone will get the info."

The Hyūga nodded curtly, understanding.

He then turned around and jumped straight into the pit.

He fell like a comet. Lee, Kiba, Akamaru and Choji did the same.

As they descended into the bottom-most chamber of the subterranean world, Naruto finally saw it.

The Excavator.

It wasn't a machine — it was a cathedral of destruction on treads.

Larger than Shukaku. More massive than Gamabunta. A towering amalgamation of steel arms, corkscrew drills, gouging claws, and spiraling teeth. It moved with the grim efficiency of something that had never known hesitation. Like an industrial titan chewing through the earth, devouring bedrock by the ton.

But it wasn't the only thing feeding.

Stationed in the walls of the chamber were hundred of living mouths burrowing like larvae. They resembled caterpillars, if caterpillars were made of plated muscle, rusted iron, and too many eyes. These biological drills writhed and burrowed at assigned tiers, sucking up broken stone and belching it out as sludge. The half-purified metal and liquefied waste that poured down into a lake of the same substance below.

Small green humanoids, the same ones they'd seen in Suna, swarmed over the byproduct like worker ants, carting the gunk away in twisted metal wheelbarrows or piping it into storage tanks.

It was industrialization without a soul.

Naruto barely landed before the chaos broke loose.

Kiba and Akamaru were the first to strike — twin whirlwinds of chakra and fangs tearing through one of the wall-mounted worm creatures. Chōji followed next, spinning into the fray as a massive human boulder and crushing an entire swath of sludge carts under his weight.

Naruto? He dove straight into the fire.

Two Rasengans spun in his hands, and he aimed directly at the joint of the closest mechanical arm. The impact was devastating — the chakra sphere bored through reinforced steel like it was tin. The entire arm shuddered and cracked before falling in a slow, catastrophic arc toward the muddy basin below.

Naruto went with it. Hell, he fell faster than it and he hit the muck hard.

For a moment, he struggled. The surface was thick — thicker than water but not quite solid — and it took delicate chakra control to find the balance between water walking and wall sticking. His feet sank ankle-deep, but he held fast, even as the fallen arm slammed down nearby and sent a muddy tidal wave washing toward him.

He braced himself, chakra flaring — and held his ground.

Somewhere above, Kiba and Chōji continued wreaking havoc. But Naruto couldn't spot Lee. Not yet.

Then the real threat revealed itself. Worms.

Not the caterpillar feeders — these were larger. Vast, armored serpents that breached the mud like whales breaching ocean waves. Dozens of teeth churned in concentric circles in their mouths. They trained their hollow maws on him.

He moved. Leaping up the nearest one's slick body, chakra gripping its hide. A shadow clone burst into life beside him mid-leap, forming a Rasengan into his outstretched hand. He aimed for what he hoped was it's middle.

The impact shredded flesh and plating. The beast split clean down the center, but the victory was short-lived. He and both halves of the worm fell into the sludge. Naruto remained on the surface while they sank. But they reared up again to reveal that it had mouths at either end. Worse, the mud was moving, not just rising but alive.

Tiny snapping mouths broke the surface, nipping at his heels. Piranha-like creatures hidden just below the sludge, fast and hungry.

He retreated, climbing up the Excavator's single central leg. From below he could see that the metal beast was a perfect metal cylinder, as wide as the entire Village Hidden in the Waterfall. Tree, lake and all.

As he ascended, gunfire rained around him. Cude bullets ricocheting off steel. He looked up and saw the source: hundreds of the green-skinned creatures stationed on carved-out ledges above, aiming their twisted rifles downward.

Naruto braced for impact—then blinked.

Lee. He was there, tearing through the gunners like a human typhoon. His bandages snapped behind him. His fists moved in blurs and the shooters fell like dominoes.

Naruto nodded in silent thanks and kept moving.

Then the earth mud below rose ten meters in an instant — and Naruto's eyes widened as he saw the reason.

Choji he had used the Expansion Jutsu, and not just to grow, but to tower. He was colossus, not quite Excavator-sized, but close enough to grab its limbs and tear them off like paper joints. One by one, he ripped through the massive arms like a kid tearing the branches off of a bush.

Naruto smiled.

Lee was handling the enemies on the ledges. Kiba and Akamaru were on the worms. Chōji was breaking the machine itself. He wasn't going to be left out of the fray.

He created a dozen clones. Each of them made a dozen more, all scrambling up the cylindrical leg, spreading out like ants across its upper surface. By the time they reached the top — the operator's deck — they'd formed a perfect circle and each of them held a rasengan.

They reached the canopy, a pit full of green-skinned operators, shouting and pounding controls in frenzied desperation. It was too late for them to do anything.

"Rasengan Barrage!"

The clones struck as one. A hundred spiraling orbs of chakra tore into the platform, eviscerating the crew and destroying the cockpit.

Steel screamed. The machine groaned. It shuddered, sparks flying from every exposed wire. Then, with a final metallic whine… the Excavator collapsed, its core shredded and useless.

Naruto landed back on the main deck, mud splashing off of his ankles.

He exhaled.

"One down," he muttered, glancing toward the tunnels above where more light flickered.

The Excavator still stood, but it was no longer a machine — just a broken shell of ambition, its operating systems annihilated and canopy shredded beyond function. Gouts of steam hissed from severed pipes. Lights flickered and died. It was now just a big metal tree stump.

Then Naruto got the pulse of memory — the signal from one of his shadow clones stationed with Shikaku Nara.

"Lee, Kiba — to me!" Naruto shouted from atop the ruined canopy. "Chōji, prepare for rocks!"

Kiba and Akamaru disengaged from their quarry mid-leap, twisting in the air to land beside Naruto with practiced precision. Lee blurred forward from the ledges above, appearing beside them a heartbeat later in a burst of green and dust.

Chōji, still in his giant form, grunted and lumbered toward them. He planted one foot, then the other, climbing up the remains of the Excavator's leg using what remained of the arms as footholds. He stood like a mountain at their backs. Then he knelt low and arched his massive frame over his teammates like a living canopy.

And then the sky fell.

It began with a distant sound: the pop-pop-pop of thousands of explosive tags detonating in waves high above them.

Their allies had prepared the trap well. Every shinobi who'd reached the upper rim of the chamber had hurled kunai and tagged kunai into the cracks and faults. Now they all detonated at once, turning stone to shrapnel.

The landslide began. Boulders the size of wagons. Gravel like iron hail. Sheets of sediment torn loose from above. The cavern roared with it — a howl of falling earth.

Chōji braced. The first slab struck his back with a wet crack, but he didn't flinch. The second followed, and the third, and then the sky itself poured down. Hundreds of impacts pelted his expanded frame with enough force to shatter bone and rupture lungs.

He held.

Mud and debris surged below as the falling rocks rolled off of him and filled the bottom of the chasm. The sludge was swallowed beneath rising rubble until the entire floor lifted, inch by inch, toward their perch atop the broken Excavator.

Finally, the last rock fell.

Silence returned, save for the low rumble of settling stone.

Chōji exhaled through grit teeth, then stood. He lifted one massive leg out of the fractured debris, then the other. He shrank back to normal size in a slow ripple of chakra, his form slouching with exhaustion.

He joined the others at the summit.

Kiba winced at the sight of him.

"Bruised?"

"Badly," Chōji muttered. "And even as a giant… bullets still hurt."

The back of his shirt was shredded, peppered with blood-speckled holes the size of pin pricks. A hundred puncture wounds where shrapnel and bullets had torn through armor and flesh alike.

Chōji reached into his pouch and retrieved a small rectangular box. Inside was a single yellow dumpling, bright as mustard. He ate it without a word, leaving the red alone.

Chakra flared off him like firelight in the wind.

Kiba followed suit, popping his own soldier pill and throwing one to Akamaru. The both braced as energy surged through their frames.

Naruto and Lee stood tall, untouched. They had paced themselves, but now it was time to push forward again.

The earth groaned.

From beneath the rubble, the enemy began to rise.

First one. Then five. Then hundreds. Small and large green humanoids dragged themselves up from the stone, bloodied but grinning. Massive beasts with slavering jaws clawed their way free, some with snapping maws, others with churning drills or scythe-like limbs.

They kept coming.

"Everyone good to go?" Naruto asked, turning to his team.

No one answered.

They didn't need to.

They leapt.

Back at the Konoha border outpost, the mission had quietly shifted.

The mapmaking plan was abandoned; not from failure, but from necessity. The two wooden structure had been dismantled, its walls carefully fused into one by the masked Anbu's wood release. Inside, they were no longer working on tunnel diagrams or terrain sketches, only war art.

The interior walls were covered in paintings; not of landscapes, but of monsters.

Dozens of grotesque shapes loomed across every surface, drawn in ink, charcoal, pencil, and paint. Nightmarish beasts of alien mak. Machines that crawled like insects and bore tusks of steel. Swarms of gnarled, mouth-legged things with blinking, alien eyes.

It was a mural of horror, unfinished and raw, the strokes crude but the message clear: this is what we face.

A dozen Naruto clones moved quickly between intelligence officers stationed around the room. Each clone delivered battle data like runners in a war room, passing between Ibiki, Inoichi, Shizune, and her adorable but jittery assistant with spiraled glasses and wild hair. The girl barely looked up from the clipboard she was scribbling on, muttering things under her breath.

Ibiki's usual composure was frayed. He worked alongside the pale-masked Anbu with red feather-like paint on his mask. The two were furiously sketching the monsters described to them by the clones, one clone per artist, and often more. The result was a scatter of overlapping depictions: incomplete, rushed, but increasingly accurate.

"Too many types," Ibiki muttered. "They're using war beasts like a weapons rack."

"They are weapons racks," the ink-painter corrected gently. "Biological ones."

The clones moved like ants,dispensing intel from the battlefront: types, tactics, weaknesses. Some described the insect-like ones that detonated on contact. Others the oversized green ones who carried flamethrowers shaped like bagpipes. One described the caterpillar beasts that excreted metal after consuming dirt. Another rattled off a field report on worm-like siege mounts with detachable jaws.

Inoichi, standing at the center of the structure with his fingers to his temple, listened to a clone who had stopped moving and now stood stiffly like a messenger drone.

"It's too drawn out of a battle for the current forces there to finish off," Inoichi said aloud, after a long pause. "Are our allies already showing signs of fatigue or injury?"

"Oh yeah," the clone answered. "Pretty much everyone. Soldier pills are already being used. Chōji was bruised up pretty bad, even at giant size. I think Kiba and Akamaru are still going, but they'll need a break soon."

Inoichi let out a quiet breath through his nose.

"Then you've completed your mission," he said. "You've mapped this sector. You've delayed excavation and sabotagued their industrial ability. You've revealed dozens of new enemy types. That is not only success — that's above and beyond."

The clone blinked.

"Sooo… tactical retreat?"

"Regroup. Plan. Recover." Inoichi's voice was firm. "This is a victory. There's no need to overextend it into a loss."

The clone nodded, clearly reluctant.

"Yeah, alright." He closed his eyes for a beat, then formed a seal. "Let's pull back and do this right. Now that we know where the big chamber is we can just dig down from the surface with our full forces."

He created a final shadow clone, who immediately dispelled, sending the order rippling back to the front lines in an instant.

Lee and Naruto stuck close as they fought through the enemies surrounding them. Both kept to pure taijutsu.

Naruto, with his single kunai, aimed for accuracy. He slipped between bodies, slicing open vital points — the necks, thighs, underarms — then darted back before the aliens could react. They already knew the enemies bled out slowly, but they did die from it all the same. So long as you didn't let your guard down after delivering the blow.

Lee focused on power.

Every kick shattered a knee. Every punch folded an arm. He ignored heads and torsos. Killing took too much energy. But disabling? That was efficient. He let them scream and writhe. They could be finished off later. For now, he was a machine designed to break momentum and snap bones.

It worked.

But even with Choji flattening creatures with his body and Kiba carving a path through the more monstrous forms, the numbers didn't thin. The bodies stacked higher and higher until they were fighting atop a mound of corpses slick with mud and blood. The air stank of ozone, bile, and gunpowder.

Even Lee was beginning to tire.

Lee gritted his teeth and forced open his second gate. The surge of chakra washed through his limbs like lightning and fire. It gave him another burst, enough to kick apart a trio of armored beasts with blunt tusks and gnashing jaws.

But the fatigue snapped back just as fast.

In that moment of distraction, something wrapped around his arms and chest; a bear hug strong enough to crack ribs.

He was pinned.

"Third Gate — Gate of Life!" he roared, chakra bursting from his skin in a visible halo of green.

He twisted inside the alien's grip, faced its armor-plated chest, and stabbed both hands into its ribcage like daggers. With a growl and a scream, Lee tore it open. Pulled it apart. He parted the creature's sternum like a scroll, and its hearts — plural — spilled out in a glistening mess of alien organs.

Lee climbed through the steaming hole in its torso and stood on top of its twitching body.

He looked up, breathless, bruised, wide-eyed. Something inside him snapped free.

He roared a war cry that sounded oddly similar to that made by these aliens. When he spoke, they lsitened.

"WHO ELSE?!" he roared. "Who else would like to trade blows with the Green Beast of Konoha?!"

The words echoed.

Not once. Not twice. But again, and again, and again — bouncing off the walls of the impossibly massive cavern. Everyone had already stopped fighting. The war cry alone had silenced the battlefield. Even the Orks.

They stared.

Lee stood hunched forward, fists clenched, arms loose like chains, chakra roiling around him like fire.

"...Beast?" one of the green aliens grunted.

"Green beast. He green boy. He... one of us?" another mumbled.

"He fight like us. He Waagh! like us."

"He look like us."

"...One of us!"

"He threw down gauntlet! I accept!"

"No you don't! I fight him first!"

"OVER MY DEAD BODY!"

"DEAL!"

And then — chaos.

Lee, Naruto, Choji, and Kiba watched in utter confusion as the Orks turned on each other. They ripped each other apart. Limbs were torn, teeth shattered, weapons discharged point-blank. One particularly massive creature leaned in to what looked like a kiss, only to bite the entire face off the other. No tactics. No coordination. Just brutal, frothing madness.

Lee panted, still trembling from the Third Gate. Blood and sweat soaked into his ruined green jumpsuit. His bones ached, but his heart? His heart was pounding like it wanted to leap out of his chest and keep fighting.

The hand landed softly on his shoulder. It was a familiar warmth, a grounding presence.

It was a mistake.

Lee spun without thinking. The Fourth Gate opened almost on its own. His fist collided with Naruto's face like a cannonball. The sound of bone snapping preceeded his friend being sent flying thirty meteres into the mountain of corpses.

A second later, Kiba and Choji were already beside him, voices overlapping in panic. One of the clones screamed for a toad. A summoning seal flared to life as the emergency escape plan was executed.

But Lee didn't hear any of that.

He barely noticed them dragging Naruto's limp body onto the summoned toad's tongue. Somewhere deep inside, a whisper said, You hit your friend. Another voice screamed louder: He got in your way.

Lee's mouth opened wide, and the roar that emerged had nothing of humanity left in it.

"WAAAAAGH!"

His vision blurred. Red. Not the red of blood, but the red of rage, of glory, of war. Every movement around him was a target. Every sound a call to violence. The air tasted like adrenaline and gunpowder and victory.

He dove from the top of the excavator into the churning chaos below.

And then he was gone.

No technique. No strategy. No finesse. Just raw, explosive, unrelenting destruction.

His hands were no longer hands. They were sledgehammers. Blunt-force meteors. One swing shattered three skulls. A backhanded slap tore an alien's torso like wet parchment. A stomp crushed chests like overripe melons. He grinned as bone cracked underfoot.

Every movement was perfect; every dodge, unconscious.

Bullets sang past him in harmony, a chorus of percussion accompanying his every strike. They didn't hit him. Couldn't hit him. He didn't think to avoid them; the WAAAGH did it for him.

Something big charged. Bigger than the others. Maybe a warbeast. Maybe a humanoid. Lee met it head-on, shoulder-checked it mid-charge, and drove it into the wall where he used it as a punching back. He didn't stop until the wall cracked, until his knuckles bled, until there was no beast left to kill.

He kept going.

They came at him in waves — eager now, chanting with him, matching his rhythm.

"WAAAGH!" they yelled.

"WAAAGH!" he yelled back.

As fire flickered and bullets danced around him like butterflies, he let go. It was all so beautiful. It was all so him.

Thanks as always to my patrons and commissioners. And to fans leaving feedback.

Chapter Text

Chapter 10

Mission: Rescue Rock Lee

Naruto's body hit the cot beside her with a wet, thudding slap. The sound alone made Sakura's stomach drop.

His face was... gone. Not bloodied. Not bruised. Caved in. The front half of his skull was concave, crushed inward like clay beneath a hammer. His breathing was ragged. Shallow. His eyes open and unseeing.

"What happened to him!?" Sakura demanded, hands already glowing green as she dropped to her knees.

Choji, still slick with sweat and half-limping from bruised ribs, exchanged a grim look with Kiba.

"It was Lee," Kiba said. "Something happened to him. He went feral. He's gone. We think it's a genjutsu."

Before Sakura could process that, one of the Naruto clones standing beside the medical tent nodded and vanished with a puff of smoke.

"I'm on it," he said.

The real Naruto was a mess.

Worse, his skin had begun to glow red. A thin veil of chakra bubbled over him in pulses, licking his limbs with corrosive heat. The Kyuubi, no doubt furious and afraid, was trying to save its host.

Sakura's hands trembled. She gritted her teeth and pressed her hands to his skull, trying to guide the chakra to feel exactly what the damage was. But something was wrong.

His bones were knitting together too quickly—and in all the wrong places. Cartilage and bone shards pressed into the soft tissue of his brain, threatening to crush it from within.

And still, the chakra boiled hotter.

A hand gripped her shoulder.

Tsunade had arrived, panting slightly as she stepped into the tent, her eyes widening at the sight.

"Good," the Hokage muttered. "He's still alive. Barely."

She knelt beside Sakura and cracked her knuckles.

"I'll keep the bones from healing or break them again as needed. You focus on putting them back into place."

Sakura nodded and blinked back tears, trying to focus.

The red chakra lashed out.

It caught her across the cheek, a thin whip-like burn that stung all the way to her teeth. Another flare slashed Tsunade's sleeve, drawing a thin line of blood across her forearm.

But neither of them moved. Neither of them stopped.

Sakura's lip quivered. Not from pain. Not really. Her tears kept falling onto Naruto's chest, and still she kept working.

They went like this for several minutes; their arms and torsos receiving minor lacerations and burns as they went.

She heard the tent flaps opened again with a hiss of cold air. From her peripheral vision she saw Kiba and Choji draw their weapons.

She dared to turn her head slightly and paled at who she saw.

Orochimaru stepped inside without a word, yellow eyes gleaming, his presence thick with wrongness. The medical shinobi on either side of the entrance reached for scalpels, but the next person to enter the tent stayed their hand.

Jiraiya.

"What is he doing here?" Choji demanded.

"I just arrived to provide my forces, then I felt that," Orochimaru said, nodding toward Naruto and the bubbling cloak of chakra around him.

He didn't wait for permission.

"Out of my way, ladies." he ordered.

He shouldered past Tsunade, who snarled and nearly decked him on the spot, but the tension in the tent held.

Orochimaru raised his right hand. Five characters lit up in twisted violent chakra, one on each fingertip.

Then he drove them, finger-first, into Naruto's stomach in the same maneuver, and likely jutsu, she had seen him use on Naruto all the way back in the forest of death.

Sakura flinched at the sharp crack and smell of scorched air. But it worked. The red chakra died away.

All at once, the bubbling pressure vanished. The burning stopped. The tent was quiet again.

"There," Orochimaru said, brushing dust off his sleeve. "Get back to it. Jiraiya, undo the seal when the idiot's skull isn't a jigsaw puzzle. I will be waiting for debriefing with the two of you when the emergency here is subsided."

Jiraiya gave a small grunt of agreement. He and Orochimaru turned and left the tent together, leaving a silence behind them that felt like the breath after a scream.

Sakura finally wiped the tears from her eyes and let out a shaky breath.

Tsunade placed both hands on Naruto's jaw and frowned.

"All right," she said. "Let's put his face back together."

All the way north in the great iron sea, Naruto stood up at attention.

"What's wrong?" Princess Koyuki asked.

They were still in the airship heading south, only now approaching the land of Iron. But he didn't have time to explain.

"Madara!" Naruto called out.

The lavatory door opened and out popped an orange swirl mask.

"What." The deep voice demanded from him

"Uh... We have to go," he said, voice urgent.

Madara fully exited the toilet and approached him.

"What is the emergency now?" He asked. "And what do you need from me?"

He was as quick on the uptake as ever.

"We need to find someone who can stop Lee. Do you know anybody?" he asked.

"Who is Lee?"

Naruto rephrased.

"Can you think of anybody who could stop a rampaging, feral, Might Gai?"

Madara actually had to think on that one for a few seconds. It was a tall order after all.

"There's only one person I can think of beside myself. Come." he ordered. Then, as an afterthought added. "Leave a clone here."

Naruto obeyed, forming another shadow clone to remain aboard the ship. Then Madara placed a hand on the original clone's shoulder, and in a blink, they were gone.

They reappeared in a location Naruto didn't immediately recognize, but he could tell it was still within the borders of the Land of Wind. The ground beneath them was cracked sandstone, but the wind carried the sharp chill of the western desert front.

In front of them stood two cloaked figures.

Itachi Uchiha and Kisame Hoshigaki both observed them curiously. As did the sand shinobi backing them up.

Itachi's eyes slowly tracked toward Madara. Kisame, ever the opposite of subtle, grinned wide at the newcomers.

"Itachi," Madara said simply. "Your genjutsu skills are required elsewhere."

Itachi didn't respond with a nod or a word. He just stepped forward in silence, falling into formation on Madara's right. Naruto instinctively moved to his left, still watching Itachi like he might explode.

"Where to?" Madara asked, eyes now on Naruto.

Naruto did some mental math, recalling the clone's last transmission.

"About three hundred kilometers west of the Konoha encampment. Big canyon system. It's raining there."

Madara grunted in acknowledgement. Without another word, he teleported them again.

They landed on uneven rock, soaked through instantly by heavy rain that hammered the ground in a constant sheet. Water pooled in the ridges and gullies around them. The terrain was brutal — even before factoring in the green tide that still lingered beyond the fog.

Madara dropped to one knee, breathing heavier than usual.

"I've really pushed myself today," he muttered. "No more jumps. Not for a while."

Naruto gave him a quick glance — not out of concern, but urgency. Another clone's memory had just returned.

"Kakashi and Gai are briefed," he said. "They're on standby inside the storage toad."

Without wasting a second, he performed the summoning jutsu.

The aforementioned storage toad popped into existence beside them, it's great mouth slowly yawning open. Out walked Kakashi and Gai, both covered in alien gore and ready for action.

"Where is Lee?" Gai asked, already tensing like he expected to sprint into action.

"Somewhere underground. Around here," Naruto replied. "The clones I left behind… they're not holding up too well."

He paused suddenly.

"We've got incoming." he warned.

The words had barely left his mouth when the earth groaned beneath their feet. Off to the east, no more than five kilometers away, the desert floor warped unnaturally. A dome of sand swelled upward like something breathing beneath it, then collapsed violently into a sinkhole.

From the darkness of that new void something emerged. A massive, cylindrical hulk of twisted metal launched into the air, trailing dust and flame in its wake. It was the remains of the excavator, now little more than a kilometer-wide metal tube, sheared of all limbs and weapons. It sailed upward like an arrow.

Lee flew up beneath it, his hands, shoulders and face pressed against the bottom as he lifted and flung the mighty object into the sky.

In the blink of an eye, Lee vanished from the bottom and reappeared high above the ascending wreckage. He struck downward with a thunderous stomp kick. The blow connected with the top of the machine with such force that the entire structure crumpled like a crushed soda can. The compressed mass plummeted downward, faster than it had risen, and ignited as the speed and pressure ripped the air apart.

It slammed back into the sinkhole with a detonation that rivaled a meteor strike.

A shockwave of sand, stone, and flame erupted from the impact. The desert floor rolled in a churning tsunami of heat and debris, crashing toward them like the wrath of a Bijuu.

None of them waited for it to reach them.

"That's the Seventh Gate!" Gai shouted, his face a mask of panic.

"I thought he could only go up to six?!" Kakashi barked, eyes wide.

"Me too!" Gai admitted, just as shocked.

"Gai-sensei!" Naruto interrupted their growing alarm. "Can he open the Eighth Gate—yes or no?!"

Gai hesitated.

"If you had asked me even an hour ago, I would've said no…"

That was answer enough.

"Go hold him off," Madara said without hesitation. "You're the only one who can. In the meantime, the rest of us will come up with a plan."

Gai didn't wait for another word. He dropped into his stance, his expression calm but deadly serious.

"Sixth Gate—Gate of Joy!" he bellowed.

A green aura burst from his body, and the ground cracked beneath his feet. The transformation hit like a shockwave, knocking the rest of them backward.

And then he leapt.

The incoming tidal wave of sand and flame parted around him as he punched through it, split like water before the prow of a ship. A sonic boom echoed through the air as Gai rocketed toward the impact site.

Naruto scrambled back to his feet, shielding his eyes from the swirling dust. Even Madara, still recovering from his earlier exertion, looked momentarily impressed.

"You said something about a plan?" Kakashi asked, brushing sand from his flak vest as he glanced between them.

They all looked at each other. The tension hung in the air like static, the aftershocks of Gai's leap still rumbling beneath their feet.

Naruto broke the silence, deciding that thinking aloud might lead to something productive.

"Uh… we wait for an opening…"

"Yeah…" Kakashi encouraged, nodding slightly. "And what exactly are we looking out for?"

Naruto chewed the inside of his cheek.

"The moment he tries to open the Eighth Gate… or maybe right after the Seventh wears off. That moment when his body gives out, just a little window—just enough."

Madara picked up where he left off.

"Then I warp Itachi in close enough to make eye contact and put him under. No distractions. Just precision."

Itachi nodded once.

"Understood."

"With what?" Kakashi asked. "Tsukuyomi? Because if he's physically on death's door, the last thing he needs is three days of torture compressed into a second. That'd kill him just as surely."

Itachi didn't blink.

"No. I'll show him puppies and rainbows. A tea party in a field of flowers."

The flatness in his tone was so complete Naruto almost missed the fact that he was being entirely serious. There was no sarcasm in the Uchiha's voice, only a grim commitment to calm the mind of a dying ally.

"…Right," Naruto muttered, still trying to process the image of Rock Lee sipping tea with Itachi in a hallucinated meadow.

"What if he succeeds in activating the Eighth Gate?" Itachi asked quietly.

There was a pause.

"Then he's dead anyways," Kakashi said. His voice was low, pained. "If it comes to that, I can… send him somewhere else. To die without endangering anybody else."

Naruto flinched at the words; not for what they meant, but for how much they clearly cost Kakashi to say. Still, he understood. If they couldn't save Lee, they'd have to save the world from Lee.

He didn't ask. But something in the way Kakashi's visible eye narrowed, in the way he held himself just a little apart, told Naruto this wasn't just talk. He had a method, a space manipulation jutsu, maybe, where even someone like Lee couldn't hurt anyone else.

"Hatake," Madara said suddenly. "Do you have a spare soldier pill?"

Kakashi reached into a pocket, rummaging for a moment before pulling one out and handing it over without hesitation.

Madara lifted his outer mask just enough to toss it back, then stepped behind Itachi and placed a steadying hand on each shoulder. Four sharingan glinted in the gloom. All of them trained on the battle before them

To Naruto's eyes, it was pure chaos; green blurs tearing through the landscape like vengeful spirits. One second, a plateau was there. The next, it was a crater. A line of trees turned to ash. A hill exploded into a newly formed lake. Every impact shredded the terrain, turning the desert into a battlefield that wept under the force of every blow.

And then it happened.

For one moment -one perfect, terrible second - the two green blurs resolved into humans. Both Lee and Gai, legs extended in mirrored high kicks, collided mid-air. The force was so immense that the falling rain evaporated, forming a dome of absolute stillness around them.

Naruto barely registered it. But the three sharingan-wielders were quicker on the draw.

All three stiffened like drawn wires, sharingan glowing as if ready to act. Naruto saw Madara shift his weight. Kakashi's hand twitched. Itachi's fingers flexed.

And then, too late, the moment passed. The dome collapsed, the blurs returned and the storm swallowed the opening.

The window had been too small but their next chance came just moments later.

Lee broke from the fight, flinging himself high above the shattered battlefield in a spiraling arc of green light. He hung there in the air for a moment, suspended like a meteor about to fall.

Then he shifted his body. It wasn't random. It wasn't instinctive. It was a stance, a pose of power, held with deliberate, terrifying intent. Naruto didn't know how he recognized it. He just knew that this was the activation method of the Eighth Gate.

"Now!" all three of his Sharingan-wielding companions shouted at once.

In an instant, Madara and Itachi vanished.

Naruto barely saw them go. One heartbeat they were beside him, the next they were airborne and far away.

Kakashi dropped to one knee beside Naruto. His Sharingan had changed. Not just the tomoe, but something resembling a throwing star. The pattern was sharper, angular — hungry.

Naruto turned back to Lee.

He saw Itachi. Just inches from Lee's face. Eye contact locked. Genjutsu activating.

And then Lee punched.

It wasn't a direct hit. He missed center mass by inches. But even from a distance, Naruto saw the shape of Itachi reduced somewhat.

Then, all three figures began to fall. The two dark ones vanished leaving Lee behind. But before he could hit the ground, a green blur, faster than thought, shot upward and caught Lee mid-air.

Itachi and Madara reappeared a second later, just beside Naruto and Kakashi.

Naruto's stomach dropped when he got a good look.

Itachi was more injured than he'd thought. A single punch from lee had taken not only his arm, but his shoulder too. He could see the white of open ribs. The skin had been burned away from the force and friction of the punch. The man's face was pale, his eyes unfocused. Clearly in shock.

"Medical tents. Now," Naruto ordered, pointing to the forgotten ally behind them.

The storage toad hadn't left them this entire time. Its mouth opened wide, tongue unfurling to form a landing platform.

"For Itachi and Lee, yes," Madara said, his voice like steel. "But leave me here."

Neither Naruto nor Kakashi argued. Gai had already bolted, cradling Lee's unconscious, nearly unrecognizable body like a newborn. He ran up the toad's tongue and disappeared into the summoning.

Naruto and Kakashi each grabbed hold of Itachi - Kakashi at the legs, Naruto at the remaining shoulder - and carried him into the toad's mouth just as it slammed shut behind them.

A moment later, the clone dispelled.

Itachi stood before the projection of Rock Lee's feral mind.

They were not alone. He could feel something else with them, but couldn't identify what it was.

The mental space he had crafted - serene and meditative - was under siege. A still lake reflected cherry blossoms as they drifted from trees that sang gently in the wind. Baby chicks chirped from within their nests. Spring flowers swayed with the quiet rhythm of breathing.

But Lee's presence didn't breathe. It raged.

Like a storm crashing against a temple, Lee tore through the peaceful illusion. The lake boiled. Trees were shredded into mulch. Chicks, flowers, petals – all gone. There weren't even screams. Just obliteration.

Itachi calmly closed his eyes and rebuilt it all, this time choosing a rolling plain under soft golden light. The winds blew slower now. The air smelled of new grass and renewal.

Lee's mind howled again, and it all burned.

Then the dreams turned against him.

Itachi saw stars, so many stars. Galaxies hanging in blackness, distant and cold, yet trembling with malicious pressure. He saw the Toads, or things that wore the skin of toads, locked in a cosmic war against creatures without names. Star-eaters, he thought. Leviathans with mouths the size of moons, swallowing entire constellations. He watched their children die and be reborn in metal frames, only to shatter their devourers from the inside out, reforming in kaleidoscopic violence.

He blinked and restored the illusion. Couples sat at the lake in Konoha, resting heads on the shoulders of their lovers. A first kiss under the watchful eye of a full moon. The scent of wind and home.

Then it vanished, replaced by a tide of darkness.

Worlds shriveled under insectoid swarms. Planets howled, devoured by locusts in chitonous armor. Their hunger was infinite.

No!

He snapped it back to a ramen bar in Konoha wit the steam of hot broth. Then the smoky barbecue place, with pork frying in the middle of the tables. A warm towel handed by an old chef. Dango on a stick, honeyed and perfect.

The air tasted sweet, for just a moment.

Then came titans in sapphire, wreathed in lightning, locked in war against purple-armored demons with tongues like serpents and claws like pikes. They collided with no regard for physics. No thought. Just violence.

Itachi gritted his teeth.

He understood, now. This wasn't Lee. This wasn't even genjutsu. It was possession. Infection. The WAAAGH, whatever it was, wasn't a mind so much as a screaming soulstorm of will and emotion and memories. No planning. No logic. Just momentum. A broken hive-mind of belief given flesh.

He watched Lee roar and crash through the temples of the Fire Nation, thesacred buildings turned to rubble beneath his green fists.

"WAAAGH!"

It was not a battle of illusions. It was a war of dreams.

"Seventy-one hours remaining." Itachi said to himself as the skeleton sitting upon a golden throne towered over him.

Thanks as always to my patrons and commissioners. And to fans leaving feedback.

Chapter Text

Chapter 11:

They are Called Orks

Sasuke Uchiha arrived at the Konoha forward encampment just after dawn. At his side was Jugo. Behind them, a quiet army.

They were draped in the coarse, off-white garb of penal confinement, none of them trained to cross such large tracts of land on foot in such a short amount of time. Dozens in number, these were the cursed seal experiments from the same facility that had once imprisoned Jugo. Twisted by their own bodies and molded by madmen, they moved as a single, silent mass.

But not for Sasuke. They followed Jugo. And Jugo followed Sasuke. It worked. For now.

The Konoha shinobi had already cleared a space at the edge of the encampment. Cots lined the inside of hastily erected, wallless tents. They were set apart, but guarded nonetheless. The newcomers said nothing as they were gestured toward their quarters. Not a single one broke formation until Jugo gave a slow nod. That was all it took. They settled in like obedient, if exhausted, soldiers.

There was a wooden enclosure, something like a pagoda, and he saw Orochimaru's unmistakable form standing inside it. Sasuke approached.

When he arrived, he found them waiting. Orochimaru stood at the center of a wide-open area, arms crossed in an unnervingly relaxed pose. Kabuto worked nearby, his arms already full of scrolls and illustrations of monstrosities that he was studying. Suigetsu was leaning against a crate of rations, sharpening a cleaver somebody had foolishly given him. Karin stood just outside, as if waiting for him.

"Things are stranger than we even imagined." She warned him. "Tread carefully."

He nodded in thanks and entered. There he found people he didn't expect.

Guren and Rinji's present made sense, he supposed. They stood speaking in low voices by one of the planning tables. But it was the others who caught Sasuke's eye. Strangers crowding around the crystal user.

There was hulking figure who resembled Suigetsu — shark teeth, dead black eyes, and pale skin stretched over dense muscle. Stranger still was a man wore a blue water-suit with a pink-tufted mohawk showing from beneath his hood. Least interesting was a thin and silver-haired man with a heavy gas mask that obscured most of his face who stood beside a tiny, scarred creature with welding goggles and what looked like a rotary grenade launcher fused to one arm.

Sasuke stared for a moment, then turned his attention away. If Orochimaru let them near the planning table, they were either valuable or expendable. Either way, not his problem.

He approached.

"The prisoners from Jugo's prison are exhausted and have orders to rest," he said to no one in particular. "They Jugo, who I have managed to convince to comply."

"Delightful," Orochimaru murmured, flashing that same viper's smile. "You've brought more cards to the table than expected. I thought you might wind up bringing me nothing but corpses from that rambuctious facility."

Thought, or hoped? Sasuke didn't ask.

"I want to be caught up."

Kabuto handed him a freshly inked report.

Orochimaru began.

"Everyone seems to agree that they are, indeed, aliens. Fungal in nature. The eastern tunnel system has been neutralized. The enemy's excavation progress there was halted after significant resistance. The southern tunnels are currently embroiled in battles with Mist forces. Kirigakure's shinobi are... effective. The northern tunnels have gone quiet. No resistance. The scouts are trying to figure out why."

"No tunnel to the west?" Sasuke asked.

"Not yet," Orochimaru confirmed. "But it's only a matter of time."

Kabuto jumped in.

"And then there are the allied forces yet to arrive." Kabuto said. "Land of Springs is sending an armada of airships and ice shinobi. Lightning nations forces should be arriving to support Rain within a few hours. Waterfall and other small nations are handling refugees and supply routes. And then there's the medical and information teams..." Kabuto said, pausing.

He looked to Orochimaru, as if for permission to continue.

"Everyone is trying to capture live subjects for interrogation, but preparing locations for interrogation and safe examinations of the creatures is proving difficult. An abundance of caution is slowing down progress, it seems. Meanwhile information sharing is all being handled by one choke point. Naruto Uzumaki."

Sasuke narrowed his eyes.

"Shadow clones?" he surmised.

"Shadow clones." Kabuto confirmed.

Damned that power house of chakra. Having such a unique and versatile Jutsu made him indispensable. No doubt the allied forces were trying to come up with a faster, or at least equal form of battlefield information sharing. But he himself couldn't come up with one.

Which was awful because that meant he would be seeing the blonde maniac no matter where he wound up being deployed.

"So now we're just waiting." he summarized.

"Indeed," Orochimaru said. "The classic shinobi war strategy. 'Hurry up and wait.'"

"And what, exactly, are we waiting for?" he asked. "The reinforcements from abroad? The interrogation and dissection rooms? Intel?"

"For Naruto Uzumaki to regain consciousness," Orochimaru said smoothly. "So he can create more shadow clones to resume mapping and battlefield communication."

Sasuke paused.

"Sleeping on the job as always?" he said, with a trace of dry disdain.

"No," said Orochimaru, his smile faltering just enough to be noticed. "He is on life support. And at death's door."

Sasuke froze mid-breath.

That idiot! Had the aliens truly been that strong? Scratch that, he hated tat thought for the implication of him respecting the jinchuuriki's strength and competence. More likely, Naruto had miscalculated so badly it nearly cost him his life.

Either way he needed to see for himself.

Sasuke turned and left the tent without another word, heading toward the Konoha half of camp.

His former countrymen didn't question his presence, though a few eyes did follow his movements. The truce Orochimaru had made with Tsunade must have offered him immunity from capture for the duration of the war, but he could see teams of Anbu that looked like they very much wanted to cash in his bounty as a missing nin.

He found the medical tent with Naruto in it fairly easily. Sakura was laying asleep just outside of it.

He considered waking her up, but based on her medical apron he knew she was overworked and needed the sleep. And didn't want an emotional reunion in such a public place.

He walked past her and inside.

He paused. The room was full of beds and patients. He spotted Naruto at the end next to Gai and Lee. But there was another person on a fourth cot.

He was visibly missing an arm and much of his shoulder and had an ice pack over his eyes. At first he thought it was Hayate, but then he remembered the guy was dead. Maybe Kurenai had lost weight?

His blood ran cold when he recognized the telltale stress marks on his face, and he knew who the man was.

There Itachi Uchiha lay, helpless and on life support. The machine attached to him beeped regularly, indicating the heartbeat of a man unconscious. The tube going into his nose and down his throat made him look truly pathetic.

Sasuke had trained so hard and for so long to best him in single combat, and all of it had been for nothing, because there would be no fight.

He would deal with the regret of a wasted life later. For now he savored the moment.

A part of him hated that it would it be too quick and painless, killing the wretch in his sleep. The rest of him didn't care. Being rid of this curse, of this mission and the hatred in his heart, would bring enough peace to let him sleep through regretting the lack of a painful death for his brother.

He slowly, ever so slowly, placed a hand on the hilt of his sword, and began to draw it. He stopped after an inch, feeling eyes on him.

He turned around to find three pairs of them. Naruto, Lee and Gai were conscious, watching him with stony expressions.

He hesitated. They weren't in any condition to stop him. More importantly, none of them looked like they would if they could. They all knew the story. They all knew he would be just in doing the thing he was planning to do. Worse, they knew he would happily pay the consequences for going through with it.

Still, he couldn't stop himself.

"Jeez, you look like shit." He told Naruto.

His eyes lingered on the black marks around is face that he recognized as the fault lines of the bones in his skulls. They were bruised and swelling, and just as black as the rings around your eyes. Despite how much it must have hurt, Naruto smiled at him.

"Yeah, I got sucker punched by a fourth gate Rock Lee." He said, tilting his head to the offender. "What's your excuse?"

Sasuke had to stop himself from smiling at the casual familiarity between the two.

He turned back to his brother's unconscious form and rethought his circumstances. Could he really live with himself if he hadn't looked Itachi in the eyes as he did the deed? Would he really be satisfied without them both having the knowledge that he bested the son-of-a-bitch, and the dawning horror he had imagined on Itachi's face he finally ripped the man's still beating heart out?

No. No he would not. He relented, sliding his sword, still not fully drawn anyways, back into its sheath.

He almost drew it again in surprise when the tent flaps behind him flung open.

"They're awake!" he heard Sakura's shrill voice call out.

The telltale sounds of footsteps moving towards the tent followed her exclamation, as did the sound of fabric rustling.

He turned back to Itachi to see him sitting up. He moved his one good arm from beneath the covers to reveal he'd been holding a scalpal, one he placed down on the nightstand beside him.

Rage boiled within Sasuke. He'd been conscious and ready for him the entire time?!

He looked completely nonchalant about it too, looking at Sasuke boredly.

"Wait... who?" He heard Sakura ask from behind him.

He turned around and saw the recognition dawn on her face. He braced himself for the inevitable moping that would result. It almost arrived, but a moment later her eyes shifted to his hand, still place on his sword, and then to Itachi. Too late did he see the rage in her expression.

One moment he was standing in the medical tent, the next he was flying through the side flap. She had slapped him. She had slapped him so hard it shattered his jaw and cheekbone before skipping him across the slick ground outside like a stone on a lake surface.

Shinobi dodged out of the way of his sliding form in surprise, but he regained his footing.

He cradled his broken jaw with one hand as he tried to stand up, but Sakura came out of the tent after him, and he had seldom seen a woman so angry.

He instinctively tried to draw his sword as he stood up, only for a hand to slam it back down.

He flinched towards the person standing over him to find Kakashi – sharingan flaring, staring him down. Another form appeared ot his left. Tsunade Senju herself.

"You sneak past me and break into my medical tent!" Sakura screamed. "Attempt to murder one of my patients!" Sakura raged, storming towards him.

He tried to say something in his own defense, that it hadn't happened like that, but his injury prevented him from making coherent sounds.

Tsunade held up a hand to stop his former teammate, and it worked. A crowd had gathered around them, seemingly every jonin of Konoha.

"Sasuke." Kakashi said with a tone of finality. "I think now would be a good time for you to leave. While our patience is such as to abide by the terms of our truce."

Sasuke did not need telling twice.

He raised both hands in surrender in a slow, non-threatening motion.

The crowd parted as he walked past them, humiliated.

He returned to Orochimaru, where Kabuto looked amused at his injury. Orochimaru looked and sounded disappointed.

"Based on the fact you returned to us it appears that you failed. I had expected you to succeed." he said.

He seethed internally for the whole time as Kabuto repaired his jaw. If Orochimaru had simply told him Itachi was in the same tent as Naruto, the bastard would be dead. Or maybe he would have made better decisions? He wasn't sure, but he seethed all the same.

Naruto couldn't remember the last time a room felt this cramped—and he'd spent his early childhood sleeping four to a bed in an orphanage.

He was propped up on a stack of pillows, face still tender but finally whole, with a blanket pulled to his waist and an IV drip hanging beside him. To his left, Gai sat with arms crossed, somehow looking both stiff and overprotective. Lee chewed gum with exaggerated focus, legs bouncing restlessly under the cot like a dog dreaming of the chase. And beyond him, Itachi Uchiha sat silent and still, one arm missing, bandages soaked with dried antiseptic. No one stood near him.

The rest of the tent was absolutely packed.

Tsunade stood like a storm front, arms folded, chin tilted, eyes watchful. Jiraiya flanked her, silent for once, thumbs tucked into his belt. Kakashi, Choji, Kiba, Tenten, Asuma, Kurenai, Sakura, Ino, Inoichi, Shikamaru, Ibiki, and Anko had crowded into what little space remained, some standing, others perched on footlockers, stools, or sitting on the ground.

They weren't ignoring Itachi. No one could ignore Itachi. But they weren't acknowledging him either, save for the way they left a careful gap in the circle so that he could hear and speak. Even war criminals earned a margin of courtesy when they nearly died saving one of your own.

"Wow, you almost look worse than when we brought you in here," Kiba muttered, breaking the silence with a crooked grin.

"You're nothing to look at yourself," Choji deadpanned.

"But seriously," Ino cut in, stepping closer. "How do you feel?"

Naruto smiled, a little off-center due to lingering swelling.

"I'm fine. Face feels more bruised than broken. You ladies do good work." he complimented.

He touched the side of his face lightly, then dropped his hand and shrugged.

"And being a jinchuriki has its plus sides, I guess."

He nodded toward the cot next to him.

"He's the one who should be doing most of the talking today, though." His tone shifted. "Sounds like he went through something interesting."

Everyone turned toward Lee.

Lee, for his part, sat up straighter, still rhythmically chewing the wad of gum he'd demanded an hour earlier. A wad Asuma had gifted after explaining that he wasn't able to smoke on the battlefield. Lee had said he had a "mysterious hankering," and none of the medical staff had the energy to argue.

"Lee?" Gai asked gently. "Are you feeling up to talking?"

"Sure," Lee said. "What's up?"

He said it as if this were a casual team debrief and not the aftermath of a catastrophic near-death incident. The nonchalance sent a few ripples of concern through the group.

Inoichi cleared his throat and took out a scroll and ink.

"What do you remember?"

Lee chewed once. Twice. He furrowed his brow, searching the space just above Naruto's head like the answer might be floating there.

"Fighting," he said. "Just… the joy and exuberance of fighting. Not specific strikes or movements. It was all just—" He closed his eyes for a moment, smiling faintly. "A blur of fists and emotion. And power."

Inoichi wrote it down like a therapist diagnosing something between a berserker episode and a religious awakening.

Then, softly, another voice cut across the murmur.

"Did it show you anything?" Itachi asked. "The waagh?"

A ripple passed through the tent again. This time, it wasn't discomfort—it was curiosity.

Ibiki raised an eyebrow.

"I am sick of that word, and I think I speak for all of us" Shikamaru added, turning slightly to look back at the eldest Uchiha. "Waagh. We all thought that was just some kind of war cry. A chant."

"It's much more than that." Itachi said.

"A name for their god?" Kurenai offered quietly.

Itachi shook his head once, slow and deliberate.

"Not a god. A sort of hive mind without a mind. More like a field. An energy that connects them. Not in the way we imagine chakra networks or telepathy. Closer to a resonance. If I had to give it a metaphor, imagine if all of us were connected to Naruto and drew on the Nine-Tails. All of us, drawing from the same rage, the same impulse."

A silence settled over the group. The weight of what he was saying wasn't lost on anyone.

Inoichi leaned forward slightly, eyes narrowed.

"You used a visual metaphor. You said it showed you things. What did it show you?"

Itachi was quiet. So quiet that the beep of his heart monitor felt too loud.

"My experience in genjutsu tells me none of what I saw can be trusted," he said finally. "Some of it may have been shaped by my own subconscious. My mind giving form and color to things that were otherwise incomprehensible. Abstract forces made visual through a reverse Rorschach—a filter of language and fear."

"But yes," he admitted. "I saw things."

"And what kinds of things?" Ibiki pressed.

Itachi's eyes closed. His breath was shallow.

"I saw wars that spanned stars. Creatures that lived in the heart of suns. Armies that devoured worlds. And I saw those armies shatter, only for the pieces to become their own monsters. Their own nations."

He opened his eyes again.

"I saw madness that wore civilization like a mask. But I doubt any actual knowledge or information could be gleaned from these visions. All I can say with finality is that I saw the id of these aliens."

There was dead Lee spoke again.

"Orks."

The word cut through the quiet like a blade.

Inoichi blinked at Lee.

"Beg your pardon?"

"They are called Orks," Lee said again. "With a K."

All eyes turned to him. Lee kept chewing his gum.

"...I don't know how I know that," he added after a beat.

"Perhaps I was mistaken," Itachi said quietly, shifting in his cot. "Perhaps it did have knowledge to share after all."

Ibiki responded without a word. He retrieved his battered sketchbook again, flipping to a set of pages filled with quick but precise renderings of enemy forms—humanoids, creatures, machines. His tone was all business as he passed it to Lee.

"Names. Classifications. Tell us what you can."

Lee accepted the book like it was a pop quiz he hadn't studied for, but instead of confusion, his expression lit up with familiarity, even fondness.

He flipped to the first image: the hulking green humanoids, grotesquely muscled and packed with crude armor.

"Orks," he said plainly. "Wit' a K. Dat's important."

Page two—small, vicious creatures, all teeth and wiry limbs.

"Grotz, or grotlings. Right nasty little gits. They don't fight well, but there's always more of 'em."

Page three—blob-like creatures with mouths and stubby legs.

"Squigs. Dat one's a bitey squig."

"I see. " said Ibiki. "And what about this creature."

He flipped to the next page without hesitation. It was one one of the creatures that exploded.

"That's a squig too." Lee said.

Ibiki turned to an image of one of the creatures with a horn.

"Also a squig." Lee said.

"Wait, they're all the same creature?" Naruto asked.

"Well, all one of three. Orks, squigs and grorz. That first drawing was a bitey squig, second was a boomy squig, that one's a stabby squig."

People started to take notes as Ibiki turned the pages.

"Spitta squig. Real nasty. Melts your face."

Next.

"Hair squig. Mostly decorative. Sometimes used for fashion or warmth."

Next.

"Medic squig. Eats infections. Sometimes eats the rest of ya too."

Next.

"Tracker squig. You bite it, it runs off, and then ya follow the blood."

He kept going, rapidly flipping through imaginary or unseen squigs as if reciting a gospel only he understood. And his way of speaking became more crude as they went.

"Paint squig. Squishes out colors."

"Ammo squig. You squeeze 'im and he pops bullets."

"Trumpet squig. For music and signalin'."

"Dinner squig. Delicious, but if it ain't cooked right it eats ya from the inside."

"…Squig-onna-stick. Carnival food."

"…Mascot squig. Has a hat."

Everyone was taking notes as he talked, when the last pen stopped moving Shikamaru piped up.

"Are there other types of Orks or Squigs we haven't seen yet? Can you name them and tell us about them?" Shikamaru asked.

Lee leaned back slightly on the cot, tapping his chin with a thoughtful pop of his gum.

"Oh yeah, loads more types you ain't even seen yet. There's the Kommandoz—sneaky boys what crawl through vents and dirt and love knives more'n guns. Weirdboyz, too, what explode if they think too hard 'cause they use the Waagh like a straw stuck in a lightning storm. Den ya got da Burna Boyz—carry flamers, love settin' stuff on fire, real happy gits. Tankbustas, what live for blowin' up tanks, sometimes with squigs strapped to sticks. Painboyz—dey're da doctors, but like, worse than normal doctors. Den there's da Mekboyz, buildin' all da big stuff, like tanks with wheels made of buzzsaws and rockets that don't fly straight 'cause straight's boring. Flash Gitz, posh gits with big guns and gold teeth what think dey better'n everyone. Then you got da Nobz—biggest of da lot, bosses of da little gits, mean as sin. Warbosses, even bigger, even meaner, dey don't just fight da enemy, dey fight each other while fightin' da enemy. As for squigs… bomb squigs, tracker squigs, lamp squigs, burrow squigs, hat squigs, snot squigs—don't ask, launch squigs, squig mines, flying squigs—yeah, dey got wings—lava squigs for meltin', and even tank squigs that roll like wheels and spit nails. Dere's even squigs that explode into other squigs! Oh, and squigpipes—used for music, terrible music, but dey love it. Dey breed squigs for everything, even soap. Dat one's called a bubble squig. Smells like fungus. Parasite eating squigs, suicide bomber squigs, face eating squigs, which honestly is pointless for a name as all squigs will happily do that. All of 'em just wanna bite, eat, or blow up whatever's nearby. Real friendly lot, if you're green. Otherwise? Not so much."

He stopped, thought for a second, then nodded.

"And… that's about it."

Silence. The room was still. Dozens of pens scratched furiously over paper as analysts and jōnin absorbed the absurdity of what had just been said.

Ibiki looked mildly traumatized. Sakura, hunched with a pen of her own, looked like she was rethinking her entire education.

"That's..." Anko finally muttered, "a lot of enemy types."

But Itachi wasn't done. The Uchiha cleared his throat softly, his bandaged form still unnervingly composed.

"That was useful. But I'd like to ask about the other things I saw during the Tsukuyomi."

The room quieted again, this time with focused dread.

"Things?" Inoichi echoed cautiously.

Itachi nodded.

"When I connected to the Waagh, I saw glimpses—visions—of other forces. Entities. Battles beyond this planet."

Itachi watched Lee for a long moment, fingers steepled beneath his chin.

"Who were the star eaters that I saw?" he asked.

Lee blinked, as if surprised anyone else had seen them.

"Oh. You mean da Star Drinkers. Yeah. Dey're gone now. Waagh says they got smashed up real good."

"Star… Drinkers?" Ino echoed.

"Yup." Lee nodded, as if this were common knowledge. "Big shiny gits, look like walkin' statues made o' cut glass and hate. Ain't alive, but not dead either. Real spooky. Used to be gods, or somethin'. Ate suns. Whole ones. Burned out star systems just to warm their feet."

He paused to smack his gum, then continued.

"There was a bunch of 'em. Real nasty gits. One o' 'em was da Night Howla, or maybe da Doom Buzzer—big floaty one with a face like a scream, used to zip through battlefields and strip da skin off ya with its thoughts. Then ya got da Burny Git—always drippin' fire and lightin' up planets just to hear 'em scream. Da Crunchin' God, that one looked like a bug's jaw glued to a moon. Or maybe a throne. Hard to tell. But da worst? Da biggest? Waagh called him da King Git. Real name's Da Void Stompa. Oldest one. Sleeps in metal and dreams in fire. Sits under da dirt of stars and waits. The metal boyz worship 'im."

"The metal ones?" Itachi pressed.

Lee nodded.

"Tin skulls. Real quiet, real mean. Work for da Star Drinkers, or used to. Then the star drinkers ate them. They ate them back. Ripped out da gods' souls and nailed 'em to cubes. Now they got ghost boxes full o' screaming gods and no one's really in charge anymore."

Itachi let that sink in, his face unreadable.

"So they're not gone. Not entirely."

"Nah." Lee shook his head. "Waagh says they're like mushrooms. Chop off da top, roots still wriggle. And if ya listen real close, da stars still scream.

Itachi waited for everyone to finish making notes. He looked notably paler than when he started.

"There was a massive swarm. Insects. They were devouring entire planets, leaving nothing but husks. Do you remember?"

Lee's brow furrowed.

"Ah. You mean da bugboys. Yeah. Don't waagh. Don't fight fair. Just eat and grow and eat some more."

Itachi nodded once.

"And then I saw something else. Vast machines. Silent. Perfect. Armored in gold and black. They disassembled worlds like puzzles and put them back in new shapes."

Lee leaned back on his cot, chewing his gum louder.

"I already told you about them. The shiny gitz. Broke their gods and put them away."

Tsunade and Jiraiya shared a look but Itachi pushed on.

"And the armored giants?" Itachi asked. "Blue armor. Halo symbols. They were fighting on a broken world."

"Smurfboyz!" Lee grinned. "Real serious. Real shiny. Real rulesy. Got a book for everythin'. Gotta ask permission to sneeze. But they punch good. And loud."

Shikamaru looked unimpressed.

"What about the other ones?" Itachi asked. "The ones with… piercings. Long tongues. Faces split open with eyes where teeth should be."

Lee's grin faltered. His jaw slowed.

"…we don't talk about dose," he said.

Itachi did not press him.

"And finally," the Uchiha said after a moment, "there was one more. A throne of gold. Skeleton. Machines humming around him. I felt… gravity."

Lee's expression turned unreadable.

"Da God Empror. Big boss of humies. Real dead. Real thinky. Keeps da bad stuff outta the sky. Barely. He's powerful. Real powerful. But he's slippin'. Got too much thinkin' to do and not enough time to do it."

Sakura raised her hand while Inoichi wrote down Lee's exact words.

"Humies?" she asked.

"Us." Lee said. "Humans. The god emperor rules all of us. Or those that don't slip through the cracks."

More people raised their hands. Lee actually called on Gai.

"Are you saying there are other humans out there?" he asked.

"Loads! Tons of worlds full of us. Orks love you because we always have good fights with you." Lee said.

People shared concerned glances at Lee making the distinction between himself as humans, and the insinuation that he was an Ork instead of one of them.

Before anybody could comment on this Tenten returned. None of them realized she'd left. She moved quietly, balancing a tray of hot soup bowls, steam rising from them in gentle curls. Without saying a word, she handed one to Naruto and Gai, then stepped over to Lee's bedside and held out the last one for him.

"Thanks, Tenten!" Lee said cheerfully, taking the bowl in both hands.

Then, without hesitation, he reached into his own mouth, yanked out one of his molars with a sickening crack, and placed it on the tray before her.

The room went silent. Lee didn't react to the pain he just caused himself. He just smiled through the blood seeping from the corner of his mouth as he lifted the soup to his lips and began sipping with gusto.

Even Itachi stared at the young man, flabbergasted. His stoic mask was well and truly broken. Naruto caught the moment and immediately slapped a hand over his own mouth to stifle the laugh building in his chest. The slack-jawed look on a dumbfounded Itachi Uchiha was too much.

Tenten just stood there, frozen, tray in hand, her arms wobbling slightly as she stared in horror at the bloodied tooth resting on the lacquered wood. Naruto could clearly see the pink nerve still dangling from the root.

"Lee…" Gai asked slowly, cautiously.

"Hm?" Lee asked.

He was still slurping the soup, unbothered by the taste of blood or pain that the hot meal must have been causing the fresh wound in his gums.

"Why did you just hand Tenten one of your teeth?"

"To pay her, of course," Lee said brightly, as though the answer were obvious.

Tsunade sighed, giving Sakura a nod. Without a word, Sakura leaned forward and gently pressed two fingers to Lee's temple, a flare of chakra sparking at her touch and lee's eyes rolled back and he fell unconscious instantly, slumping sideways with the now empty bowl in his hand.

"Put that thing back into his head," Tsunade ordered, pointing at the tooth. "And file all of this new information under speculation. But the details on new ork and squig variants? Confirmed or not, they're worth sharing. We're officially calling them that."

Someone from the back—Kurenai, maybe—raised a hand.

"And the rest? The other aliens? That… god on the golden throne?"

Tsunade gave her a firm shake of the head.

"All of it should be treated as the ravings of someone under intense genjutsu strain. There's no proof of any of it. We'll waste valuable energy chasing ghosts and aliens on distant planets when we have plenty to deal with right here."

Ibiki, arms crossed, finally spoke up again.

"If Lee's information about orks and squigs proves accurate we'll re-evaluate. Only then can we begin considering the rest of his so-called visions."

"Agreed," Jiraiya said, voice heavier than before. "For now, get the descriptions of any new ork or squig types out to all divisions and allied forces. Everyone needs to be ready for what they might face."

The room slowly began to empty, conversation dying off as people filtered out with their notes and orders. Soon, only Jiraiya, Kakashi, Sakura, and the patients remained.

Jiraiya moved to Naruto's bedside

"Think you're up for making more clones yet? Your old ones won't hold out for another day."

Naruto rubbed his neck and winced.

"Might need another day. Then I can start the info relays and the storage toad circuit again."

"Fine." Jiraiya leaned back against the wall, arms crossed. "Rest while you can. This war doesn't slow down for anybody."

There was a pause. Then, quietly from the cot across from him, Itachi spoke.

"Oh right," he said. "I forgot to ask Lee about the toad gods."

Both Jiraiya and Naruto turned to him, blinking.

Itachi just shook his head faintly.

"It's probably smarter to wait until Inoichi and Ibiki can get in my and Lee's heads and translate everything visually." He told them.

Thanks as always to my patrons and commissioners. And to fans leaving feedback.

Chapter Text

Chapter 12:

Expensive Down Time

Tsunade stood beside Jiraiya, arms folded, chin high, as Orochimaru's prisoners were marched before them in groups of ten. Ragged, blank-eyed things. Some twitched. Some stared vacantly at the sky like they hadn't seen it in years. One or two looked like they might pounce at the first sign of weakness. All wore the same patchwork prisoner robes, pale grey with sleeves frayed at the edges.

"They are all useless for combat," Tsunade said flatly.

Orochimaru, lounging like a bored prince on the edge of a supply crate, smiled indulgently. Jiraiya hated that smile. It was too practiced, too smug.

"You have created these powerhouses of chakra," she went on, voice rising slightly, "but never taught them even the basics of ninjutsu. They are untrained, undisciplined, and broken. I will not allow you to send them into combat."

Jiraiya glanced at the prisoners. Some visibly relaxed at her words; their shoulders sagging, exhaling a breath they hadn't know they'd been holding. Others tensed, as though disappointed to be denied the thrill of violence. A few even looked insulted, before makign gestures as if conceding her point. One licked her lips as she stared at Tsunade. Bloodlust. Jiraiya had seen it in enough wars to recognize it immediately.

"Very well," Orochimaru said, flicking invisible dust from his sleeve. "Back into their holes, then."

"Absolutely not." Tsunade's voice cut the air like a blade.

Even Orochimaru blinked, momentarily caught off guard.

Jiraiya stifled a chuckle.

"Konoha is taking these illegal prisoners of yours into custody," she declared.

"Is now a really good time to be starting a second war?" Jiraiya muttered.

"You assume," Orochimaru replied calmly, his eyes raking over Jiraiya "that I am willing to fight over them. In truth, you are doing me a favor. They are yours, save for those trained in ninjutsu. And Jūgo. I will provide a list of those I am not surrendering."

Jiraiya raised an eyebrow. That had gone smoother than expected. Too smooth. He'd have to ask Tsunade later what it was she really wanted from those prisoners.

They were interrupted by the approach of a familiar presence.

Sasuke Uchiha.

He moved like a shadow drawn by purpose, a red-haired girl and teh saddest human being Jiraiya had ever seen trailed him silently, their odd collection of cursed seal survivors already finding places to rest in the rear tents.

"Lady Hokage." Sasuke said. "I wish to speak with you and Lord Jiraiya in private."

Lord Jiraiya, was it? He could get used to the moniker.

Tsunade scowled but motioned for him to follow them. Sasuke, in turn, motioned for his two minders to stay behind.

They walked back to the Konoha camp and into Tsunade's personal tent. There, Shizune was writing out some form or another. Tsunade nodded for her to leave and she obliged.

Sasuke bowed low before Tsunade as soon as Shizune left.

"Lady Hokage," he said. "I come to apologize for the misunderstanding."

Jiraiya shifted his weight, arms crossed. Sasuke didn't grovel. Whatever was coming next had to be rehearsed.

"I went to see Naruto," Sasuke continued. "I saw that Sakura was overworked and asleep. I chose not to disturb her. When I entered the tent and saw Itachi, I…" he hesitated, "I chose not to act. If I had known he was in there, I would have requested formal permission to reunite with my team through proper channels. So as to avoid the conflict that nearly occurred."

Tsunade stared at him a moment too long.

"Is that what this is now? A formal request?"

He deepened his bow.

"Yes, ma'am. That is what I'm here to make."

She sighed, rubbing the bridge of her nose.

"Very well. In exchange, I want everything you know about the cursed seal experiments."

Sasuke straightened, voice clear.

"The cursed seal forces their body to absorb and implement ambient chakra as a third element. It mutates them based on their internal psyche."

Jiraiya's brow furrowed.

"You're saying it's Sage Jutsu?"

Sasuke blinked.

"I don't know what that means."

"It means exactly what you just said." Jiraiya's tone was grim now. "Infusing ambient chakra, from nature, into your system. It's extremely dangerous. Without the proper training, the mind and body can collapse under the pressure."

Sasuke shrugged.

"I've seen it happen."

Tsunade's voice was sharp.

"Then you understand why I'm concerned. We may need to seal their cursed marks. Like Kakashi did for you."

"That's a bad idea," Sasuke said immediately. "Some of them are too far gone. Their chakra networks are completely dependent on that ambient chakra mix. Sealing them could kill them."

"And the trauma," he added after a beat. "They've had enough isolation. More might break them permanently."

"Then what?" Tsunade snapped. "We leave them as they are? Untamed sage bombs in human skin?"

"No," Jiraiya said quietly. "We take them to Mount Myōboku."

That got everyone's attention.

Tsunade turned to him, her expression unreadable.

"The toads will agree to that?"

"They might," Jiraiya said. "But they'll be furious. Orochimaru used Sage Jutsu as torture. That's a grave insult to the toad sages. If they accept, they'll train them. Teach them control."

Sasuke frowned.

"What's Mount Myōboku?"

Jiraiya gave him a sharp glance, but Tsunade raised a hand.

"Later. We don't have time to explain everything."

She turned to Jiraiya.

"Can the toads handle it? All of them?"

He nodded.

"They'll manage. I'll explain the situation to them."

Tsunade closed her eyes for a moment, took a deep breath, then exhaled.

"Then Sasuke has held up his end of the bargain." She opened her eyes again and pointed toward the command tent behind her. "Wait there. I will arrange your reuniting with your teammates."

Naruto, Rock Lee, Might Guy, and Itachi Uchiha sat in a loose circle, cards in hand. Their chips? Individually pills of Vicodin, their legally allotted painkillers, each one worth more than its weight in ryo.

Itachi, pale and one-armed, was still somehow winning. With a methodical calm that made Naruto sweat, he placed his cards face-down to rearrange them from memory, eyes half-lidded, betraying nothing.

"Are you even human?" Naruto muttered as he squinted at his hand.

"A question with many answers," Itachi replied.

Lee folded, sighing dramatically and tossing his hand face-down with a flair that nearly knocked over Guy's IV stand.

"Alas! Defeated again."

Guy shook his head in wonder.

"Youth truly has many faces today, it wears the mask of unrelenting misfortune."

Suddenly, both Guy and Itachi stiffened, like hounds catching a scent. Without a word, they began tucking their winnings into the folds of their blankets and sleeves. Naruto and Lee followed their lead just as the tent flap rustled.

Lady Tsunade entered, flanked by Sakura and Shizune. Her eyes swept the room with a practiced sharpness, lingering briefly on the four men and their suspiciously still hands.

"Naruto. Sakura. Come with me," she said, cutting to the chase. "Shizune will tend to the rest of you while we're gone."

Lee gave a polite bow.

"Thank you for your care, Lady Tsunade."

It was good to see him back to his normal self again. Hopefully Shizune knew to knock his ass out if he started talking funny.

Itachi nodded. Guy simply gave a thumbs-up.

Sakura had to remove Naruto's monitors before they left. The glue from where they attached to his chest were particularly nasty to remove, but they had to go before they could leave. Once they did Naruto was just happy to be on his feet again. Let alone outside!

They walked straight across camp to the largest of the tents. Inside was the Hokage's desk and boxes upon boxes of documents.

Sasuke stood in the middle of the large tent, arms crossed, posture stiff. He turned as Naruto and Sakura entered behind Tsunade. The flickering lanterns gave him a hard shadow, but his eyes softened slightly when they met Naruto's.

Sakura's expression was another matter , wary and tense. Naruto probably looked as tired as he felt. His face was still swollen but healed enough to look like himself again. And he was still better looking than the bastard across from him.

Sasuke bowed. Low. Deeper than Naruto could ever remember seeing him go.

"I came to apologize. For everything. For entering the tent without permission, for scaring Sakura, for… almost doing something I would've regretted."

Sakura didn't speak. Her eyes narrowed but she stayed silent.

Naruto shrugged.

"Eh, I was there. You didn't actually do it. I saw you change your mind. Guess that counts for something."

Sasuke straightened.

"I'd like to be reassigned. Away from Orochimaru's unit. I want to fight alongside you. Not him."

Sakura folded her arms.

"Will Orochimaru even let you go out into battle? Being his precious vessel and all."

"He won't. That's why I'm here."

Naruto scratched the back of his head.

"Well, it's not like we're doing much fighting. I'm a glorified courier pigeon right now; Poof in, poof out, send info. Sakura's on healing duty."

Tsunade interjected, stepping forward.

"But your skills could be useful with the lightning battalions. Getting you away from Itachi is a tactical bonus."

Sasuke arched an eyebrow.

"Why lightning?"

"The battlefield near what used to be Sunagakure is soaked. The Amekage is using a weather-based jutsu to keep it that way. Lightning users are dominating. Fire style is flashy, but less effective under those conditions."

He nodded.

"If I'm going to help, I want full briefing materials. Everything you have on enemy movements, tactics, and what works."

Tsunade smiled, just a little.

"Talk to Ibiki. He's already compiled a report. I'll authorize it." she said. "And it's about time to send relief to Kakashi and the other lightning users anyways."

She turned and left, leaving them in the quiet of the tent.

Sasuke studied Naruto's still-bruised face for a moment.

"So, why did Lee do that to you? And what happened to… Itachi?"

Naruto rubbed his chin, careful of the still-tender skin.

"Lee got possessed by the Ork hive-mind. That's what the aliens are called, Orks. He went berserk. Itachi dragged him back out with those freaky eyes of his. Barely survived."

Sasuke didn't respond at first. He stared past Naruto at the flaps of the tent, lost in thought.

Both he and Sakura gave him a moment to be lost in thought, but Sakura's patience was less than his.

"What has you boring a hole in the tent wall over there?" she asked.

"I just realized I could have trained under Guy. If all I needed was raw power, he would've taught me. Now I thoroughly regret leaving for Orochimaru. As if I didn't before." he trailed off.

Sakura blinked, surprised by the unexpected admission.

Naruto laughed.

"That's your only regret, is it?" he asked.

Sasuke gave a lopsided shrug.

"Well. That and knocking Sakura out." he confessed, before examining his clothes. "And maybe the bow."

Naruto snorted. Sakura almost smiled. Almost.

Konan stood quietly on the rise, paper fluttering faintly in her robes, as she watched the approaching procession from the Land of Lightning snake its way up the ridgeline.

They were hundreds strong. Disciplined. Focused.

"Wooohooo!" She heard one yell. "Gonna beat em up good, send em out of our hood!"

Perhaps she was mistaken on both the disciplined and focused parts.

The man in the lead was the eight-tails jinchuuriki they had been holding off on capturing. His strength, speed and skill such that they wanted to be more cautious. That and his brother just behind him Behind themwas another Jinchuuriki, the beautfiul blond who contained the cat. She had least kept a poise respectable of a lady. And their army came up behind them.

Beside Konan the trio that had fought alongside her for so long now, Karui, Omoi, and Samui, already moved to greet their kin.

Konan gave a small nod of recognition as the Raikage stood before her. His brother stole the conversation yet agin.

"You arrived a few hours earlier than expected."

Killer Bee struck a pose.

"'When the storm rolls in, we never miss the spin — lightning's fast, we're born to win!'"

Samui rolled her eyes, and Konan had to wonder how many times she'd endured such entrances. The rest of the force came to a halt, and Bee's expression shifted, the moment for theatrics passing.

The Raikage ignored him, his gaze zeroing in on the one Konoha shinobi present.

Near the edge of the camp, seated against a slab of cracked sandstone, was the clone. The same boy Konan had seen too many times to count, always different, yet always exactly the same.

Naruto Uzumaki looked terrible. Or at least this clone did.

Pale. Sweating. Eyes fighting to remain open as he leaned against the rock. A toad scroll lay beside him, its seal faintly glowing, flickering like a dying ember. She waited for him to create a new clone to spread the information on Kumogakure's arrival. He didn't do this, so she pressed on.

The Raikage seemed to decide the Genin wasn't worth his time.

"What's the situation? At least in regards to us." he asked.

"Lightning users are needed at once," Konan began, projecting her voice to the ranks. "The front near Sunagakure is a mire of blood and thunder. We've held them back, but the rain remains. Lightning jutsu is our greatest asset there, and those who've fought all day and night require immediate relief."

She motioned to the clone.

"This boy," she said, "has been coordinating communications between fronts. A single network, shadow clones linked by shared memory. But he is reaching his limit."

Killer Bee glanced over at him and grimaced.

"That boy's about to fall, can't answer the call, he looks like death warmed over, slumped by a wall."

The clone lifted his head with an effort., but still laughed at the insulting rhyme. He was a good sport. Konan liked him, and hated that they would have to one day kill him for the nine tails.

"I can make it… a few more hours. I think." the clone said.

Bee snorted but didn't argue.

"You better hope you can. Let's go. People who bring the thunder! Follow me down under!"

He ran off without a second word, leaving the Raikage to point to and motion for his lightning users to follow. Dozens of them, broke from the camp, racing across the cracked flats toward the thunder front, following the two brothers.

The clone, trembling, lifted a hand. With intense concentration, he formed the cross seal.

A puff of smoke formed around him. When it dissipated, nothing remained. Not even the original clone. Both he and the newly created clone vanished. Their allotted chakra was spent.

The ripple of concern moved through the shinobi left behind, but Konan simply turned to face the remainder.

"Our relay is down. For now, we wait."

"Wait?" Yugito asked, her voice sharp.

Konan didn't flinch.

"There is no choice. Better to be cautious than to fly in blind. I have it on good information that the original Naruto, that's his name, is nearly recovered and will be sending out more clones shortly." Konan all but pleaded.

Bee and A were already gone. Yugito's brow furrowed.

"And the northern tunnels?" she asked. "We were told that's where we might be needed, that or the far western edges."

"Still sealed," Konan replied. "The Land of Stone is awaiting support before they proceed. They've reported silence. No movement. That's all we know."

Yugito looked to her comrades.

"Then that's where we'll go. I do well underground." she boasted.

She didn't wait for permission.

With a flick of her wrist, she led a portion of the remaining Kumo shinobi westward, toward the tunnels the Land of Stone feared to tread alone.

Konan watched them disappear into the horizon, her paper wings folding slightly behind her.

She would have objected, but she knew that she had no authority over these foreign forces. Were she in command she would have recommended pulling back until Naruto could get his clones situated again. Now she foresaw deaths that would have been easily avoidable with mere patience.

She turned to her forces.

"Move out, spread evenly over the terrain from here to Sunagakure, and prepare to evacuate injured." she ordered.

A series of "yes, Lady Angel"s replied and she had to stop a trio of Chunin.

"Ajisai, Fujin, Raijin." She said, stopping the three young ladies. "I need you here."

"Yes, Lady Angel." they said, "What will you have of us?"

They said it in such synchronicity that she wondered if they practiced addressing her as a team. Little girls could be weirdly studious towards simple social interactions.

"I have a different mission for you. And it will take all three of you." said Konan.

Warboss Gitznash of the Blood Axe clan stood up with a creak and a thud, his boots pounding the metal floor of the chart room as he straightened to his full, mountainous height. His crimson-stitched coat flared with the motion, the jagged emblem of his warband flapping from his back. The memories were still settling in his thick skull; visions spat out by the WAAAGH from that feral humie, the Green Beast of Konoha.

He grinned. Big, tusky, and full of menace.

"Dat woz a fight," he muttered, drool thick on his tusks. "Da WAAAGH liked dat one."

Reports from the scouts matched what the psychic storm had shown him. The humie had earned the name Green Beast. Fought like a Nob on mad juice and shouted the right words while doin' it. Gork and Mork themselves mighta watched that scrap. And now, the humies were coming — whole armies of 'em, and his ship, that big bastard rogue trader cruiser, still wasn't runnin'.

He turned toward the map table where a weak red glow lit the jagged systems they'd torn through to get here. The Halo Stars. Barely even real on the charts. And yet here they were. A whole world what didn't even have a warp presence. Dead silent. Cut off. Like a stikkbomb with the pin pulled and no one noticin'.

Just then, the sound of power humming in the rafters filled his ears.

"Oi! What system just clicked back on?" Gitznash barked.

One of the mekboyz, ears half-melted and nose replaced by a glowing fusebox, looked up from a mess of wires and pipes.

"Uh… weapon arrays, boss," he stammered. "But no dakka. Just zappa beamz."

Gitznash spat a bolt onto the floor.

"No proper gunz, no boomz, just zoggin' pointy lightz?" He scratched his chin. "Guess it'll 'ave to do."

He turned to the main screen, showing radar pings and incoming threats. The humies were swarmin'. Their tunnels were full of scouts. The skies up north were getting noisy too. Flyers. Slow ones. The ship's sensors had just barely scared off the last round of birds, but they'd be back.

And his underground prepz? Not ready. Not by a long shot.

They couldn't go loud. Time to go quiet then.

"I got a job fer da sneaky boyz!" he roared.

Twenty shadows shimmered into visibility around him, lean Orks dressed in purples so dark they hurt the eyes. Burna masks. Silenced sluggas. Long knives carved from stolen hull plating. No one had even heard them come in.

"There's gitz in red an' black," Gitznash said, stabbing a claw at the glowing map. "An' a thousand screamie siblings in orange. Y'know what to do. Go unmake 'em."

The sneaky boyz vanished again without a word, like ghosts that stank of blood and engine grease.

From behind him came the squelch of uneven boots. His head painboy stomped forward, dragging a sack that squirmed and moaned.

"Boss," the painboy croaked. "Da weirdboy what got caught outside when we punched through da warp? He's actin' spikier. Mighta eaten one of them screamy gits. Screams a lot now hisself."

"Oh yeah…" Gitznash chuckled, remembering the mad-eyed psyker. "Da one wot didn't die when da sky folded up? If he's gettin' pointy, send 'im to da fight. Drop 'im where da sparky humies are givin' our boyz a beatin'. Let him share da noise."

He turned back toward the star chart with a grimace that passed for satisfaction.

Gitznash of the Blood Axe squinted at the flickering star map, gears grinding in his neck as he thought real hard, or as hard as a warboss ever bothered.

These humies had their big five. Lee had taught him that, what little made sense in that humies mind. He had scoured what the Waagh learned from him for the only thing that mattered, who would be a good fight. He got his answer. The ones what wore the same stupid hat in different colors. Always shoutin', always bossin', always standin' just outta reach while sendin' others to do the krumpin'.

He didn't know what made those ones so important; maybe they was priests, maybe they was kings, maybe just gits with funny names, or maybe they had some ork in em and respected those hats. But Gork and Mork whispered the same thing in each ear:

Those hats would look good stacked on his head like pancakes, with the skulls once in em dangling from his waist.

He grinned wide, tusks flashing.

And what were the odds?! One of the hats was charging right for em.

"Da boyz is twitchin' in dere," he said to his pain boy, "stuck in da ship too long, startin' ta stink of boredom and bad breath. Orks ain't built for waitin'. Even if dere's a proper krumpin' brewin'. Tell em they're about to be let out for the best fight of their lives, one dat was worth da waiting."

"Tell 'em da yellow hat's on his way. An' he looks like he wants a proper scrap." he said.

Thanks as always to my patrons and commissioners. And to fans leaving feedback.

Chapter Text

Chapter 13:

The Battlefield Collapses

By the time Sasuke and the reinforcements reached the frontline, the sun had climbed nearly to its peak. It hung above them like a blade, sharp, still, and watching. And so very, very hot.

They had sprinted the entire way. The journey had taken four hours, with zero breaks. The advance team included two dozen shinobi from the Fire Country interior: a mix of lightning-style specialists, medical-nin, and a smattering of older Chūnin with enough stamina to keep pace and enough experience to know better than to complain.

Kiba, choji and Ino had accompanied him in particular. They made the standard efforts to try and catch up with what the last two years had held between them, but Sasuke rebuffed every attempt at small talk to pass the time.

The fighting had already died down by the time they arrived. There were no screams nor sounds of distant jutsu. Just the low hum of wind brushing over saturated earth and the occasional fzzzzzzt of a kunai blade sizzling as it scraped over live wire.

Most fascinating about the battlefield was how transformed it was. And not by the destruction caused by the battles.

The earth was soaked through, veins of moisture crawling through the cracked dirt like blood through old skin. Every step sank into the mud with a sucking squelch. Some areas were ankle-deep in slush. Even the air felt heavy, soaked in mist and ozone. The Mist Village support squads were still active. Sasuke could feel it in the air pressure, the oppressive dampness. It was deliberate. A controlled and effective remedy to the spore problem.

Patches of wild grass had already started to sprout from the ruined ground. Bright green shoots and even the occasional wildflower dotted the cracked earth. A week of steady rain, courtesy of shinobi-induced cloud seeding, had worked miracles. The desert was healing, or pretending to. The ground was still a graveyard.

They reached the forward platoon without incident. Konoha's camp was no more than a collection of dirt-crusted shinobi resting in shallow dugouts reinforced with metal plating and chakra-threaded wire. Some had pitched fabric tarps, but most had gone without. The sun wasn't the main source of discomfort though, not in comparison to the haze of moisture and the stench of burning spore-flesh.

Kakashi was sitting on an overturned beam that might have once been a cart axle, mask half pulled down, slowly chewing on a ration bar like it had wronged him personally. His forehead protector was pushed back into its usual spot, his visible eye drooping like he might fall asleep mid-bite.

"Yo," he greeted without looking up. "Did you kinds bring coffee?"

"No," Sasuke said flatly. "We brought you relief."

"Coffee would have been preferable." Kakashi said in a deadpan.

"Missed you too, sensei" Sasuke said in a similar deadpan.

"I highly doubt that, but we can bury the hatchet later." Kakashi said.

The older man stood with visible effort, dusting off his pants and rolling one shoulder like it might fall off if he didn't. His chakra was low, Sasuke could see it even without his Sharingan active. He looked like he hadn't slept in two days. Hell, he probably hadn't.

"I won't argue," Kakashi said at last. "I'd love to be summoned back to Mount Myōboku for a hot meal and a night's sleep, but Naruto's still recovering, so no dice. I guess its a four hour jog back to camp, sixteen hours of rest, then four hours back to relieve you. I should be bright-eyed and sharp enough to take over again by noon tomorrow."

"You'll still be slower than me," Sasuke said.

Kakashi gave him a thumbs-up with dead eyes.

"That's the spirit."

He turned to go, but Sasuke caught him with one more question.

"Anything we should know?" Ino asked.

Kakashi stopped. Tilted his head, as if considering the answer. Then gave a tired little smirk.

"Yeah. Prepare for a game of whack-a-mole."

The other shinobi backing him up, a handful of anbu, Shikamaru, Shino and a Hyuuga, gathered with hem and a second later they were off. They left them behind only the crunch of gravel under a sprinting footfall.

Sasuke would come to understand what he meant within the hour.

The first breach came barely forty minutes later, and dozens of Orks clawing their way out of the mud in a sudden explosion of dirt and pressure. The tunnels behind them collapsed almost instantly, detonating in a muffled boom that sent dust and spores curling into the fog. The enemy was crude, unarmored, and clearly meant for distraction.

They were cut down within seconds.

The second breach came minutes after that. Then a third. Then a fourth.

Each group emerged from nowhere, different corners of the battlefield, often a kilometer or more apart and in groups of five or so tunnels. They were like boils rising through the skin of the desert-turned-bog. The tunnels behind them collapsed just as quickly, boom squigs exploding in the rear to prevent pursuit. The tactic was clear: appear, attack, vanish. No trail. No backtracking. No data.

But the moisture was their undoing.

Sasuke had never seen lightning jutsu perform so efficiently. The air was already wet, the ground damp enough to carry current like a wire. Even a low-power Chidori shocked the Orks hard enough to seize their muscles, opening them for a clean follow-up strike with steel.

By the sixth skirmish, he didn't even need to draw his sword. A kunai was all they needed.

They had crossed paths with other teams who worked just like they did. Their cooperative cleanups were particularly quick, but they had to split in different directions after. The goal was to cover as much ground as possible.

He moved like mercury across the field, leaping from trench to ruin to rocky outcropping, each strike a blur of motion and electricity. Where other shinobi slogged through the mud, Sasuke danced over it. He was fast even by shinobi standards, and these brutes were anything but.

It wasn't a battle. It was a routine. A constant, annoying one. Whenever they whacked one mole, a new molehill rose elsewhere. Every tunnel burst came with a thundercrack of earth and smoke. Every enemy team was smaller than the last. And none brought new weapons, vehicles, or specialized squigs. Just Orks and grotlings.

By sunset, someone finally said what they were all thinking.

"They're not trying to win," muttered Raido, one of the mid-level jonin stationed nearby, his trench coat damp and flaked with spore ash. "They're just keeping us busy."

Another shinobi, a Mist-nin with frost-white hair and eyes like broken glass, nodded solemnly.

"They're stalling."

Sasuke wiped blood from his blade and sheathed it in a single fluid motion.

"Then it's a good thing we're pacing ourselves," he said, scanning the horizon. "Stay alert. Conserve energy. The real threat is still coming. Until then, we just do our jobs."

Someone to his left scoffed.

It came from Kiba.

"Oh, now we take orders from Genin?" he said, loud enough for everyone to hear.

Ino and Choji both guffawed at it. Only then did Sasuke realize that, indeed, he was still a genin. And surely the rest of his graduate year was already Chunin. Even Naruto ought to be by now.

Sasuke wanted to retort, but didn't. A new breach opened just over the next hill, announced by the screaming of that waagh war cry. He was already walking toward the next zone, and his allies followed.

The fleet from the Land of Spring crested the final mountain ridge just as the northern border of the Wind Country came into view. The sky was thick with mist and distant thunder. Below them, the land of Stone forces moved like ants, dragging slabs of reinforced sandstone into makeshift barricades, threading chakra through trenches, weaving reinforced mesh between spike-lined rows of battlements. It was the most perfect battlefield Koyuki Kazahana had ever seen.

The rain was exactly as she'd been warned: constant but not overwhelming. A fine, ever-present drizzle that clung to everything like spider silk. The Rain Village shinobi stood at precise intervals along the ridgelines and canyon edges, each one casting a shared jutsu that kept the clouds low and the humidity high. It wasn't to help crops or cover movements – a utility she couldn't believe they never sold s a service to Suna before now(AN) - it was to keep the spores down.

Just beyond that thin veil of moisture, sunlight bloomed. Desert sand shimmered in the near distance, and far beyond that — impossibly far — a horizon of green. The real, living green of grassland.

Koyuki felt her breath catch. She'd seen the impossible twice now. The land of snow became the land of springs under her, and now the land of wind, parched desert was becoming the land if wildflowers.

"Keep the lens steady!" Makino snapped from the next airship over, sweeping a hand across the sweeping view. "This is history in motion — I want narration on reel four. Yes, reel four. Cut in the monologue about peace efforts and transition to visuals of allied troop movement. Don't forget to pan left on the rain jutsu; it's thematic!"

Koyuki resisted the urge to sigh.

"Prepare to land," she said into the microphone wired into the hull of her flagship.

Her voice echoed across the internal speakers of every airship in the fleet, crisp and direct. All around her, chakra-armored soldiers stood at attention, adjusting their grips, preparing the glide locks that would disconnect the balloons for controlled descent.

Behind her, she heard the director whisper to one of the cameramen.

"Get a soundbite from one of the frontline shinobi once we're grounded. Bonus points if they're attractive and bleeding."

Koyuki turned just in time to glare at the man for being such an opportunistic ass. He caught her gaze even from so far away, but her attention was drawn back to the horizon.

It took a few moments for her to make out what it was, but it was unmistakable. Small black clouds were approaching them, and they approaching fast.

Fubuki Kakuyoku — long since rehabilitated and now one of Spring's most reliable elite — was already at her side, narrowing her eyes into the wind.

"Aburame swarms?" Fubuki suggested.

Koyuki didn't answer. She moved instead. Her hand closed around a spyglass secured to the helm rail, and she raised it to one eye, squinting through the raindrops.

Her jaw dropped. They weren't insects. They looked like heads — inhuman, malformed, with teeth bigger than a human hand. Each one wielded leathery bat wings. They were little more than mouths with wings, and there were thousands of them.

Koyuki didn't hesitate. She seized the microphone again, voice cutting across the entire fleet.

"The enemy is here! They have flyers!"

Fubuki yanked the mic from her and spoke next with the clarity of command.

"All ice users to the bows! Collaborative blizzard formation — NOW!"

Koyuki nodded without hesitation. It was a sound strategy and the woman was always good for some quick thinking. Fubuki had earned her rank a dozen times over.

As Koyuki turned to reposition herself near the ship's command line, she caught a glimpse of Fubuki at the stern, arms already moving through rapid seals. Dozens of chakra-armored shinobi mirrored her movements across the other ships.

The air grew colder, the mist thickened and moisture bent to their will.

They waited for the swarm reached the shadow of the clouds and once it did they unleashed nothing short of an artificial blizzard in the full fury of winter. Cutting shards of ice, blades of sleet, and gale-force winds . The force of it all was enough to jolt the airships backward despite their anchors. The swarm shrieked. The creatures were soaked, frozen solid, and then shattered in the slipstream. Their bodies rained like icy shrapnel.

But they kept coming.

Koyuki worried that her Jonin wouldn't be able to keep such a powerful collaborative jutsu going for long, but she needed not have worried. They would have the chance to decide this battle, bot that was when the world flashed red.

It took Koyuki a moment to understand what just happened. It felt like a flash of crimson lightning just blew through their mists, and it was only after she blinked that she realized what she saw. It had been a single line. Perfect. Clean. Like a vein of death carved across the air.

An explosion followed.

One of the ships to Koyuki's right burst into flame, the blimp above it engulfed by searing red fire where the beam had struck. The midship deck fractured. Screams erupted from the crew as shinobi leapt overboard, some already burning.

"DOWN!" Koyuki bellowed into the microphone. "Take us down, all of us! Controlled descent—cut the cables!"

Another beam of red light and another ship down. Flames lit the clouds like a second sun.

"Release the balloons! Drift if you have to! GO!"

The crew obeyed. Cables were slashed. Hydrogen sacs severed and floated away into the haze. Koyuki's own ship began to descend with jarring speed. The wind buffeted them, the winglike rudders adjusted for glide, but the angle was steep. It was going to be a crash, no matter how well they flew it.

Above, a flaming balloon, one from a severed ship, began to drift back toward them. The pilot clearly saw it too. The deck tilted hard as the ship veered sharply, guiding them away from the descending inferno. But it might not be enough.

Fubuki didn't wait to find out. She activated the wing-glider on her chakra armor, scooped Koyuki into her arms, and leapt from the deck.

They glided smoothly toward the defensive lines below, wind catching beneath their armor's lift panels.

Rain and Stone shinobi were already on the move, sprinting toward the descent path to intercept and support any survivors.

Koyuki and Fubuki landed hard in the mud beside a Rain shinobi, identifiable by his umbrella and a peculiar underwater respirator across his mouth and jaw.

"Lightning users, on me!" he barked while motioning for the two women to take shelter behind him.

They obeyed his motion and watched as he hurled his umbrella into the sky. Across the border, other Rain-nin mirrored the action. Umbrellas burst open mid-air, and then the sky turned to death.

Senbon needles, thousands of them, descended upon the swarms of mouths with wings like rain made of steel.

The flyers shrieked as they were shredded mid-dive and a moment later the lightning-users that the rain-nin had called for did their thing.

Electricity arced through the cloud a moment later, a web of lightning leaping between embedded needles, turning the air into a mesh of living current. The swarm collapsed mid-flight, plummeting in limp spasms.

Above them, a shadow formed. Small. Floating. Ancient. It had a tiny, pointed nose and a hat the size of his own torso.

The Third Tsuchikage, Onoki of Both Scales, hovered beside them, arms crossed and concerned. He offered a gentlemanly hand.

"Come, Princess Koyuki," he said curtly. "The battlefield is no place for a lady."

Koyuki, flustered but keeping pace, took his hand.

"Of course, Master Onoki." she said as regally as she could covered in frozen mud.

Fire rained around them. Balloons and hulls, shredded and burning, collapsed one after the other in a series of ruinous impacts. The ground shook with each impact.

Then the earth really shook. Onoki raised a hand. Halted them. Waited.

Then the earth around them broke. Great tunneling machines burst from the ground in every direction. Each was little more than a wheeled drill the size of a house, plated in crude armor and covered in black-painted explosives.

They hit the ground and exploded.

Shinobi screamed. Earth-style barriers rose defensive domes. Those near tunneling machines yet to detonate made retreat signals. It was too late for some of them, but they were shinobi and most were quick with the dodging, making it out either unharmed or only mildly burned.

The shockwave battered the trench lines all the same.

The trio went back to running, and not a moment too soon. Another tunnel erupted behind them, where they had been just moments before. Koyuki dared to look back and saw another drill launch directly toward them, aimed like a battering ram.

Fubuki didn't think, she threw Koyuki to the ground, covering her with her body. Onoki turned, jumping behind them with his arms wide, preparing a final defense. It was then that the tunnel behind the machine glowed.

And then something else emerged. A flood of black chakra, foul and roiling, as thick as shadow and as vast as a mountain. It wasn't a technique. It was a beast.

A tiger, vast and shimmering, formed of pure chakra and ink-black flame, tackled the machine mid-air and with its added momentum both flew clear over them.

The two collided with the earth, and the sound of their crash was followed an ear-splitting BOOM as the drill detonated.

The chakra beast lost half of its chest in what would have been a gory mess were it made of flesh and bone like anythign else. AS it was, the massive shape collapsed in on itself. Coalescing into the shape of a human, the shape of a woman.

She was blonde, beatful and boisterously laughing despite being singed. The headband of the Lightning Country graced her forehead.

"Whew!" she whooped. "I hope I at least saved somebody important with that stunt."

She spotted Koyuki and from there her eyes slid to Onoki.

Her grin doubled.

"Wow, I saved two important people with that stunt!" She tossed a wink and Fubuki so as not to leave her out. "Can't wait to tell the boys about this."

Her smile vanished and she bowed to the Tsuchikage. When she spoke next her voice shifted to serious and respectful.

"Lord Tsuchikage. I would strongly recommend a tactical retreat." she said.

Then came the sound from the tunnel behind them. The sound of heavy footsteps marching in the opposite of disciplined lockstep. The stomping was soon joined by roaring from each of the new tunnel exirs.

"WAAAAAAAAAAGH!"

It echoed across the plains like a storm chant.

Onoki wasted no time.

"Tactical retreat!" he yelled for everyone to hear.

And the order rippled. Rain shinobi screamed it. Stone shinobi repeated it. And down the line in both directions the game of telephone went on. Echoes passed down the lines — west, east, center — all of them falling back.s

The four of them sprinted toward the cliff walls, toward the canyon trench system and fallback fortresses. Behind them, the enemy surged, green and armored, howling and cackling and charging with wild abandon.

Dozens of shinobi raised barriers. Earth walls, mud shields and stone ramparts blocked the projectiles and explosive being fired at the retreating forces. Anything to buy time.

Around them other teams of Spring forces, and Makino's crew, were sprinting with their guard of Rain and Stone shinobi. They continue to film and broadcast as they ran.

Sasuke stood at the highest point in the field, a crumbling stone ridge just north of the forward trenches. Mist-nin crouched beside him like phantoms in the fog. Kiba and Akamaru patrolled the perimeter below. Chōji leaned against a half-toppled wall, already halfway through a ration pill. Ino hadn't said a word in hours.

Sasuke actually felt for the young woman. Her sensory abilities had proven fruitless against these Orks, who bizarrely had no chakra. He had confirmed in many times with his sharingan.

Then came the noise. Sasuke couldn't place it at first. It sounded like an electric razor or power drill, or metal boxes full of both.

A sound like groaning metal and arc welders. A low whine. Grinding teeth made of rust and engine belts.

"Vehicles," Kiba growled, eyes narrowing. "I smell grease, meatl and Orks."

Sasuke tried to banish the mental image of what Orks must smell like to his teammate's enhance sense of smell but it haunted him even as the enemy arrived.

They came up from the south, barreling over the crests of collapsed tunnel mouths, at least forty of things on wheels.

They looked like junkyards glued to motors, belching smoke and mud as they screeched across the field. Armor plating was bolted in uneven chunks, many painted with skulls, jaws, or zigzags. What looked like powerline transformers jutted from the backs of each, crude metal cubes glowing faintly blue with unstable energy.

Strapped to those transformers like crucified sacrifices? Orks. Blue ones.

They were small than the green they were used to, wiry and sharp-eyed, they clung to the transformer rigs like parasites. Their eyes sparked with electricity. Some drooled. One of them had wires jabbed directly into his skull. They weren't holding weapons, which Sasuke felt was cause for concern.

They didn't wait.

"Take them out," Sasuke ordered. "Lightning formation — now!"

The Mist shinobi leapt forward. So did several from the Leaf and Sand, a dozen hands flew through seals. A crackling barrage of lightning jutsu lashed toward the lead vehicle.

The bolts hit the transformer on the back, drawn to them like lightnign rods. The blue Orks screamed and spasmed in pain as they were electrocuted. But they did not die.

"Oh." Said a sand shinobi. "That's bad."

This turned out to be an understatement.

One of the blue Orks screamed, his mouth splitting wider than it should, and vomited a stream of raw energy in a zigzag arc, blowing a crater into the earth where a Sand-nin had just been standing.

Kiba dove behind a wrecked outpost wall, skidding next to Akamaru and spitting out dirt.

"Okay, those are definitely the Weird Boyz Lee warned us about!" he shouted.

"Score one for his fried brain predictions." Choji hollared back.

Sasuke had no idea what they were talking about, and didn't have time to ask. Lightning raked the sky again, only this time it wasn't theirs.

The enemy had claimed the element s their own, not just abosrbing it but redirecting it back at them.

The transformers hand absorbed every inbound jutsu and converted it into raw, chaotic backlash. Every time one of their own struck with lightning, a Weird Boy would fling it back tenfold in a direction of their choosing. To Sasuke's surprised his allies kept trying. They really had put all of their eggs into one basket by deploying all the lightning-users out here hadn't they?

Sasuke had fire release and some Suna shinobi had wind release, but the air was so full of moisture he wasn't so sure it would be worth it.

A blond woman who wasn't Ino jumped down into the trench beside him and he recognized her as Gaara's sister. She shared a glance with him as she drew her fan, and they nodded at each other.

Both leapt out of the trench and did their thing.

"Fire style: Great phoenix jutsu!" Sasuke incanted.

"Wind style: Wind net!" Tamari incanted.

His flames were amplified by her checkerboard of wind blades, turning them into a flaming net that tore open and scorched the earth. It did take out the nearest vehicle, but more importantly it created a crosshatched battlefield of burning trenches. Sasuke saw the added brilliance of the combo as it both blew away much of the wind, and would dry out the air.

He gave Tamari an appreciative nod for her quick thinking and she snorted in something akin to pride.

The battlefield became a nightmare.

Bolt after bolt of lightning tore across the soaked earth, arcing through puddles and slamming into the legs of retreating shinobi. One Mist-nin was hit in the hip and went rigid, his body convulsing until he slammed face-first into the mud. He was quickly cooked from the inside until he was charred flesh. Another from Suna tried to cast a sand shield, the lightning melted it to glass. Thankfully he was fine.

Only Sasuke remained untouched.

He moved like a phantom — leaping over beams of blue-white energy, rolling under detonations, disappearing between strikes with short-range shunshin bursts. His Sharingan was active, whirring red behind mud-soaked lashes, reading every twitch of the blue Orks' grotesque movements.

He took the fight to them. Kiba and choji did the same, with Tamari's wind style keeping the enemy lightning off of them.

With Kiba using fang over fang and Choji using human boulder they were as fast as he was in their attacks. Forming a three person scissor strike they were able to take out individual vehicles, giving their alleis time to regroup.

For every transformer he disabled , usually with a perfectly-placed kunai or a vicious blade strike through the wheel assembly, two more rolled onto the field.

They themselves retreated to regroup and plan a strike that ought to take out multiple enemy vehicles, as going one-by-one was not proving to be a winning strategy.

"We're losing ground!" Ino shouted, ducking behind an overturned cart. Her hair was plastered to her face, her arms scorched from the last lightning pulse.

Chōji grunted beside her, pushing another injured shinobi behind a defensive stone ring.

"They've taken the field. If we don't get lightning back—"

He didn't get to finish as the sound of muffled explosions rang from every explosions. With the earth itself

Dozens of tunnels burst open across the eastern quadrant of the battlefield. Spouts of dirt, water, and reinforced stone shot into the air like geysers.

It was the tunnel exits they had been playing whack-a-mole with all day. Each of them was being blown open from below and from within the enemies swarmed.

Grotz scrambled in ahead the Orks — sharp, wiry things with stolen kunai and repurposed tools. They leapt at anything that moved. Behind them came the Orks proper, howling and swinging weapons made from salvaged steel and broken machines. This time they were armored,

Sasuke finally got his first sight of these squig creatures he had been told about. They were as numerous as they were diverse.

Some with spears for noses. Others with mouths that opened side to side. Some crawled on hands. Some bounced. Some exploded just from hitting the ground wrong.

There were thousands of each in all directions.

"Fallback position!" one of the Sand captains roared. "Form a line! Don't let them reach the trenches!"

But it was already too late.

The Weird Boyz were still firing from the backline, now shielded by their heavier green cousins. The field was a mess of lightning and screams.

Sasuke landed beside Kiba and Shino, blood streaked across his arm.

"We're surrounded," Choji said, voice calm but grim.

Kiba nodded.

"Yeah. Hard. What do we do?"

Sasuke looked up at the sky. Retreating would be just as perilous as fighting, and there was no guarantee of backup as the other forward fighters were surely just as bad off.

"We hold." Sasuke said gravely.

(AN) : Seriously, am I the only one who hates half the shinobi world for seldom using their ability to make the world markedly better in small ways? Pain's ability to create and control rain could have helped solve hunger/draughts, but no, war is more important. Naruto could become a one man trade union of 1000 and build entire cities himself.

Oh hey! There's a fic idea. Naruto refuses Iruka's headband and becomes a carpenter with the old man Genno. Feel free to steal it and share with me. Or stay tuned for me writing that one. It'll be short, possibly a one-five shot.

Thanks as always to my patrons and commissioners. And to fans leaving feedback.

Chapter Text

Chapter 14:

Scrambling

Warboss Gitznash of the Blood Axe Clan stood atop a raised metal platform, arms outstretched like a sacred idol, surrounded by a whirling, stomping, belching halo of machinery. Massive mechanical limbs, each one built from scrap and vengeance, swung in time with the clanging march of servitor drums, mounting plates, bolts, and tubes into his waiting frame.

A voice crackled from the overhead vox, synthetic, ancient, and bizarrely formal and humie.

"Loadout sequence initiated."

The mechanical arm descended, slamming a shoulder plate into place with the sound of a thunderclap. It was the size of a riot shield, carved from human battle armor and repainted in deep forest green. Crude glyphs of teef and checkered stripes ran along its edges.

"Armor designation: Chock-Insulated. Void-Rated. Gitznash pattern."

It wasn't standard Ork armor. Not by a long shot.

It was repurposed humie tech, warped and welded by insane Mekboy craftsmanship; a bastard child of powered exosuit plating and tank tread steel. The rear panels still bore fragments of the original human inscriptions: "AUTHORIZED USE ONLY" and "HATCH ACCESS" were visible beneath Ork graffiti.

On the chest was a blackened cog symbol, melted beyond recognition and now painted over with a crude red axe.

"Pressure seals subobtimal. Gravitic reinforcement stable. No breach in dataplating detected."

Gitznash didn't flinch as another gauntlet was slammed onto his wrist. The claws retracted with a hydraulic hiss, revealing spinning barrels beneath.

"Primary armament: Twin-Linked Lascannon, scavenged pattern. Self-repairing, semi-sentient. 88% accuracy at preferred engagement range: POINT-BLOODY-BLANK."

His arms dropped slightly as the next mechanical limb plugged thick cables into his spinal plate. The lights on his back flickered blue. The Orks watching from the gantries above howled in appreciation.

"Cybernetic reinforcements confirmed operational. Running diagnostics."

A burst of static, then a rapid checklist blared over the vox:

"Subcranial shokk implant… functional. Left eye dataloom… functional. Gut-plate reactor stabilizer… semi-functional. Stomp booster… overloaded, just how you like it. Painboy's cranial override chip… absent."

There was a pause. Then the voice returned with a hint of dry resignation.

"All systems nominal. WAAAAAGH compliance: greenlighted."

Gitznash opened his jaws and let out a low, wet snarl that echoed like a turbine choking on bone.

Then the floor beneath him shifted.

He was lowered, hydraulics whining, into a socketed cradle. His back locked into place. A cylindrical shell slammed down around him with the sound of metal slamming metal slamming destiny.

A countdown began.

"WARHEAD CARRIER LOCKED. PAYLOAD: GITZNASH."

The launch shaft rattled. Warning klaxons brayed. The Orks above banged on railings, whooped, and tossed squigs into the launch smoke just to watch them bounce.

A red light flickered above the silo hatch. A few moments later, it turned green.

"All systems go."

There was no ceremony nor delat as the rocket launched.

It screamed into the sky with a trail of black smoke and red fire, which he watched joyously from the one porthole haphazardly cut into it. The barely operational vessel carried its payload of armor, weapons, and unfiltered rage straight toward the surface — toward the war, toward the meat.

Toward the fight.

The muddy flatlands rolled endlessly beneath their feet, the earth still churning from last night's rains. Each step sank an inch into the sodden ground, and each stride kicked a spray of water and red-tinted dirt into the air.

But the Raikage didn't slow. Neither did Killer Bee, nor Darui, nor the elite strike squad that followed them. They were lightning country's sharpest blade, and they moved like thunder, silent until they struck.

Then the sky screamed.

Lines of red fire tore across the horizon like the gods had drawn blades. It was not lightning, but perfect streams of crimson light. They cut the sky in surgical arcs, clean and horrifying.

"Cover!" A barked.

The group ducked beneath a ridge of hardened clay, the natural elevation shielding them from the battlefield's distant fury.

One of the shinobi, young, slender, headset clamped to one ear, had frozen. His eyes widened as the crackling radio began to spill reports with panic that they could hear even without the earpieces in their own skulls. He repeated them as they came, trying to maintain composure.

"Northern front says the Spring airships are being shot shot down by concentrated fire. Full aerial suppression. Ork flyers confirmed. Allied losses… climbing."

A curse rippled through the squad.

The radioman continued.

"Central front, enemy vehicles now absorbing lightning chakra and reusing it. Weird Boyz confirmed. They're firing back with jutsu-like attacks. Field advantage lost. Allied squads surrounded and pinned."

The Raikage's brow furrowed.

Killer Bee stepped up beside him, adjusting the seal-strapped scroll at his back.

"I'll head north," Bee offered, already bristling with chakra. "Crush those flyboys, give the Spring folk a break—"

"No, Yugito has them covered" A interrupted, his voice a low rumble. "You're with them."

He pointed southwest, to where they knew the central forces to be, where they had been heading anyways.

"Support the central front. Reinforce Konoha and the others. Break their siege."

Darui blinked.

"Sir, with respect, if the laser weapons are gunning down ships now—"

"Then I'll destroy them myself." A said confidently. "Who else do you know that can dodge beams of light?" he asked, voice utterly flat.

His people answered with silence.

He jerked his chin toward the southwest.

"You're wasting time. Go."

"Don't get turned into roast pork, big bro." Bee insisted.

"Just go." A insisted harder.

And with that, the team vanished, splitting into motion across the flats. Darui led them, moving like a pulse of dark lightning.

A stayed behind. From there he walked alone.

Twenty minutes later, he crested a long-dead dune turned to clay by weeks of war. Wind blew softly across the flats below. What had once been desert was now a half-formed battlefield.

And in the center of it he saw the glass crater and the ship sitting in the middle of it. Reports had not done it justice. Surely it could contain tens of thousand of the enemies, were it full. A had not delusions that it wasn't

The Ork vessel squatted like a bloated insect god — bulbous, jagged, and impossibly alien. From this height he could see the long sweep of its underbelly, the weapon ports rotating lazily like sunflowers of death.

He watched as the turret clusters spun toward him. He tense, ready to move the moment they showed signs of firing. But the beams of crimson death never game. They turned back around towards the north as if he wasn't a threat.

Them something else fired at him.

One of the aft-mounted cannons on the ship's rear fired. The projectile was slower than he expected of a weapon, and much larger. A cylindrical object hurtled through the air, trailing black smoke and shrieking as it spun.

A missile? No. A drop pod.

It didn't aim for him directly. It struck the flats below and to the right, off by a few hundred meters. The impact cracked the earth and sent up a cloud of mud and scorched air.

And then the door blew off. Kicked out, not opened, and from inside emerged a figure.

It was an Ork. Massive, even by the warped accounts he'd heard. Easily five meters tall.

Three times the height of most shinobi. His frame was plated in brutalist armor with thick slabs of repurposed black-and-yellow steel, interlocked with tubing and spiked fasteners. One arm ended in a rotary saw the size of a man's chest. The other held a double-barreled weapon glowing with unstable energy. His chest bore a red glyph. It was not painted, but branded.

He took a few thudding steps toward the edge of the cliffs A stood atop, then raised one hand and pointed.

"Oi!" the Ork shouted, voice like a meat grinder gargling rocks. "You's one o' them five shadows, right? The lightning one?"

A raised a brow. The dialect was thick. Understandable, if Barely. This was a surprise to him. Nobody said they could speak.

"Kage," A said flatly, arms crossed. "Five Kage. I'm the Raikage of the Land of Lightning."

"Right! Righrightrightright," the Ork nodded rapidly, lips flapping with each repetition. "I understand you's the big man in charge, yeah? The strongest?"

A blinked. Just once. He'd come expecting a battle, not a conversation.

The Ork's tone was curious. Focused. Almost diplomatic. That, more than anything, unsettled him. His mind whirled with possibilities.

Was this it? Was this the real reason for the war, a test? A show of force to open negotiations from a position of strength? Were they refugees from some greater threat? Were they trying to send a message?

Let us live here, or we'll tear the sky down?

It would've been a valid strategy, one he himself would employ. Just not one he trusted. Not from something that bled oil and teeth.

"I lead one nation," A replied slowly. "There are others. Hence the Five Kage. Are you the leader of the Orks?"

The creature turned and thumbed toward the ship.

"Of these Orks? Aye. That lot's mine. The boyz, the squigs, the Weirdies."

A nodded once.

"Then tell me," he said. "What do you want?"

The Ork paused. Scratched his jaw with the edge of his saw-arm. Sparks flew.

"What I want… or what we want… pajer, perjur…"

"Pejoratively?" A offered.

"Aye, that."

"Both."

The Ork grinned. His tusks gleamed with saliva and steel shavings.

"Well then," he said, "we Orks want what all Orks want, yeah? From the biggest warband to the tiny mobs like min. We want a good, teeth-shatterin', gut-punchin', skull-krumpin' fight."

A said nothing. He processed the boast that this was a tiny mob. Not small, tiny. The confirmation that there were, in fact, other warbands out there in space was also informative.

The Ork took a step forward. The earth shuddered.

"As for what I specifically want…" he tilted his head, grin widening, pointing at him again.

"I want your hat."

A stared.

The Ork revved his saw-arm. The barrels on the other rotated, lit with coiled blue fire.

"I'll be taking it from ye now."

Obito came to slowly, like surfacing from dark water.

Cool air drifted across his skin, brushing damp hair against his brow. The chirping of birds echoed distantly from somewhere down the valley, a false lullaby in a world gone mad.

Obito blinked. His body ached like he'd been wrung out by an Akamichi. Every joint was stiff, every breath slow. He rolled onto his side with a groan and immediately regretted it.

"Good morning, sunshine," came a drawl beside him.

He glanced sideways to see Zetsu, sprawled lazily across a boulder. His hands folded behind his head like he was reclining in a dream.

Obito didn't reply. Instead, he sat up slowly, bones grinding, cloak rumpled and dust-covered. He looked down at himself. He was uninured but everything hurt.

He exhaled.

"I really overdid it," he muttered.

"You think?" White Zetsu chirped. "You used Kamui like it was a buffet. Shuttled how many people? Dropped that many clones? Burned through three backup seals and all of your reserves and then topped it off with a soldier pill while already spent?"

Black Zetsu grunted.

"You're lucky you didn't collapse mid-jump and rematerialize inside a wall."

Obito gave a small grunt of acknowledgment. Not quite amusement. Not quite shame. Just tired.

"How long was I out?"

"Nearly two days," White Zetsu replied, whistling. "Ain't chakra exhaustion a bitch?"

Obito didn't answer.

Not immediately.

He exhaled again, shakier this time.

"How the fight going?" he asked. "And did you finish scouting the central caverns beneath the ship?"

Zetsu didn't speak for a moment.

Then the black half shifted.

"Yes and the latter. As for the former, why don't you go take a look?"

Obito rose, albeit slowly. His legs trembled once before they caught. His cloak fell across his back like a tattered shadow.

He activated his eye. With a short burst of Kamui, he warped to a nearby plateau, one they'd marked in advance, just in case.

He emerged in silence, boots touching stone. The wind was stronger up here, sweeping in from the west with the scent of scorched sand and blood.

Obito stepped forward and saw that the entire horizon was alive.

A carpet of green and iron. Thousands of the aliens, maybe tens of thousands, were spread across every visible rise, every valley, every cliff edge. Massive war machines crawled among them like steel beasts. Storm clouds of fliers tangled in the upper skies, wings jagged like shrapnel. Bright lines of red fire carved through the air.

Far below, explosions blinked like fireflies. And through it all, battle. Endless, grinding battle.

"Oh," Obito said flatly. "So badly, then?"

The Konoha encampment was a storm.

Messages poured in through crackling radios and shrieking hawks, each one carrying a message more grim than the last. Maps were unfurled and marked over with trembling fingers. Squads were rerouted mid-sentence. Medic tents were being prepared for the expect overflow.

Naruto watched it all from his seat outside of his tent. Kakashi stood next to him, eating his first meal in over day. His eyes shadowed with exhaustion. He knew that his sensei was just as frustrated as him that he wouldn't be joining the next wave.

None of the forward recon squad would. They had held the line long enough for others to survive, and now their time was up. For today. Tsunade was keeping a close watch to make sure they did as she ordered and rested.

Kakashi didn't complain to anybody but Naruto, and what counted as complaining from him was short and tired.

"Recover," he muttered to no one. "Then back in."

Naruto decided he didn't want to sit around, so he moved across camp. He wobbled as he walked, his balance still shot from his cranial injuries.

He saw Orochimaru and his most trusted at a table with Tsunade and hers. Curiosity got the better of Naruto and he approached to listen in.

Orochimaru was reading over a report with a grin that didn't quite reach his eyes. His cloak stirred slightly in the breeze, long pale fingers twitching in anticipation.

"Deploy everything from my forces," he ordered. "All remaining operatives — now. I want the field flooded."

Tsunade considered Orochimaru with

"That… includes yourself?" she asked.

"Of course." he said with a grin that this time did reach his eyes.

"But how will we get there?" Some guy who looked like a young, albino Zabuza asked. "A four hour trip may be too long for them to hold out."

Orochimaru answered by exiting the wooden structure and out to a wide open area. As he went Tsunade spotted Naruto and gave him a death glare. She made a motion with her hands next to her face like a pillow.

The message was clear. Why aren't you resting?

Naruto tapped his ear to tell her he was just there to listen.

She glared at him again before looking around. She spotted an unused cot in the open air tent and pointed to it. Good, he had permission to listen so long as he was laying down as he did so.

He watched Orochimaru perform a familiar set of hand signs and slam a hand on the ground.

The earth shook with a sound like thunder inhaling and a massive plume of smoke erupted beside the camp. From its center emerged a serpentine head, ancient, violet-scaled, and full of hate.

"Manda." Orochimaru greeted.

The snake hissed.

"You dare summon me to a mudhole like this?" he began to complain before he saw the enormous audience he had.

He then, hilariously, preened. Bringing himself up to his full height and doing he snake equivalent of puffing out his chest. Naruto tried not to laugh.

Orochimarus grin at the display himself..

"Oh, come now. Don't be dramatic." Orochimaru chastised.

"I am always dramatic." Manda said. "Now, what business do all of these fine folk have with?"

Oh wow, he was people polite and respectful to everyone save Orochimaru. Pride came with manners, Naruto supposed. And serving Orochimaru was surely a stab to anyone's pride.

"I need you to Swallow us. "Orochimaru demanded.

Manda blinked one yellow eye.

"Excuse me?"

"You heard me," Orochimaru purred. "Me. My squad, and some Konoha forces. You'll spit us out at the battlefield where Sasuke will summon you. Nearest safe spot."

"You forget your place, little wretch."

"I forget nothing. Which is why I'm offering compensation: every Ork you and your brood can catch. We will be killing and roasting them so you can all eat to your twisted hearts' content."

There was a long pause as Manda considered the offer.

"I see. And what is an Ork?" Manda asked.

Anko stepped foreward to answer him.

"Big, beefy, mushroom aliens. They smell like toothy mushrooms, but none of us can say what they taste like." She said. "And they grow like weeds. There are many thousands of them."

Manda looked closely.

"Ah, little Anko lives. The only student of Orochimaru deserving of our contract. That is a most gracious deal." he said. "I accept, assuming they turn out to be edible. Should they not, we will be wanting pigs as repayment. As many as you can produce for... the next five years."

"Done." Tsunade agreed. "Now let us make certain as to who we are sending."

Jiraiya stepped forward.

"Make sure to take some of my storage toads with you. They can swallow up the injured and unsommon themselves back to Mt Myoboku, where they can be tended to." his perverted sensei said.

"That is an excellent idea." said Orochimaru, he eys turning to Anko. "On the topic of summoning, Anko should stay here. That way she can summon us back through Manda or another serpent should the situation prove dire."

Anko looked surprised at the instruction before pointing a finger at her face.

"You didn't cross me off of the summoning contract?" She asked, surprised.

"Of course not. Then you wouldn't be able to re-sign it when you eventually returned to my flock." Orochimaru said with a wink.

Anko shivered in disgust.

"Is there any chance you would be willing to unseal your cursed mark so I can communicate to you through it at a distance?" Orochimaru asked.

Anko scowled, shaking her head in the negative.

"I didn't think so. In that case Mukade should stay here so I can send him the order to summon us back, to relay it to Anko. Karin and Kabuto must come for their battlefield medic specialties. Lady Tsunade is surely remaining here. Aside from that all of my forces are going." Orochimaru said, as if thinking out loud.

Tsunade nodded in agreement.

"Everyone save the information team, the injured and those who just returned should be going with you. That includes Shizune, who is to accompany the storage toad to Mt Myoboku should injured be evacuated." she said. "And all of the Chunin should remain, Jonin only."

Shizune stepped forward. The chunin stepped back.

The final team was the odd mix of Orochimaru's forces, Asuma, Choza, and pretty much every other Jonin. The final count was nearly a hundred of the best fighters Naruto knew of. Even Guy, as recovered as he was going to be, stepped forward.

Jiraiya summoned a pair of storage toads and stepped back. Apparently he wasn't going?

Manda made ready to swallow them all when Tsunade stalled the deployment for another moment. She performed her own summoning and a large chunk of Katsuyu, the size of a bull, materialized. Smart, she would be invaluable on the battlefield as well.

Then, Naruto watched as Manda lowered his open man to the ground and people walked into it. Somehow, this was even less appealing than being swallowed by the storage toads. But that may have been his own trauma speaking from his experience in the forest of death.

A second later, the violet monster disappeared the same way it had arrived, in a plume of white smoke.

As soon as it was gone Tsunade made eye contact with Naruto again. She pointed to him, then in the general direction of his tent. Naruto obeyed diligantly. Jiraiya accompanied him.

For those of you who recognize the technobabble of what the warboss is wearing, I'm sure you've already realized what I'm about to say. For the rest of you, allow me to confirm.

This isn't a Naruto 40k crossover. This is a Naruto and SECOND EDITION 40k crossover. Oh yeah. Some of you may ask "Why the hell would you do that?!" to which I would say "Because hte Naruto world curb stomps modern 40k factions. Almost all of them." And that would be boring.

Thanks as always to my patrons and commissioners. And to fans leaving feedback.

Chapter Text

Chapter 15:

The Enemies True Strength 1

Sasuke moved like a shadow between arcs of collapsing lightning. His sword flashed with each downed vehicle, and his nerves remained taut with each movement, going against every bit of training he'd had to remain relaxed in combat.

He considered himself a permanently calm guy, but real war was different than small skirmishes and individual battles. Even with hiss Sharingan spinning, reading muscle tension, projectile curves, and heat shimmer all at once, he still had no fucking clue what was going on one moment to the next!

His enemies were brute Orks and scuttling grotz, and squigs of all shapes and sized. But even the dumbest creature could kill with the smallest lapse of judgement, and the constant pressure of performing everything perfectly, for hours at a time, was worse than all of other horrors of war for the constant cutting into his mind it provided.

He slashed a squig mid-pounce and spun out of the way of a boomer's corpse just as it exploded behind him. Chunks of meat and shrapnel rained down like a warning and he transformed through the cursed seal to use his wings like shields.

Then it hit, not an enemy strike, but a cold flash across the back of his neck. The curse mark flared., pain bloomed, his spine arched involuntarily, and he hissed as the message transmitted directly into his nervous system. A voice like oil and silk slid across his consciousness.

"Five minutes. Summon Manda." Orochimaru's voice ordered.

Sasuke wasted no time. He surged backward into the mist, landing near Kiba and Chōji, who were fighting shoulder-to-shoulder near the crumbling edge of a sandstone ridge.

"We're pulling back," he said without preamble.

"Now? But the—" Kiba complained.

"Yes. Now." Sasuke said.

The tone brooked no debate.

Within moments, the command rippled through their allied platoons, Suna, Mist, Konoha, and even a few scattered stragglers from other fronts. Al lof them had converged from the hundred kilometer radius. They were all surrounded anyways, why not be surrounded and unified?

It had worked, but they were steel on their heels for the entirety of the fighting.

They all retreated. Several hundred strong they fell back through a ravine cut into the landscape by days of rain and tunneling warfare.

They found shelter in a sunken valley, surrounded by cliffs that offered both protection and strategic high ground. Lookouts who specialized in ranged, non-lightning, combat took the ledges immediately. The rest crouched behind what cover remained.

Sasuke stood in the center of the basin and bit his thumb.

A series of hand signs, a single breath and he slammed his palm to the ground.

"Summoning Jutsu."

The earth trembled. A ripple ran outward through the mud like a heartbeat. And then, with a gout of smoke and a monstrous hiss, Manda appeared.

Bullets, lightning and worse whizzed over his head from the enemy that surrounded their position and he ducked like somebody who almost walked into a chandelier.

He even whispered an "oh, shit." at nearly receiving a face full of metal and plasma. Still, he regained his usual composure.

The giant serpent coiled and snarled, golden eyes flaring. And when he opened his mouth he vomited an army.

One after another, ten after ten, the bodies flew from his gullet landing in muddy impact. They each landed perfectly despite the rough terrain.

A hundred new combatants hit the field in under twenty seconds. He spotted Guren with those strange men she had been with at command. There was also a knot of cursed seal prisoners, including one with a canon on his shoulder. These must have been the few that knew any jutsu at all. Jugo towered and was already transforming beside Orochimaru, with Karin, Kabuto and Suigetsu taking the rear.

Beside them dropped Guy-sensei, arms crossed and grinning. Behind him came a wave of Konoha reinforcements, heavy hitters, sensory types, long-range support. They'd really sent the works.

Strangest of all was the handful of summons. Two large toads and an equally large slug, blue and white.

Orochimaru didn't even wait for the smoke to clear before barking orders.

"Lady Katsuyu," he snapped.

"Yes, Lord Orochimaru," the slug answered.

"Divide. Attach to everyone. You are comms and triage." he said in a manner as if to remind everyone that he was a veteran of the second shinobi war.

"Understood."

Her bulk shivered then split. Over a hundred pieces slithered free, each the size of a mouse, each bearing the same calm presence. They leapt from her flanks like droplets of water and landed on shinobi shoulders, armor plating, and the backs of necks.

Orochimaru continued to bark orders as she was divvied up.

"We will take this canyon back in thirds. Guren. Your unit will take the northwest. Clear it to the ridge line. No survivors. My team will claim the northeast, Jugo and the cursed seal users on me. Guy. The southern basin is yours. Use your energy wisely. Burn out only when you must."

"And you," Orochimaru added, now addressing the cluster of exhausted soldiers behind Sasuke — shinobi from Mist, Konoha, and Suna alike.

"You stay. Recover. Resupply."

No one argued.

They split off like clockwork, three forces spiraling outward like a scythe made of chakra and revenge.

He noticed that the only new arrivals to stay behind were Karin and Kabuto, who got right to work.

"Alright, fatally injured first! Then the injured, then the chakra exhausted!" Karin yelled. "Other healers with us. Let's go people!"

The noise of combat almost drowned her out. Sasuke looked to the northwest to see the massive crystal spires piercing the heavens as Guren let loose. The backup really didn't waste any time.

Sasuke stood near the rear wall, high enough to see the cliffs above, low enough to feel the churn of boots in the mud around him.

Karin had set herself up on a dry stone outcropping in the shadow of a broken siege cart. Her cloak was half-off and her sleeve rolled up. The expression on her face could have curdled blood.

"I said BITE ME!" she roared.

The poor chūnin in front of her flinched even though his guts were literally hanging out of him.

"I—I just—"

"NOW." Karin ordered.

The soldier obeyed, sinking his teeth into her offered forearm with trembling hesitation. Seconds later, his eyes widened and his posture straightened. A pulse of red chakra had zipped into him through the bite, chakra, and healing. His hands stopped shaking. The burn down his thigh sealed shut.

A Suna shinobi, a kindly looking woman dressed in white, was upon him in seconds with blades made of water to stitched up the torso injury.

Meanwhile, Kabuto cleaned and stitched up the gunshot wounds of a woman nearby.

Word spread fast.

Soon, shinobi were lining up in awkward, shifting silence, each one giving her a pained glance before submitting to the procedure. None of them liked it, but they all needed it. Okay, a few of them visibly liked it, but there were always weirdos out there.

Sasuke didn't say anything. Karin didn't need defending, she had results that spoke for themselves.

Not far off, three figures were surrounded by the worst of the wounded.

Kabuto moved like a surgeon possessed, arms coated in sterile chakra, voice cold and calm. Ino worked beside him, gloves stained, hands glowing. Together, they stabilized the critical injuries first , mostly from Suna and Konoha, where the fighting had been thickest. There was also that Suna girl whose water blades also worked as stitches somehow.

Sasuke drifted closer, eyes scanning the field.

He didn't know most of the faces. Chūnin, genin, medical volunteers, filler detritus from the last wave of reinforcements.

But a few stood out.

One boy, a tank of a man who looked more like a sumo wrestler than a shinobi, was lying motionless beneath a shredded tarp. His armor was half-melted. Three burn scars ran up the side of his neck, and blistered shrapnel wounds lined his ribs. He had a bullet wound through the thigh, and another across the shoulder. He was being stitched shut and sealed at the same time.

Poor guy was clearly strong, but not fast, and against enemies with firearms he had proven in effective. His teammates, a guy with ridiculous hair waving a flag and a kid who looked like he still belonged in an academy, stuck with him through the entire ordeal of his conscious surgery. Sasuke couldn't help but nod at their spirit.

All three of them had headbands marking them as from the land of grass.

Near him, a girl with whitish hair — face covered in burns, mask half-melted to her cheek — was holding the hand of what looked like a baby held by the puppet of a beautiful woman. There was a man with them with a covered mouth and the most manic eyes Sasuke had ever seen. Maybe a genjutsu user?

The ground shook and he turned to the south to see a great plume of dirt erupted from the southern ridgeline.

It climbed a hundred meters into the air, a mountain's worth of dirt and rock, thrown skyward in a perfect arc. Not an enemy weapon. A pulse of chakra-driven earth.

Choji, who Sasuke hadn't noticed next to him, whistled.

"Guy-sensei is getting serious." he said.

Sasuke didn't ask for clarification.

Karin came over to them and slumped against the wall next to them, letting out a long, exhausted sigh as she pushed her glasses up her nose. The sleeve of her bitten arm was crimson from shoulder to wrist with fresh bite marks. She was pale now, visibly drained.

"I'm tapped," she said.

The main work of stabilizing the injured looked done, and was confirmed so as Kabuto and Ino came over to join them

They gathered as a group, still surrounded by the sound of boots, groans, and low chakra pulses.

"What now?" Ino asked, glancing to Sasuke.

He scanned the sky above the canyon. The terrain was loud, but controlled.

"I think we should split again," he said. "Send our remaining mobile forces west and east. Relieve the flanks. Get full coverage of the surrounding area" he said.

"No. Bad idea." Kabuto said, shutting him down.

Sasuke raised an eyebrow.

"We're not mobile," Kabuto explained. "We're exhausted. Half of these shinobi are chakra-depleted. Many are no longer battle worthy due to internal wounds, burns or concussions. And the few who could still walk will do more good right here, as replacements rotate in from the field."

Sasuke frowned but nodded

"You're right. Marathon, not sprint." he said. "We relieve the injured and tired as they come back."

"So we keep the injured we have, and when more injured come in we send all of them with the toads?" Ino asked.

"That's the plan." Said Kabuto. "And if things get too rough we all get out of here in the second toad and another snake summon, compliments of Sasuke."

Good. They had a plan of retreat.

Choji cleared his throat to get their attention as he rubbed the back of his neck.

"Yeah, but… what about us? People like me. I'm not injured, but I can't exactly—" he gestured vaguely—"go giant out there. I'll just make myself a lightning rod. Literally. They'll pick me off."

Sasuke didn't answer. He was right. All Choji had been able to do out there was strategic human boulder or single limb expansion against groups of enemies that got close, but he couldn't work out in the open with the enemies lightning attacks.

Speaking of lightning attacks.

"Most lightning users are useless out there right now," he admitted. "Including me. Until we can dry the area up and make the most out of fire."

Katsuyu, the portion riding on Choji's shoulder, spoke gently.

"You may not need to fight directly," she said. "If you can supply chakra to me I can deliver it to anyone in the field who needs it. As long as they have a piece of me, I can relay it."

Choji's expression brightened. He reached into his belt pouch and pulled out a small, rectangular box. He opened it to reveal three colored balls about the size of dango, each resting in a foam cradle.

One was green, one was yellow, and one was red.

Sasuke narrowed his eyes.

"Food pills?" he asked.

Choji shook his head.

"Chakra pills. They're from the Akimichi clan vaults. These aren't the standard fare."

He pointed at each one in turn as he explained them.

"Green boosts my chakra flow about twofold. Yellow's more like ten. Red's a hundred, but it burns my fat reserves so fast it'll leave me crippled and out of combat for a month. Or… kill me. Probably kill me."

Sasuke's eyes widened slightly. Even he had to admit…

"That's actually a good idea." he said. "Just use yourself as a chakra generator for everyone else? Shame Naruto isn't here to do that."

Kabuto made that face. The one when he was thinking about truly evil things. As usual Sasuke could see his thoughts pull him back to reason and morality and he reconsidered his idea.

"We test the green one. We transfer chakra to the medics only. If it works, if Karin's back on her feet and at full chakra before the forward teams need rotation, we'll escalate. But slowly."

Ino crossed her arms.

"No red. Not unless this place is about to burn to the ground." she says.

Everyone agreed with a shake of their head, even Kabuto who had the least medical morals of them.

Choji picked up the green one and rolled it between his fingers.

"Here goes nothing." he said.

A leapt from the cliff like a meteor, his body cloaked in lightning and his fist cocked back and crackling.

His eyes were locked onto the alien below, but his opponent didn't dodge. In fact, he puffed out his chest and held his arms wide, as if inviting the impact.

It wasn't bravado. It was a challenge. One the Raikage accepted.

A slammed his fist into the creature's solar plexus with the force of a divine hammer and the ground exploded outward in a perfect circle around the alien, shockwaves radiating like a dropped stone in water. Chunks of stone and dust were hurled away in concentric blasts.

The Ork didn't flinch.

A's eyes narrowed as he leapt back.

Shock absorption. Not absorbed and turned into chakra, or whatever these creatures used, but redirected away from the body. He'd seen techniques like it, but never so perfectly.

Worse, A's lightning, the very energy that cloaked his body like armor, was siphoned. Thin coils of light danced up to a metallic box strapped to the Ork's back, complete with antennae.

Lightning rods. Real ones.

He leapt backward just as two thin beams of light erupted from the Ork's wrist-mounted gun. Smaller versions of the lasers upon the ship. If he hadn't been expecting it, they would have killed him. But he dodged all the same.

Weirdly the machine which fired them tracked him mid-air, even though the aliens' arm didn't move. The weapon pivoted and followed as if it had a will of its own.

The laser barely missed that first attempt as it snapped like a whip. But only barely. He would make certain there were no more close calls.

The creature brought his other arm around, the rotary sawblade embedded in his gauntlet screeching to life. The blade howled as it spun.

A lunged low beneath the swing and countered with a snap-kick to the Ork's shin. He ducked another laser bolt and struck again, a chop to the ribs. Then a palm to the throat.

Nothing. The alien did not flinch nor stagger. Even exposed flesh absorbed the blows like a sponge.

But it was the armor which reacted. Slight flares of energy pulsed with each strike. Glowing filaments responded to contact, feeding the shock away, not from his body, but from the impact itself.

It wasn't the creature that absorbed the shock, it was the armor. He was sure of it. Even when a blow didn't strike the armor he could tell.

He didn't have time to strategize, for the creature was no sluggish brute.

He missed every counter, yes, but his reactions were still inhumanly fast, absurdly so. Faster than most jōnin. A knew it. Every blow he landed was nearly met with a swipe, a kick, or a blade swing. The lasers were the only real threat with his speed, but that didn't give him license to underestimate the other means of death this creature could deal.

He was measuring A's abilities just as A measured his. But A had already learned all he needed.

If kinetic force wasn't up to the task, then it was time for good old-fashioned grappling.

He slid beneath the creatures leg, standing back up behind it. His arms latching around his waist in a sudden, crushing bear hug.

He squeezed his glutes, planted himself like a tree and lifted with all his might. Jumping with all of his might as he did so. All of his might was more that up to the task.

The two rose meters up they went, then fifteen. They were suspended above the desert, two giants bound together by raw power and shared momentum.

And then all A knew was pain and he screamed.

A searing, white-hot lance of agony shot through his arm. He couldn't feel anything below his elbow. He couldn't flex the fingers on his hand.

He didn't need to look, as a split second of neurons firing deduced what just happened.

The laser had found him. He had assumed that if attacking his arm would also strike its owner that the laser wouldn't fire at him. He had assumed wrong and now his arm was gone.

He let go of the alien. The Ork fell like a missile toward the canyon floor.

And now, with no earth beneath him to vent the shock, the armor could no longer redirect the kinetic energy. Except to the air which was nowhere near dense enough.

A slammed a foot into the Ork's face midair. Then another to his fresh, self-inflicted wound where the laser had nearly gored him.

Three punches to the jaw – palm, hammer fist, and knuckles - broke its nose, shattered a tusk and sent a tooth flying. In that order.

And then, as they hit the ground, he delivered a double stomp to its chest.

The earth detonated beneath them like an entire minefield being triggered at once. Chunks of stone were hurled upward as the entire ridge quaked. Cracks spiderwebbed across the landscape like cracked glass.

A flipped away, using the airborne debris as cover in case the automated laser targeted him as he retreated. He landed hard, skidding across a slope. He ducked low to stay behind a newly created cube of earth.

Hiding behind his cover he checked is arm. Just as he expected, it was gone from the elbow down. But the stump had cauterized clean so he wouldn't bleed from it. He flexed his remaining hand.

His chakra reserves were fine. The pain was manageable. He wasn't going to bleed out. He was fine.

No point looking for the arm. Even if they found it, he doubted it could be reattached. Not even lady Tsunade could heal or replace two inches of vaporized skin, flesh, nerves, tendons and bone.

On the plus side it barely detracted from his combat abilities. He didn't need hand signs for most of his techniques. Not anymore. What he did need was to destroy that lightning rod backpack so he could vivisect this creature with a lightning blade.

Across the battlefield, the Ork picked himself up with a laugh. It was guttural wheeze, part chuckle, part cough, and part sheer admiration.

He spat two teeth into the dirt. Mark that four that A had taken away from him.

"If all the humies out in the stars were as good a brawlers as you is," the alien bellowed, "my people woulda gone the way of the brain boyz long ago! And been happy to be krumped."

He paused, grin wide.

"What's yer name, shadow king?"

A considered him. There was respect there. Worn rough, buried in madness, but real. In that moment the creature across from him wasn't a monster. This was a warrior, who was recognizing A as the same. A decided to return that respect.

"A," he said.

The Ork blinked.

"A? What a short 'n sweet name. Monscyclical."

"…Monosyllabic," A corrected.

"Right! Rightrightrightright. That." the Ork said.

Something about the way this creature spoke... it told A that it was painfully aware of its mental deficiencies and worked through it. There was something humble about that. And something frightening. A kind of wisdom that he had seen in warriors who were absolute morons but understood where they were lacking and somehow became combat geniuses as a result.

The greenskin stretched, rotating his shoulder with a crunch of metal and sinew, leanin back to stretch his stomach as if to feel how bad his burned wound was.

"And what about you creatures?" A asked. "I know you're called orks pejoratively, but what do you call yourself specifically?"

"Oh, aye. I got a name. I've earned one." he said. "Gitznash. Means idiot gnasher. Like gnashing, with teef. Good name, eh?"

A returned Gitsnash' chuckle. It was a respectable name if he did say so himself. That he earned it spoke volumes. He respected names earned. Yellow Flash. White Fang. These weren't picked, they were given.

Gitznash cracked his knuckles as his grin widened. He put up his dukes and crouched low.

"For once, I get a fight with someone who knows how to krump proper!" he said

A raised his remaining good arm and his stump. He smirked back.

"So do I."

They stood across from one another, both clean of blood but mutilated. Both grinning, burning with equal madness and glee.

"WAAAGH!" Gitznash roared, charging forward, sawblade shrieking.

"AAAAAGH!" A roared back, lightning bursting again around him, stump raised high like it still held a weapon.

There was another scene here with Naruto back at camp, but it didn't fit with all of the action so I cut it. Couldn't ruin the pace. Things get REALLY crazy next chapter.

Thanks as always to my patrons and commissioners. And to fans leaving feedback.

Chapter Text

Chapter 16:

The Enemies True Strength 2

Every few minutes, a genin runner or minor animal summon would arrive, scroll in mouth, words tumbling from breathless lips. Most of the reports were the same: progress slow, Ork resistance erratic, and above all, focus centered on disabling the enemy's lightning-absorbing gear.

The real danger wasn't brute strength anymore. It was the magics that this enemy used and that they were documented. Powerful sonic screams and lightning, much of it their own redirected jutsu, was only the start of it.

Sasuke dropped from the ledge and walked back toward the heart of the basin.

A handful of the medics had begun to look less like casualties and more like soldiers again, straight-backed, sharp-eyed, fingers flexing with restored energy.

That was thanks to Choji.

He sat near the stone slab that had become their makeshift central operations platform, sweat on his brow, but his breathing even. His usual wide smile was back.

"Not even that sore," he said as he rotated his shoulder with a satisfied grunt. "Honestly expected more kick from that green pill."

"Could be adrenaline," Ino replied, eyeing him with skepticism. "Or shock suppressing your fatigue."

Choji shrugged and patted his stomach twice, a proud thump.

"Could be superior chakra metabolism."

Karin, standing nearby with her sleeves rolled to the elbows, cracked her neck, then bounced on the balls of her feet with renewed vigor.

"That was more effective than it had any right to be," Kabuto muttered, watching her. "I underestimated the Akimichi formula. Again."

"Don't feel bad," Choji said. "Most people do."

Their attention turned back to the open box sitting near Choji's feet ,the chakra pills: one green, already consumed. One yellow, shining faintly in its cradle. One red, glimmering like a bloodstone.

"We should use the yellow pill at the next rotation," Sasuke said flatly. "Distribute the chakra across the field evenly. Don't focus it all on the returnees. We need the entire force topped up, not just the exhausted."

Kabuto frowned.

"That kind of broad-spectrum refueling could disrupt delicate jutsu in progress. You'll get people killed mid-cast if it hits at the wrong moment."

"I can handle the timing," Katsuyu offered, her voice soft but certain from each of her distributed selves. "I'll ping each target with a signal first. Let them brace or delay."

Kabuto gave a slow nod.

"That would work."

Ino stepped closer, arms folded.

"And the red pill," she said, " only if a full retreat becomes the only option. Or if another spaceship crashes on top of us."

Even Kabuto didn't argue, although his curiosity was evident. Then Katsuyu whispered something to him and Kabuto turned to raise his voice.

"All injured, all who will not return to combat in the next rotation, prepare for transport!" He barked across the canyon.

A small ripple of motion spread through the resting troops. Some genin teams, particularly those from minor nations, straightened up immediately, pride sparking in their faces. A few even objected aloud.

"We can still fight!"

"I'm good enough to—!"

"Sit down," snapped one medic, not looking up from bandaging a burn. "If you pass out five minutes after rejoining the battle, you'll just get in someone's way."

One man didn't sit down.

He wheezed audibly as he waddled forward, heavy steps squelching in the wet mud. Sweat glistened across his face, even in the shade. One leg was encased in a splint. Burns marred his right arm, and two freshly stitched bullet wounds peeked out from under his ragged flak jacket.

"Name's Barumi," he grunted. "From Grass."

Nobody asked.

He paused to catch his breath, then pointed a thick finger at the chakra pill case.

"I heard you talking. That red one."

He looked at Choji.

"If you took it… it'd boost your chakra a hundredfold, yeah? So what if someone with even more body fat than you took it? Would I make even more?"

Choji reacted with panic.

"No! Well—yes. But that's a bad idea." he said.

He sighed.

"Look, with the over two hundred shinobi already deployed, the chakra I generate will be enough to recharge almost all of them through Katsuyu. You? You'd overload them. Completely. We'd be frying people's tenketsu. You don't generate usable chakra in clean ratios like I do."

"So it would only be useful," Barumi said, "if we needed everyone to be overcharged."

Choji hesitated.

Then nodded. "Yeah. That's… about right."

Barumi nodded firmly, sweat still pouring.

"Then I'll stay. In case you need that."

Kabuto stared at him, arms folded.

"It would likely kill you, even with regeneration support. The shock alone cof burning all of that fat so quickly might end your life and cause organ failure. Your own chakra pathways will almsot surely be fried beyond repair."

Barumi grinned, despite the pain.

"Then I'll die the same way I fought — being useful."

"The first rotation is returning. Relief inbound." Katsuyu's voice rang smooth, clinical.

They already knew that, as that was the only thing she could have said to Kabuto, but now the rotation was upon them and it was time for relief to head out.

Sasuke turned slightly, the gaze of his sharingan shifting to the rim of the canyon. He caught movement — streaks of chakra signatures, some flickering with fatigue, others simply sluggish with the weight of prolonged battle.

"Eighty shinobi," Katsuyu continued. "Minimal casualties. Most are chakra depleted. Minor wounds. Frontlines remain stable for now."

Below, Ino and Kabuto were already in motion, reorganizing the triage points with brutal efficiency. Karin stood on a boulder overlooking the basin, sleeves rolled up on her good arm, baring her bite-marked appendage like a badge.

Sasuke nodded once and flared his chakra just enough to get attention.

"Combatants," he called, voice crisp and loud, "Form at the northeastern, northwestern, and southern edges. You're rotating in. Move."

Behind him, Choji let out a long breath and stayed seated near the regrouping medics.

"Sticking with the plan," he muttered, clearly disappointed. "Battery duty."

Sasuke didn't look back, but he nodded.

He joined the team on the northeast, a strike force of close-quarters and mid-range shinobi from Fire, Mist, and Suna.

Temari fell in beside him near the halfway mark, her war fan folded but strapped across her back.

She was not alone.

Behind her came two more Sand shinobi: one with a blood-stained handkerchief tied over his mouth and wild, unblinking eyes; the other immaculately groomed, not a speck of ash or sweat marring his slicked-back black hair.

"I'm Mamushi," said the first, voice oddly cheerful.

"Koji," said the other, polite and neutral.

Sasuke gave them each a glance and a nod. "We move fast. Keep up or stay out of the way."

"They'll keep up," Temari assured him.

They traveled fast, bounding between jutting rock pillars, shallow rootwork, and burst craters from collapsed tunnels. The wind howled past them as distant concussions rolled across the desert.

At the next outcropping the two groups crossed paths. Exhausted and wounded shinobi limped back from the front, tagged their replacements with chakra taps or claps on the shoulder, and vanished toward the rear. Sasuke exchanged a brief nod with a Suna jonin he recognized from the Chunin exam before his team surged forward into the northeast front.

They heard Orochimaru before they saw him.

The shrieks of serpents, the hiss of swamp jutsu, and the screaming of Orks overwhelmed by viper bites and sudden terrain liquefaction — it was all there, woven into a symphony of unnatural destruction.

The battlefield was in chaos, but it was organized chaos, and Orochimaru was its composer.

Dozens of enemy vehicles — half-formed, clanking metal heaps just emerging from hidden tunnels were ensnared mid-rise by coils of white-scaled serpents. Swamp water surged beneath them, choking exits and swallowing wheels. Wind howled like a storm trapped in a bottle.

Temari whipped out her fan, and Sasuke followed suit with a stream of fire. Their attacks collided mid-air and ignited.

A vortex of fire and wind spiraled across the front, sweeping through spores, vehicles, and unlucky Orks in one unrelenting wave. Even the sky seemed to shimmer from the heat.

Orochimaru cackled with glee and summoned a new serpent, snow-white, sleek, and barbed, which slithered into the sky and dove straight into a unit of incoming skimmer bikes.

Sasuke broke formation and veered left with Mamushi and Koji flanking him.

They dove into a particularly large Ork vehicle, one with gun towers. In perfect rhythm, they attacked delivering a one, two, three strike combo.

One, Sasuke's sword tore through the wheels of the vehicle. Two, Koji's glasslike iron sand rammed a wedge through the vehicle's undercarriage, sending it flying. Three, Mamushi's snake arm burst inside, dragging out the screaming pilot like a hooked fish.

Another vehicle. Another trio of strikesstrike. Their attacks blended like a conveyor belt of execution.

Sasuke moved like a scalpel. Koji's weapons were sculptures with hard angles and no wasted motion. Mamushi's snake arm twitched, and grew a second head mid-fight to strike and inject their venom into the two gunners in the tower. Sasuke caught the movement and narrowed his eyes. Not a summoning pact but a parasitic graft. It was dangerous and unstable. Very Orochimaru.

Which made the next moment unsurprising.

Orochimaru joined them.

He moved like mist, cutting, slashing, laughing, the Kusanagi blade an extension of his will. Through the caravan of deadly vehicles they went. The two swordsman danced between the vehicles to relieve them of the wheels, Koji relieved them of their grounding, and Mamushi relieve them of their gunners.

In less than ten seconds just as many vehicles were neutralized. The surviving pilots and side gunners were easily handled. Beheaded by Sasuke and Orochimaru or ripped apart by serpents conjured from all of their limbs, save Koji who took this time to destroy the lightning rod devices.

Sasuke had a moment to wonder at the lack of weird boyz when they crested the hill aboard a wide craft thatl ooked more like a barge, lacking in any gunners.

The storm of lightning and kinetic energy was waylaid by Kobi, who shielded them from the attacks, summoning his sand in tight, angular domes. It was different from Gaara's flowing style. Or architectural and geometric.

"I like your style, old man," Mamushi said during the moment of peace.

Orochimaru paused and glanced at him with slitted eyes. Clearly taken aback by the casual way he had been adressed before regaining his composure.

"Save your flattery," he said. "Your imitation is already the best form of it. All the more impressive for not having gained a resonance with snakes outside of my line of succession."

Mamushi grinned wide, delighted to have met what must have been is idol.

Then, rather unexpectedly, three of the weird boys appeared behind the shield with them. They just popped into existence. Sasuke and Orochimaru cut them down without missing a beat.

"The werid boyz can teleport!" Sasuke screamed to the slug on his should.

"Message passed on." She told him

They leapt out of cover intent on attacking the remaining weird boyz on the barge, only to find it driving away from them.

The Orks began to retreat, not in terror, but in formation. Tunnels collapsed behind them, detonated by boomer squigs. Koji countered with a ridge collapse of his own, sealing the escape route and burying a half-dozen vehicles in the process.

They found out why they were retreating a moment later when the sky howled. Something fast and large was approaching from the general direction of the alien ship.

"A missile?" Asked Temari.

"No, a drop pod." said Sasuke.

It slammed into the earth a few kilometers out, gouging a jagged scar from the desert floor. Heat shimmered off its hull and smoke curled into the sky.

"That's new," Orochimaru said, narrowing his eyes. "Be cautious as you approach."

They moved. Dozens of shinobi flanked the pod, a good half of the northeastern force. The rest hanged back and remained spread out, ready for anything. Temari and the ranged fighters stayed behind as the close range heavy hitters moved in through the smoke and debris.

Sasuke pulled ahead and activated his Sharingan and immediately dropped to one knee, hand gripping his temple.

The world around the drop pod was wrong to the vision of his sharingan. Like the paintings of schizophrenic patients rendered in 3d, a kaleidoscope straight out of a bad trip.

Blood ran from his burning eyes

Orochimaru knelt beside him.

"What did you see?" he asked.

Sasuke wiped the blood away.

"Madness made real," he said.

Orochimaru at least pretended to understand the nonsense that just came out of his mouth. He held Kusanagi aloft ready for a fight and Sasuke raised his own sword.

The pod hissed and cracked open.

A single figure emerged, at first sight appearing to be a single weird boy, but as it shambled out Sasuke could see that it was something new.

Maybe it had once been an Ork, but it was clearly no longer just that. Its skull was split with something glowing and wet pulsing inside. Tumors lined its torso. Its veins glowed red-violet. Tendrils grew from its joints and its body was covered in long, quivering black spikes, like an echidna carved from nightmares.

It twitched as it moved. Every movement was either too fast or too slow, and sometimes appearing to be multiple movements at once. Each jerking motion looked painful, and sounded painful too based on the groans it made.

It saw them did not waagh, merely shambling towards them too.

Then the stench hit them. It was like burning plastic and something sweet like flowers left too long in water.

Sasuke stepped back.

"Did Lee say something about this?"

Orochimaru took one long look at the thing.

"No," he said. "No, he did not."

Naruto sat up in bed, fists clenched in his lap. His teeth grit tight.

"I should be out there," he hissed. "It's my fault that people are flying blind and can't get around."

Lee, in the bed next to him, turned his head.

"No. It's my fault. I don't remember much but I do remember punching you." he said.

Sakura placed a firm hand on both their chests and shoved them back down.

"You are both idiots, but neither of you are at fault. This is war. And you should be unconscious, so you can recover enough to do better next time." she told them firmly.

Naruto appreciated her stern manner of consoling them.

"Let me send some clones. Just to help relay messages—"

"You're concussed," Sakura snapped. "You might already have permanent brain damage. Do you even know how many times you've stuttered today? Your frontal lobe is probably bruised."

Naruto paused. She was right, he had been having trouble getting words out. That could happen if the front of your brain was bruised? How could Sakura even know that off hand?

Just then, Jiraiya entered the room. Naruto pointed an accusing finger at him as if he was at fault.

"Why isn't the stupid fox healing me faster?!" he demanded.

Jiraiya froze. He blinked a few times before his face fell and he held it with his hands in shame.

"I'm so sorry Naruto. I completely forgot." he said.

"You what?" Naruto asked, confused.

So his random accusation was correct.

He walked over and crouched beside Naruto's bed. He held out his hand and chakra appeared at each finger tip. Then, in a practiced motion, he slapped his palm against Naruto's stomach.

Having not expected a claw strike to his stomach the wind was naturally knocked out of him.

"Release." Jiraiya said.

The result was immediate.

Red chakra surged outward like a geyser.

The sheets and curtains around him caught fire and Jiraiya backed away from him in fright.

When Naruto wanted the ninetails chakra, he had not wanted this much. One tail sprouted, then in quick succession a second came.

"I can't fight it!" Naruto yelled.

It was like all of the excess nine tails chakra had been releasing to try and heal him had built up and now was being let out all at once. A third tail had already sprouted and he could feel the fourth on the way. He knew what that meant, especially in a crowded medical tent and camp.

"Shitshitshit noooo!" Naruto yelled as his skin began to peel away.

"Look at me!" Itachi's voice rang out.

Naruto whipped around and met his eyes.

The tomoe of his sharingan spun and bled into each other and formed something like a three-pronged shuriken.

In an instant the red cloak of chakra vanished and Naruto felt calm. Confused as to what the hell just happened, but calm. The anger returned when Jiraiya doused the last embers on Naruto's bed with a stream of water from his mouth.

"Thank you both." Naruto said to the two men.

He turned to Itachi, who was groaning and rubbing his eyes. Even across the room Naruto could see blood trailing down both cheeks.

Sakura was on him in a second.

"I told you not to use that jutsu!" she chastised,

He didn't reply, nor did he acquiesce to her mothering.

"And why haven't you been icing your eyes like I told you?!"

Itachi calmly spoke back to her in a way Naruto would never dare.

"I am a rogue ninja, a mass murderer and I terrorist. Most importantly, I am not under your jurisdiction." he told her.

"You are under my care. So you can either follow my instructions like a proper patient, or you can leave and heal yourself." She said, crossing her arms.

Itachi actually sat up and made to stand.

"Then leave and heal myself, I shall."

He didn't even get out of bed before Sakura grabbed his head like a coconut and slammed him back into a laying position.

"Sit. Down." she all but snarled.

Itachi raised his one good hand in surrender.

"…As you wish."

She stomped towards the exit with a huff.

"I'm off to get you a new bed and curtains." She told Naruto.

The room was silent as she left and Naruto's eyes were drawn to Guy's abandoned and clean bed. Sakura must have forgotten she'd already changed the sheets for it. He just mosied on over to it and glanced back at Itachi.

"…I know I already said this, but thanks."

Itachi nodded.

The room remained silent for a few more moments. Itachi glanced around at the occupants, blinking and squinting his eyes. Eventually he opted to stare at Naruto.

Unexpectedly, it was Itachi who broke the silence.

"Lord Jiraiya. Mister Lee. May require a moment alone with Naruto." he said.

Jiraiya blinked, but his hesitation was short lived.

"…Sure. Lee? Let us go distract Miss Sakura," he said, "before she decides to suplex a war criminal again."

They quickly left, Lee with crutches.

As soon as they exited Itachi rose. He did so with difficulty, feeling his way across the room. His one hand skimmed the wall like a man blind until he reached Naruto's ruined bed and sat on it. Up close Naruto could see that his eyes were thoroughly red, and not from the sharingan.

"I understand your frustration," he said, voice low. "About not being able to go out there. But in times like these, I have always found it… therapeutic to train while I wait."

Naruto huffed. The conversation had come back around to before the near crisis.

"I'd love to. But Sakura's got me locked down. And what could I even learn in a day?"

Itachi smiled. It was odd expression on his usually dour face.

"Two jutsu. Both underutilized. Both ideal for someone like you. And both can make your clone strategies exponentially more effective."

Naruto sat up straighter.

"…Go on."

"The first: shadow clone weapon replication. You already duplicate your clothing and tools with each clone, with a slight modification to your way of thinking you massively duplicate shuriken and kunai as you throw them? One kunai becomes a hundred. A thousand."

Naruto's eyes lit up.

"That's a thing?!"

Itachi nodded.

"The second is the Kamekaze clone. It is a clone imbued with explosive chakra, the same essence as a bomb tag. It detonates when struck."

Naruto crossed his arms and grunted.

"I don't know fire release though." he said.

"The kamekaze clone is not a fire element infused clone. It's just a clone made into an explosive tag. You know how to make explosive tags?" Naruto nodded. "Then you know how to make a clone explosive. The trick is to combine the two. You essentially already know both of these jutsu, you just need to practice them.

Naruto's demeanor lit up.

"That's genius. Why didn't Pervy Sage teach me that?!"

Itachi's smile faded slightly.

"Because he was training you as a jinchuuriki. Not as a soldier." he said. "Right now we need a soldier.

"Can they be learned in a few hours?" Naruto asked eagerly. "And in here without Sakura noticing? I imagine she would notice a thousand shuriken or an exploding clone."

Itachi chuckled.

"I imagine she would. And no, they cannot be mastered in a few hours." he said, activating his sharingan into that same shuriken shape. "But they can be mastered in a few weeks."

The world around Naruto melted away, and he was suddenly standing in the same training field Kakashi had given team 7 their bell test.

Itachi was standing across from him, blessedly sporting two arms which he stretched in front of him.

He drew a kunai and threw it right between Naruto's feet.

"Let us begin." he ordered.

Sakura returned to the tent, dragging Lee by the ear for leaving and making her chase him. She was surprised by what she found.

Bout Itachi and Naruto were unconscious in their beds, well, Naruto was in Guy's bed but same difference.

The terrorist actually had the ice pack over his eyes, though he was breathing heavily. She let go of Lee's ear and dropped the clean beddings onto the one Naruto had ruined and checked up on Itachi. Her medical duty outweighed her disgust with the man.

His eyes were still bleeding from when he had saved Naruto. Tsunade hadn't been kidding when she told her how much damage using the advanced sharingan did to the body.

She replaced the soaked through cotton wrap of the ice pack and placed it back on top of him, then returned to her chair outside of the tent to rest herself.

Has it ever occurred to any other writers to use the Tsukuyomi as a hyperglycemic lion tamer? I mean hyperbolic time chamber? Because using it just for torture is a huge waste.

So yeah I hope you guys liked that twist.

PUSSYSMASHER  said:

Bro you're tripping, the ninjas are not curb stomping any edition of 40K. Most shinobi are not Kakashi and even he isn't effortlessly crushing a company of any of the 40K factions.

Response:

I didn't say ninjas would curb stomp 40k. I certainly didn't say any individual, let a lone Kakashi, could 1v1,000,000 any company. I said the Naruto WORLD can curb stomp the 40k universe on "A long enough time scale." Not to spoil, but this story will take place over centuries if not millenium. What could happen in that time?

I want you to imagine how a united Naruto world, shinobi nations, filler/movie villains and all, would strategize and react to information on the tyranids. What counters do they have to that? Roran puppet armies, shadow clones armies, Moryo's terracotta armies, edo tensei armies. No biological matter for them to consume.

What jutsu or kekkei genkai would you proliferate into the thousands to create armies of? How does an army of 10,000 8 gates and 7 heavenly breaths users sound to you? That would only take a decade of training. What about a planet of Uchiha? All trained in the most brutal manner, similar to Mist/Zabuza's upbringing, to get them the MGS/EMGS? That would take thirteen years for an army of Sasukes (pre-shippuden) all with susanoo. Give em guns on top of their fire/lightning jutsu. How about artificial ninetails jinchuuriki like Sora, or the gold and silver twins, all trained to use NOTHING but multishadow clones like Naruto and Tenten weapons training? Infinite waves of fully armed, gun toting shadow clones that never run out of ammo. Suddenly Tryanids don't seem like much of a problem, do they?

You pointed out their second biggest disadvantage. Numbers. The biggest being lack of information. The latter will be remedied very soon, once Obito and Edo Minato start their mission to recon the stars. When information on Slaaneshi demons, imperial hive worlds and exterminatus, or tyranids get back to the elemental nations their tactics and strategies get really grimdark really fast. The former in less than 1000 years when they start sending breeding groups to other planets to sling semen. Which they can do undetected. Plenty of human worlds lost to the imperium, many of them in middle ages technological levels.

And I haven't even discussed the proliferation of potential city, nation or planet destroying techniques or combinations of techniques I'm going to employ.

To be clear, I'm not midmaxing. Nobody will be Naruto/Sasuke/Madara at end of shippuden levels of broken. Naruto won't even learn sage mode or master ninetails chakra. But the simple organization of the resources available to the Naruto world will make them not only competetive, but one of the strongest factions in 40k.

Are you starting to smell what I'm cooking here? This isn't me fanboying for Naruto saying "Zomg! Academy Sakura could one punch Khorne!" It's me asking you to imagine the Naruto planet as a 40k game faction that has reached the same numbers as other factions and with same lack of morality.

How would you play them?

Thanks as always to my patrons and commissioners. And to fans leaving feedback.

Chapter Text

Chapter 17:

The Enemies True Strength 3

Sasuke, Orochimaru, and the other close-range fighters watched the thing lumber towards them. If it could still be called an Ork, it bore only the vaguest resemblance. Its skin was too thin, stretched too tight around its sagging flesh. Its movements were jittery, disconnected from gravity.

Sasuke could tell that whatever twisted mutation had turned it into this wasn't finished yet, and that this was cause for concern.

Koji and two others stepped back, their nerves reacting before their training could catch up. The thing didn't move like it belonged here. It didn't move like it belonged anywhere. It was as if it skipped frames, jolting forward, then vanishing, then continuing forward again like time itself couldn't decide how to record it.

Orochimaru shifted his stance and the way he held Kusanagi and muttered something in a language even Sasuke didn't recognize. His pupils had narrowed to slits, and his breathing had gone still. Sasuke felt he should do the same but couldn't decide what kind of stance he ought to take.

So instead he opted to flick his fingers. A static charge danced between them. It crackled the air, leaping across the joints of his knuckles. There was no distortion nor sudden drain. That meant the null fields, the lightning-suppressing packs from earlier, weren't active here.

He nodded once to the slug clinging to his shoulder.

"I will pass on the word," Katsuyu said calmly. "Lightning techniques are viable."

He nodded again, this time to Orochimaru, and flung a Chidori charged kunai at the creature.

The weapon screamed as it left his hand, a straight blur of blue-white light sprinting toward the target. It pulsed with killing intent, wrapped in nature transformation so tightly that it burned the air behind it, transforming it into fresh ozone.

It missed. Or rather, the creature was no longer there. It was now in multiple other places, for it was three now. A split second later it was two, then five.

They all flickered, occupying different positions, different angles. They were not blurs, nor were they clones. They looked real and tangible. They cast shadows like shadow clones do(Hence the name).

They charged in perfect unison, five horrors in one direction, all on a direct intercept with Sasuke.

The only thing he could tell for certain is that all of them moved identically.

"Mirrored illusions?" he yelled, leaping backward.

"No!" Orochimaru shouted. "It's superpositioned!"

Sasuke actually had to think to recall what that meant.

Kakashi had mentioned it once. A theoretical technique known as quantum jutsu. One body in all states, all locations, until observation forced it to collapse into one. A mind-breaking technique even in theory. But this wasn't theory.

He dared not activate his Sharingan. Not after what he'd seen earlier. The vision of it still echoed behind his eyes like a migraine. And without it, he couldn't track five enemies at once. But he didn't need to, for they moved in unison, identically, he just had to keep aware of their positions and pay attention to the movements of one.

He shifted tactics to instead focus on the overlaps. Wherever they passed through one another, reality flickered. That had to be the real one — just for a split second.

He moved in with a chidori in his hand only for all of the superimposed mutants to vanish. He turned and found them descending upon Koji.

The sand nin had tried to retreat. He moved too fast, too erratically. One of the projections followed him with no delay and the scream that followed was wet, abrupt and final.

Sasuke's stomach turned. It was hunting emotions. Fear. Panic. Koji had broken formation and it had read it as permission.

"If we can't target the individual positions," Orochimaru said, eyes glowing pale gold, "then we target every probable space at once."

He didn't have to explain.

Sasuke formed the signs for Great Fireball.

"Wind!" he barked.

Orochimaru answered immediately, weaving a gale from the earth itself. Behind them, Temari snapped her fan wide as the other wind and fire users caught on. They matched Sasuke and Orochimaru's joined jutsu with a second wave of wind and fire release from the flank.

The resulting vortex was nothing short of a storm. A rolling spiral of cutting wind and fire that swallowed the air between them and their enemy. Koji and the creature were cremated. The firestorm collapsed inward on every version of the thing, roaring across the sands like a summoned hell.

For one moment, the copies screamed in perfect chorus, a dozen mouths echoing the same garbled noise in unison.

When they stopped their jutsu only silence and smoke remained. When the latter cleared one figure remained, the mutated ork.

They all remained indecisive on whether to attack again and with what, as if they were all waiting to see how fire effected it.

Sasuke half expected it to split apart and attack again, but it didn't.

Its body ballooned outward, first its gut, then its arms, then its neck and skull. The mass shifted wrong. It was an expansion of flesh like a distorted Akamichi expansion. Or at least it was at first, before shifting into something like a cocoon made of tumors. Its veins bulged and snapped in half. Its skin sloughed off in sheets as its head expanded, consuming the rest of its mass like a black hole gorging on itself.

What remained resembling an egg. A pulsating, veiny, twitching egg the size of a carriage.

The outer shell pulsed. Not with chakra, but something else. The stuff he had seen with his sharingan and had thought an illusion.

Even Katsuyu hissed audibly on his shoulder, her body tensing like she could feel it through the ley lines beneath the soil.

The didn't crack open, it burst. With a wet, sonic pop and a scream of shredded dimension, it hatched into a shape that defied shapes.

Tendrils, long, barbed, and dripping with what looked like toxic waste exploded in every direction. They spiraled in geometric patterns that made Sasuke's eyes water just looking at them. The creature's body unfolded itself in overlapping patterns, layered and infinite. A fractal pattern of madness.

He couldn't discern any head or torso, or tell its ass from tis elbow as some might say. It had neither.

What he had seen earlier, that impossible vision through his Sharingan, now unfolded in front of every naked eye. What he had witnessed a portent of the future, and that future had arrived.

The tendrils lashed outward. Each one flickered, superpositioning just like its former host. They whipped through the air in impossible arcs.

"Alien Bijuu!" Someone yelled from behind.

Sasuke couldn't come up with a better description of what now attacked them, and for all he knew that's exactly what this thing had been. An alien Jinchuuriki. But now? The jinchuuriki was dead and the demon within remained.

The creature lashed out, a tentacle striking at the house-sized boulder that a handful of archers had hidden behind. Their cover was shattered and the people behind them were grasped before being drawn into the mouth of needle-like teeth that made up half of the creature's body.

The rest of the tendrils lashed at everyone else in all directions. Everybody that could dodge, did so, but well over a dozen couldn't

Mamushi was among them. He screamed as he was pulled upward. First in pain as the tendrils had pierced him through the spine and chest. The tendrils didn't just pierce Mamushi, they grew into him. Spread inside him like roots through soil. His chakra shattered. His spine twisted unnaturally. His soul — if that was what he was watching — fractured in real time.

His yells of physical agony were replaced by those of mental agony. The kind Sasuke had only heard once before, from his own mouth in a world of red moonlight and cold hands on the night Itachi had killed their clan and used the Tsukuyomi on him.

His eyes rolled back and turned milky white, and a sound came from his throat that wasn't human.

Sasuke took mercy. He drew a kunai, imbued it with the chidori, and threw it directly at the suffering man. It struck Mamushi clean in his unprotected forehead where it pierced all the way through his head, killing him instantly.

His body went limp but it didn't fall. The thing kept him like a trophy.

He would have delivered a mercy killing to the other captives the alien demon had taken, but he was too late. The being had consumed them, and with their consumption it grew.

It absorbed the others next. One by one. Those too slow, too stunned or too close to have gotten away. It's growth was not in accordance with the mass consumed, so Sasuke could only assume it was devouring some other essence from it's victims, for it grew in size by an order of magnitude.

It went from being the size of a house to the size of an apartment complex. It also grew in complexity.

Chitinous plates burst from the sides of its mass. Crusted, serrated armor. Bone-like limbs slammed into the earth, crab legs, pincers, some fusion of arthropod and mollusk. Or at least that was the best comparison he could make. The body behind them writhed like a squid, barbs extending in fractal geometry, skin rippling like ocean water.

Its shape was beginning to make sense, but now it was no longer immobile as it crawled towards them.

Gishnash' saw-arm hung low, dragging behind him like a butcher's cleaver dulled by decades of overuse. Its teeth were cracked, half-melted, and sparked with each step like it was chewing the earth itself. The lightning absorber on his back was still alive, and looked like it ought to be barely functional. It flickered in intervals, coughing out sparks like a dying heart monitor. Its rhythm made no mechanical sense. It pulsed like a seizure.

And yet all of his opponents degraded and poorly maintained gear seemed to work better than stuff that would be brand new.

He lunged forward, low and fast, with his head tucked and muscles tight. He knew the beam would track him, and it did. The laser screeched across his shoulder as he closed the gap, slicing through armor and searing a brand into his skin. His cloak buckled but he didn't stop. He slipped beneath the Ork's swing, found the joint under its arm, and wrenched his hand beneath the cooling vents of the cannon's mount.

Then he ripped the accursed weapon off.

Metal groaned. Wires tore like sinew. A burst of slag hit his wrist, scalding hot, and something inside the device tried to scream, a digital shriek that warbled out mid-glitch before it shorted and died.

He received a split-second warning that the device was going to explode and he barely leapt away and shielded his eyes before his did.

His cloak was nearly burned off, and when he looked back he saw Gitznash charging through him, oblivious or apathetic to the severe burns he himself he sustained from the blast.

He dodge the sloppy blows with ease, testing the limits of his opponents defenses. He couldn't be sure if the punches he delivered to open laser wounds on his abdomen caused Gitznash any pain. He was sure that digging his fingers into it had, but the Ork seemed to be impervious to pain and he couldn't get his fist deep into it enough to grasp anything vital to rip out like he planned.

It was almost too late by the time he realized he couldn't drag the fight on.

The Ork's saw connected, not clean, but close enough to tear a long, angry gash across the side of A's head. Blood spilled down one side of his face, thankfully not into his eyes.

His legs slowed. His shoulders dragged. The flow of chakra down his spine faltered like a dammed river, and by the time he took his second step, Gitznash was already swinging.

He stumbled back, vision doubled, the world tilting under him.

"Feelin' slow now, shiny boy?" Gitznash said, half his mouth missing, the other half grinning like he'd just won the lottery.

A didn't answer.

He flung kunai past Gitsnazh at the cliff face behind him. In groups of four he threw them, all of them with bomb tags attached. They whistled through the air and embedded themselves into the cliff walls, the ground, the surrounding boulders.

When he made the seal with his good hand tThe world came down in pieces.

Explosions rang in sequence, detonating up and down the cliffs. The mountain cracked, chunks of rock the size of buildings shearing off and fell like thunder. Gitznash raised his arm to shield himself , and the armor absorbed each of the first to land on him, redirecting the impact into the ground. But the hit still staggered him.

That was all the Raikage needed.

He charged into the dust cloud.

He could hardly see for the dust and sand, but muscle memory took over where senses failed. His chakra cloak flared again, sputtered once, then held.

For one heartbeat, he was lightning again.

He circled behind the Ork in a blur, tags in his hand. He slapped one to his leg, another to the casing for the buzz saw on his arm. A third found the damaged pack lightning absorbing pack between the shoulder blades.

Gitznash turned to strike him but the Raikage was already gone, retreating behind the largest of the boulders to fall where he once again made one of the only hand signs he could one-handed.

The tags exploded as one.

The shockwave rolled outward like a fist. Gitznash was thrown sideways, the metal on his back shrieking as it peeled. A leapt back over the boulder now that he wasn't in, skidding across stone, lungs burning from dust and chakra overdraw.

Then he felt it. The drain was gone on his lightning, and thus chakra, was gone.

The moment the pack ruptured the siphon ended. His network surged open like floodgates blown wide. Lightning howled through his limbs. His lightning cloak returned, radiant and angry. He breathed in once, sharp, controlled, and the Lightning Blade bloomed in his one good hand.

He didn't speak. There was nothing left to say. He merely charged at his enemy for the kill.

Gitznash was already rising when he narrowed the gap. Half his jaw was missing. One leg was gone below the knee. He stood anyway, laughing, blood running down his chest in thick ropes.

The blade came down toward his neck in a perfect arc.

That was when Gitznash raised his hand. He made a finger gun and winked.

A had just enough time to blink when then the world around him turned bright crimson.

There was no sound at first. Just heat, blinding light and pain.

A beam of red light, thick as a tree trunk, screamed down from the sky. It struck like a divine punishment. The battlefield didn't explode, it ruptured.

A flew backward, half his body already gone, and hit the earth like discarded meat.

When he opened his eyes, his body barely responded. His entire right side was scorched. From hip to neck was nothing but black, blistered ruin. He could see white in places that should've been red. Most of his arm was bone and muscle, with not a hint of skin. Some of his rips and hip bone were just as visible.

He could feel wind on the inside of his cheek. His tongue and teeth were exposed to the open air.

He tried to laugh and choked on blood instead.

"Damn fool," he rasped, barely audible. "Let myself believe..."

He'd thought they wanted a fair fight. He'd bought into the myth of warriors. That someone like Gitznash wanted just a good honorable fight, something men like him had craved all of their lives, something their souls cried out for.

But these weren't warriors. They were animals with toys.

He sat there in silence, every breath a sentence. All of his focus was on manipulating lightning chakra within his body and nervous system. He was staving of shock and death, sealing veins and arteries in his wounds and forcing his heart to remain pumping and calm. It was a herculean task in terms of concentration.

All he understood of the world around him were the footsteps approaching him. They were slow, heavy and uneven.

He opened his eye to see the Ork half-walking half crawling towards him. Using his one good leg and both arms he approached.

His buzzsaw was fused to his arm, half slag, half gore. One eye had burst. His shoulder crackled with static.

"Now that," he said, voice shredded, "was a hit."

Then he grabbed his own arm, the ruined one, and tore it off along with the circular saw weapon. It snapped halfway down the forearm leaving a jagged bone behind as a weapon.

He didn't so much grunt in pain as he did it.

He the stooped, reaching into the dirt, and picked something up.

His hat. Or what was left of it.

Charred and melted, it was barely more than a brim.

He set it on his oversized head and straightened it like a crown.

"One down," he said. "Four to go. Hopefully they put up as good of a fight as you do."

The blade in his hand, his own ulna, dripped with blood he came to A intent on using it to take his life.

A closed his eyes, consigned to his fate.

The demon is a failed Warp Ascendant — mutating rapidly without access to the Warp. The original entity that possessed the Ork was Slaaneshi (if you couldn't tell), but after a week of being battered by the Waaagh and now manifesting in a Warp-dead zone (remember, the Naruto world is cut off from the Warp?), it's barely holding together.

It's clawing at any psychic resonance it can find, but the Waaagh is actively rejecting it. That leaves only the shinobi it picks off — and it's burning through them like fuel. Fast.

Design-wise, it's more inspired by the Mirror of Slaanesh than your usual Greater Daemon.

It's not just unstable — it's dying. A true daemon death. No Warp. No Waaagh. No future.

Or it could also be just an unaffiliated warp demon of pure chaos. It doesn't matter to the story, this is just some in universe lore that inspired its design.

As for A, I want you to know I wasn't being unfair to him. If he'd had the information he needed this fight would have ended in five seconds tops. But he didn't have most of the information others had, let alone the intel on this particular enemy. What we saw is the folly of shinobi fight. They fight to gain information more times than not, testing their opponents and hiding their own techniques. This habit is very good when fighting shinobi, but against the 40k factions? It's getting them killed.

The Raikage should have curb stomped this guy, but didn't because he didn't know that he needed to. It's a big theme of this first arc that I'm breaking these bad habits out of the shinobi nations.

Thanks as always to my patrons and commissioners. And to fans leaving feedback.

Chapter Text

Chapter 18:

The Allies True Strength 1

Gitznash towered above him, the blade of bone raised high overhead. The shattered remnants of his buzzsaw arm spasmed where it lay discarded, still twitching with leftover nerve impulse or residual charge. His breath steamed like a furnace, blood oozing from his torn jaw, and yet he moved as if uninjured, as if pain simply did not register. The jagged bone, his own ulna snapped and sharpened into a crude dagger, shimmered wetly in the dust-filtered light as it hung poised to end the life of the man beneath him.

And then the world erupted in mist.

Not smoke, mist. Cold, heavy, clinging. It poured in from nowhere and everywhere at once, coating the battlefield in a curtain of pale gray so dense it swallowed sound. And in that mist came paper—thin sheets of it, fluttering down like a typhoon of autumn leaves. They caught on broken rocks, on bloodied armor, on the scorched stumps of shattered trees.

Two figures emerged from the veil. Slim shapes, barely more than shadows in motion, one to the left and one to the right. They moved with no sound, water pooled around their sandals but didn't splash. Their faces were unreadable, their eyes calm. Rain-nin, though A didn't know them by name. They knelt at his side, one grasping his left shoulder, the other his right, and with a strength hidden behind their size, they lifted him.

Then they leapt up. And up again.

The holes in the cliff face, born of A's own earlier barrage, now served as footholds for retreat. They ran like insects along the rock wall, using each fractured crater as a platform and for cover. Blood trickled from A's head and his vision swam, but still he noted how their feet never slipped. Not once. Their grip on him remained iron.

They reached the top, the place he had begun his descent from so long ago. The ground here was dry, until the three of them landed with a thud that kicked dirt into his wounds. But he hardly felt it.

Flashbangs and smoke bombs exploded behind them, covering their retreat further. Then silence again, broken only by the distant echo of a furious roar. Not pain. Rage. Gitznash had lost his kill.

Thankfully the ork did not give chase. Not that he could in his current condition.

On the next ridgeline, they stopped. The mist thinned here, though not completely. All three of his rescuers kneeled in perfect unison.

"Ajisai, sir," said the tallest, a lavender-haired girl with her hair coiled in a spiraled bun.

Her gray cloak bore subtle markings along the hem—captain's insignia, if A recalled Rain structure correctly. Her eyes did not flinch. Her voice did not tremble.

"Fuyo, sir," said the smallest.

A child by his estimation, though that was only her size. She wore her hair long and black, draped over half her face like a curtain, her forehead protector nearly swallowed by it. She stared straight ahead, as unblinking as the others.

"Suiren, sir," said the third.

Freckled, greenish hair tucked under her beanie-styled headband, her mouth hidden behind a cloth wrap. She didn't fidget. None of them did.

A groaned, his voice thick.

"You should have killed him when you had the chance. I won't survive a trip back. You know that. Let me write what I saw. Then leave me. Don't waste resources on a dead man."

Ajisai did not hesitate.

"I'm sorry, my lord. But we cannot obey that order. Our mission was to rescue you. Rescue you we shall."

She said it plainly. It was not defiance nor a challenge, though in his state even an academy student could take him down. It was just a statement of fact.

She pulled a scroll from her pouch and unfurled it in one fluid motion. The rings around its edge glittered—chakra-reactive metal, finely etched with micro-seals.

"You saw the whole fight?" A asked, eyes narrowing.

Suspicion didn't flavor the question. Curiosity did.

"We did," Fuyo said, opening her own kit, filled with pre-inked tags and tiny scrolls.

Her hands already moved, organizing reports mid-conversation.

"We will ensure our reports are complete before yours even begins, so that you may rest without burden," she added.

"But first, we must move you. You require immediate treatment," Suiren said, as she circled the scroll with ribbons of chakra.

Ajisai approached him. She dabbed two fingers in the blood crusting his temple and drew a spiral across the scroll.

Each stroke burned crimson as it sank into the parchment.

"Wait, you're not going to—"

But indeed, she was going to. The sealing jutsu activated. A tried to rise, but his body betrayed him. His limbs felt like lead, and his chakra flared and died in stuttering flashes. The last thing he saw was the spiral pulsing.

Then he was gone.

He opened his eyes to firelight.

No—not fire. Lanterns. The air was sterile, the walls were right. He was in a medical tend.

Hands pressed to his chest. Voices called out vitals. Chakra flared around him in diagnostic patterns.

A tried to laugh but it hurt. The girl had used a time-dilated was a forbidden technique to use on living people. But with him so close to death and guaranteed to die on the return trip anyway, the young lady had opted to throw caution to the wind and risk it.

She must have been a true prodigy in sealing to have pulled it off. That or she'd prepared and practiced it specifcially ahead of time.

As sedation took hold, he smiled faintly and muttered, "Kids these days... they're a different breed."

Director Makino steadied his camera rig with trembling hands, his breath ragged through the mic, not from fatigue, nor cold, nor any injury sustained on the field, but from awe. Raw, terrible awe. The kind that turned men into statues and made faithless men believe in gods. Because gods were here. Not above, but among them.

They didn't descend from heaven on wings of gold, nor rise from the underworld in fire and bone. They walked through the mist and blood like soldiers. Call them shinobi, call them saints, call them monsters, but they were more than men regardless. He barely kept the lens straight as his assistant fumbled with the secondary arm.

"The sky is a furnace. The ground is ash," Makino whispered, the words leaving his mouth almost as reverent as prayer, carried by the boom mic cradled against his scarf. "And our heroes burn brighter than both!"

Ork projectiles peppered the ridgeline around them, some crude and jagged, others glowing with eerie green fire. One howled with an inhuman shriek mid-flight and struck a snow wall twenty meters away. The wall collapsed. The soldier behind it didn't scream—because his eardrums had already ruptured and his insides liquefied by the frequency.

Makino winced, but didn't stop filming.

Ōnoki of the Dust hovered ahead, keeping low to the ground to avoid the far off laser attacks. He didn't fly—he simply defied gravity with the contempt of someone too old and too powerful to care what it thought of him. His footsteps sent ripples through the earth, even when his feet touched nothing. Stones orbited around him like moons around a collapsed star, then flared into white spears that skewered Ork fliers mid-dive. With a touch of his hand, a full walker vehicle turned weightless, hovered, and was flung skyward to be struck down by allied fire.

The Land of Snow kept the blizzard thick and cold enough to fell the smaller fliers. The Land of Rain drowned sight lines in mist to enhance the former, and with more senbon storms to take out the rest. And every available shinobi focused fire on the aerial threat, the flying Orks, the winged drop-beasts, the mad comet-screamers.

This left them wide open to the ground forces, and the resulting loss of life was the tradeoff.

Makino's lens panned upward, then higher still. Above them was not sky, not really. It was war incarnate. A thousand dogfights spiraling through frozen air—paper bombs detaching from kites, jutsu trailing like banners, shinobi lept from summoned beasts like grasshoppers in a storm. He zoomed in on a group of fliers chasing what looked like a mutated, winged shark before it exploded into spores.

There was an anbu on a bird made of ink conjuring more of the artificial creatures for others to fly on, and he stole the show.

It took all of his years of discipline to continue narrating.

Hinata sat among the Mothers of Konoha. They were not merely mothers in the literal sense, but the quiet, indomitable matriarchs of every major clan still present within the village walls. Though she had never borne children of her own, they had taken her in without question, seating her with the quiet reverence reserved for those who carried a burden beyond words. She was Lady Hyuuga, and in the absence of so many, she had kept order where others might have allowed despair to seep through the cracks. She had done what she could these past few days, and slept little.

They gathered now on soft woven mats laid across the polished wooden floors of the Hyuuga compound, a room built for ceremony now repurposed for grim communion. The elders of the clan moved like courteous ghosts along the walls, brewing tea from three dozen varieties of leaf, each more fragrant than the last. Their polite attentions turned with particular charm toward the honored guests. It was, Hinata thought, strangely comforting to see these stately old men playing the part of flirtatious hosts to the other mothers, who seemed all too pleased to be doted upon, even if the war still raged just outside the village, and even if half of them had children in the field.

The compound felt too empty. It was never meant to echo. Nearly all the Hyuuga were gone, deployed to the frontlines where their Byakugan could be used to cut through both enemy illusions and the thick mists summoned by allies in the Land of Rain. Only Neji and the elders remained behind, the former assigned to perimeter defense and the latter too old for active combat. It made the silence worse.

On the far wall, a projection glowed faintly. The live telecast, fed by Director Makino's broadcast team. The picture warped slightly at the edges but the sound was crisp. War flickered in the dim light like a ghost story no one wanted to believe, and yet none of them looked away.

An Ork artillery barrage hit the front lines mid-broadcast. The screen jittered. Dust clouded the lens. A defense line, shinobi, steel, and barrier seals, vanished beneath the impact like twigs beneath a cartwheel. Somewhere in the room, a sharp gasp. A kunoichi's name was spoken, then hastily swallowed back down. They all knew better than to ask questions during a live feed. Answers could be unbearable.

"Fungaloid aliens," came Makino's voice, steady and hollow. "If even one spore lands… it grows. On anything. Dirt. Flesh. Trees. The Land of Wind has been quarantined. That is why all efforts are focused on aerial containment. We cannot allow them to cross into the Land of Stone."

Hinata's fingers, delicate but calloused from a lifetime of training, curled tightly around her porcelain teacup until the crack of glaze beneath her grip whispered an audible protest. The tea within trembled, dark ripples spreading outward. Beside her, a gentle hand, warm and firm, settled over her own. Ino's mother gave her a look that held no words, only permission: to be afraid, and to stay composed anyway.

Hinata exhaled.

The feed continued.

Ōnoki, ancient and proud, hovered through the sky like a vengeful comet, hurling boulders like toys. Each one struck with such force that Ork fliers were torn from the air in twos and threes. Blizzard and fire jutsu turned spores into frozen ash, falling like powdered rust. Summons emerged from cracks in the earth, cleaving tanks apart with claws that gleamed like etched metal.

The scale of it all defied belief. Even the camera struggled to keep pace.

"Where is Naruto?" Hinata asked — quietly, to no one, or perhaps to herself.

The room did not was a pause, long and careful. Then Shikamaru's mother, her voice like paper folded into a fan, spoke.

"The people of Konoha are watching in their homes," she said. "Everyone will see what we are seeing. And they will need to believe. Not just in victory. In each other."

Choji's mother clapped her hands — once, twice, sharp and decisive.

"Then we'll feed them. Every kitchen opens today. Every pot gets stirred. Get the mochi out of storage and start boiling sweet red bean. If they're going to watch this war, they'll do it with full bellies and warm hands. That's how you keep the heart strong."

"Right." Said Mrs Haruno. "Get them out of their homes, then out of their heads."

And just like that, plans were made.

Not with declarations or grand gestures, but with the quiet, efficient solidarity of women who had lived through too many wars to let this one unravel the home front.

Sumaru, the last Hoshikage of a village hidden in the stars, stood at the edge of the stargazer's platform. Once the proud heart of their shinobi tradition, here they had channeled the light of a fallen celestial body in pursuit of a strength meant to rival the Five Great Nations.

Around him stood the others who had trained under its glow; those who had been touched by its radiance, scarred by its poison, and humbled by its destruction. Veterans of a war that had never come, a village built on hope and desperation, now sheltering refugees from lands less lucky. They had taken them in without question. Naruto's mere name had convinced them.

It was the right thing to do. And now they stood here again, not to train, not to ascend, but to watch.

The war, live and unfiltered, fed through Director Makino's all-seeing lens played out before them. They had gathered to discuss their place in it; whether to join the war effort, whether they could even make a difference. That question now seemed painfully naive.

The camera shifted, lens adjusting to white glare, as something vast broke through the snow-slicked dunes. A ripple of motion, at first subtle, then undeniable, buckled the landscape like a breaching sea serpent. The snow fell inward and sand rose up in its place. The entire terrain distorted as if reality itself had been rewritten. What had moments ago been a frozen wasteland was now a seething desert.

Then came the centipedes.

Monsters. No other word fit. They moved through the sand in perfect arcs, glassy bodies reflecting distorted light, their armor gleaming like obsidian and chitin. Each one was the size of a warship. They swam through the dunes like predators beneath ice, silent but devastating. The camera rattled with their passage. And then, behind them, a figure appeared — unmoving, suspended above the battlefield like a ghost-king who had chosen to walk among the living once more.

"Is that the Kazekage?" Hotaru asked, her voice brittle. "How is he so strong? How is the Tsuchikage so strong?!"

No one answered her. Not because they didn't share the question, but because they all knew the answer, and it tasted bitter.

For years, they had believed in the power of the star. They had bled for it, studied it, built their entire shinobi philosophy around its alien glow. They they had abandoned it seeking to rise by their own strength. And yet here, on a cracked screen and under cold evening light, they watched men who commanded entire landscapes as if it were as natural as breathing. Gaara wasn't a boy. Ōnoki wasn't an old man. They were forces. Calamities with human faces. If there had ever been a tier above them, it had broken now, and these were its ascended kings.

The Kazekage floated, arms folded, his expression impassive. With one gesture, the long canyon below him rose like a curtain drawn upward by invisible threads. What had once been a hollow trench became a towering wall of sand, as high as it had been deep, sealing off the entire battlefield and giving the allied forces a shield even the Orks would struggle to breach.

No one cheered.

Mizura swallowed hard and spoke.

"Do you think they'd even notice if we joined in?" he asked.

The words hung awkwardly in the air, vulnerable and bare.

Sumaru didn't respond. His eyes remained locked on the screen, his expression unreadable, his posture still as stone. But when he finally spoke, his voice was quiet, and devoid of any pride.

"I can't believe we ever thought we could compete with the great nations," he said. "Without the power of the star."

And as if drawn by gravity itself, every pair of eyes turned to the back of the platform, to the black box resting in shadow. Within it, sealed for a very rainy day, were the last remaining fragments of that so-called blessing. Just fragments now, they still held the stars power.

Lady Haruna stood beneath the wide, flowering dome of the old greenhouse, once the pride of her people, now repurposed into a war briefing hall, though its walls still breathed with life. The heat inside was thick and fragrant, the air rich with chlorophyll and steam, and it was in that layered, living haze that dozens of young shinobi sat cross-legged in quiet rows, waiting. Most were genin and fresh-chosen chunin, flower-style practitioners trained by Yurinojo, their faces turned upward to the projection screen now cast across the glass ceiling like the ghost of a second sky.

Scenes the battlefields above danced against the panels, refracted in water droplets and curling fronds, scattering kaleidoscopic halos across their upturned cheeks. The war outside looked almost sacred from within.

Small things moved quickly through the sky. Hummingbirds, thousands of them, impossibly tiny and controlled. They weren't birds, Haruna saw that immediately. They were clay. Each one flapped with rhythmic precision, the wings shaped to spin like shuriken, each feather lined with something that glinted, each body armed with detonation seals that pulsed like tiny hearts. They latched onto airborne Orks and exploded with brilliance.

"What kind of jutsu is that?" one of Yurinojo's students asked aloud, barely above a whisper.

"Art," Lady Haruna answered, breath caught in her throat. "It's art… as jutsu."

The voice of Director Makino came low through the feed, as if struck dumb by what he was seeing. The camera lurched for a second, panning, overcorrecting, failing to adjust for the sheer scale of motion, then finally stabilized. And there he was.

A man rode above it all on the back of a dragon made of clay, vast and sculpted, with wings like blades and a tail that twitched like a living whip. His cloak, unmistakable even at that height, billowed in the chaos. Black, rimmed in red, its fabric patterned with drifting clouds. On his forehead protector was the line of exile behind blone hair.

"Get me an ID," Makino snapped. He didn't need to look away to give the order. His eye was pressed tight to the viewfinder, as if afraid to blink and miss whatever happened next. "If he's here, I want his name burned into this tape."

Lady Haruna folded her hands in her lap. She did not gasp. She did not move. But her heartbeat quickened, thudding hard beneath the collar of her robes.

"Akatsuki," she murmured, more to herself than the room. But others heard her.

She knew of them. Everyone knew of them, if they were wise. The wandering murderers. The monster-catchers. The exiles who called no nation home and answered to no village creed. And she remembered too, remembered the boy they had hunted once, the one she had spoken to in flowers and soft riddles, offering in roundabout language the prospect of a future that he had, thankfully or tragically, been too oblivious to notice.

The assistant scrambled beside Makino, rustling through the thick leaves of the bingo book with clumsy urgency.

"Uh—Deidara!" the assistant called. "Rogue nin from the Land of Stone. Kekkei genkai user—exploding clay sculptures. Known Akatsuki."

Several of the younger students repeated the name under their breath like a dare. One asked if the Akatsuki were terrorists. Another asked what they were doing fighting to save the world.

Lady Haruna stood.

"Prepare to deploy," she said, and her voice cut through the room like steel drawn from a sheath.

There was no hesitation in her words. There couldn't be. Not anymore.

En Oyashiro sat in silence atop his private observation platform, a crescent-shaped box of dark wood and gold trim high above the arena floor.

Chiro and Nowaki stood guard over him.

Once, this place had echoed with jeers and laughter, the cheers of nobles and merchants delighting in the spectacle of bloodline theft and child combatants tearing each other apart for temporary glory. Now it was silent. Now, it bore witness not to pageantry or cruelty, but to war in its purest, most unrelenting form. The tag matches below had been postponed without ceremony. All eyes had turned upward, or rather, outward, to the vast rear wall of the auditorium, now transformed by high-caste projectors into a colossal, living screen.

The hum of that projector was the only sound in the room, steady and mechanical, as if straining to contain what it displayed.

Then the mist shifted, peeled backward like breath over ice, and something else emerged — a presence too still, too perfectly balanced. A shape took form, flickering between visibility and camouflage: a chameleon bigger than the colosseum they sat in, one that opened its mouth to reveal something seated inside. A man, thin to the point of translucence, his red hair long and weighted with something invisible. His body was wired into some kind of throne, mechanical, organic, or divine, it was impossible to tell.

Around him, six others appeared.

They did not step into frame. They did not materialize like normal men. They revealed themselves like facts already known, as if they had always been there. The seven red-haired figures broke formation, each with the same serene, apocalyptic expression. Their Rinnegan eyes shimmered like eclipses pulled too close. They stood with purpose, not posture, weapons unraised, as if the world was already beneath them.

A breath went out in the room. Someone gasped aloud. "No… it can't be," they whispered.

But Oyashiro said nothing. He simply leaned forward in his chair, old fingers folded beneath his chin, eyes fixed unblinking on the projection.

He had spent a lifetime cataloging bloodlines, pricing out power, watching children bleed for scraps of fame. But this, this was something his auctions had never prepared him for.

The camera zoomed in on the seven, their eyes casting a subtle halo through the mist. Director Makino's voice crackled into the feed again, tight with disbelief.

"I… I don't know who they are."

And then the battlefield responded.

Summons tore into the world with no hand signs, no warning. They rose from glyphs that unfurled like brushwork. A centipede uncoiled from the sky, as long as a freight train and many times as heavy, its body striking the ground with the finality of a tomb seal. A hawk with inked scrolls on its claws spiraled down like a falling poem. Another figure knelt, serene, deliberate, and placed a hand to the earth, and what rose in response was not a creature but an abomination: a two-headed dog with muscles like coiled siege cables.

And when it died, it did not stay dead.

One head cleaved, two grew. A limb torn off returned with a second. Blades made it stronger. Violence made it plural.

"It's multiplying!" Makino shouted. "It—What kind of summon is that?!"

The microphone peaked and screeched. The image quivered. In the audience box, many flinched instinctively from the sound, eyes wide, hands raised to mouths.

Oyashiro did not flinch. He had seen pain before. He had profited from it. But this… this wasn't pain. This was judgment.

He watched the hound lunge, saw the tank it collided with collapse inward. Metal, meat, bone, oil — all of it folded like origami crushed beneath a hammer. He watched the fire that followed, and still he did not look away.

Then slowly, deliberately, En Oyashiro turned to the other patrons, the ones who had once whispered prices behind their sleeves, who had bet on orphans as if they were dice.

The theater was silent.

No orchestra. No stagehands. No velvet voice announcing the evening's performance. The pit was dark, its instruments cold. Above, the heavy curtains, dyed crimson to match the kingdom's banner, hung wide like twin arterial wounds, drawn aside not for comedy, nor opera, nor pageantry, but for something far older. Something sacred. Projected across the back wall, larger than life and yet impossibly small compared to the events it captured, the feed flickered and hissed in hues of silver and blue. War, distilled and broadcasted. No longer a rumor. No longer a headline. Now a spectacle none could look away from.

Prince Michiru sat upright in the royal box beside his father, his customary silks exchanged for the rough practicality of linen. His crown lay forgotten on a side table. The gold sash of his title was crumpled across the seat behind him. His sleeves were rolled, and his gaze did not move.

Below them, the seats were full. Courtesans sat beside soldiers. Tutors leaned against tired merchants. Children huddled beside their nurses. The Crescent Moon Kingdom, known for its indulgence and retreat, had become a congregation. They watched as one, not as guests, not as nobles, not as castes divided by profession or coin, but as people. As a kingdom of onlookers.

And what they saw made none of them speak.

On screen, the six redheads moved once more. They separated with unnerving grace, like petals peeling from a steel blossom. One remained at the center, arms stretched wide, feet planted in scorched ash. Dust curled around them like incense before the altar.

The camera zoomed out.

It did so slowly, like it, too, was hesitant to witness what came next.

A voice, flat and resonant, filled the theater:

"Almighty Push."

A murmur rippled across the velvet chairs.

Then, it happened. Not a flash of light. Not a concussive blast.

The chakra on the screen thickened, warped, became visible, not as color, but as weight. As if gravity itself had been sculpted into a blade and held poised just beneath the clouds.

Then it fell.

A shockwave carved through the landscape, but not in any direction one could point to. It did not fall. It did not rise. It expanded. A flat, horizontal plane of destruction, pure, unrelenting force, erased the battlefield as if it had never existed. Orks, machines, bunkers, hills, tunnel — all gone in an instant. There was no smoke, no fire. A large chunk of the world was simply removed. The scar it left was enormous: ten kilometers wide, stretching further than the camera could capture, and hundreds long. A wound on the world. A deletion of matter.

The feed crackled. Makino's camera wavered. The audio cut out. The sound returned but the only thing it captures was the deafening silence of something colossal having just ended. It was a void. A thunder that already happened, now echoing only in memory.

In the theater, the image flickered. For two terrible seconds, the projection failed. The walls buzzed with static. Then the picture stabilized — sharper than before.

No one spoke.

The silence that followed was not stunned. It was sacred. No whispers. No applause. No breath, even. Just stillness. Was it reverence or perhaps fear?

Then the camera tilted.

It moved again, shakily this time, as Makino ran forward to approach the man now descending from the chameleons moth, a man who had joined forces with Ōnoki and Princess Koyuki. A man who stood motionless amidst melted metal and scorched stone, his back a lattice of iron piercings, his body a silhouette of thin strength and unbending conviction.

Makino asked his name.

He turned toward the lens.

And in the theater, a dozen people flinched—not from sound, but from sight. From recognition. From those eyes. Pale, circular, spinning suns of the Rinnegan. One child in the second row buried her face in her father's cloak.

"I am Nagato Uzumaki," the man said.

His voice was even. Calm. Unmoved by the magnitude of what he had just done. "Leader of the Akatsuki. Amekage of the Land of Rain."

Michiru exhaled sharply. His knuckles whitened on the railing in front of him. "Uzumaki?" he asked, not to anyone in particular, but the word sounded too small for the room it now occupied.

On screen, Nagato raised one hand, palm open. The motion was slow. Deliberate. A gesture meant not to beckon or bless, but to brand.

"And you," he said, and though he spoke to the camera, everyone in the theater felt as though he was looking at them, "will make sure the world remembers what it saw today."

This is the last time I'll use the broadcast as a framing device. It's very important for the story that you see how smaller nations, and people, would feel seeing jutsu like this. Most had no including power like this even existed, even in myth. Now they're seeing not just the horrors of war but the true depths of what Shinobi can do.

Imagine how the Daimyo system or other government structures would react to this knowledge? Spoiler, they cave and become redundant.

Also, I wanted to show more filler characters and factions that will fold into the alliance and have a breather chapter between the action. Next chapter is pretty much just violence. But yeah the northern front is won. A/Ei lives! If you can call that living.

Thanks as always to my patrons and commissioners. And to fans leaving feedback.

Chapter Text

Chapter 19:

The Allies True Strength pt 2

The reinforcements came just in time in the forms of the other central forces.

Team Gai and team Guren trickled in. Not in formation, nor even as a cohesive unit, but in battered clusters and ragged bursts, filtering through the mist-drenched ridgelines like half-spent arrows loosed from battlefields the world was already forgetting. Their approach carried the scent of scorched blood and broken chakra, and their eyes told stories no report would ever capture.

Their teams had surely felt this abomination even from kilometers away. Or perhaps it had been Katsuyu. That seemed more likely. The slug's whispers carried far, and her warnings carried weight.

Orochimaru didn't shout. He didn't need to. His words passed through the shifting air like iron filaments drawn by a magnet, picked up by shinobi minds already attuned to disaster.

"All close-range fighters are to retreat immediately."

That was all he said.

But Katsuyu, latched to each of their shoulders, passed the message until it rang across the entire battlefield like a curse.

"You heard the boss, morons!" Guren barked. "Back the hell up unless you wanna get eaten by the color purple!"

The sound of it echoed off shattered cliff walls and came back stranger.

Might Guy didn't stop to ask questions. He barely slowed down. One hand scooped up a wounded Kumogakure jōnin, an older man still trying to argue that he was fine despite the arterial spray coming from his calf, and hauled him bodily over one shoulder.

"We live to strike harder tomorrow!" he shouted with the kind of burning optimism that sounded like a battle cry even when uttered in retreat.

Behind him, Kiba and several others sprinted past in rough formation, dragging allies and wounded alike, their focus tight and unshakable. They knew better than to test whatever had rattled Orochimaru enough to issue a blanket withdrawal.

Guren didn't leave.

She hesitated, fists tight at her sides, and then made her choice.

She formed her Jade Crystal Prison not with fury. The coffin of shimmering facets grew around the monster with flawless precision, every shard reflecting the sky like stained glass. For one moment, the world held its breath. The shape was perfect. The geometry divine.

Sasuke didn't even know she could do that without prep time. Or maybe she had sent a few of her men around the field to plant those crystal seeds while he was preoccupied with the demon?

Then the cracks bloomed.

Hairline fractures laced across the crystal like veins of inevitability, beginning at the core and racing outward as though the creature within had merely flexed the idea of resistance. The construct trembled, resisting its own unmaking, and then it detonated in a burst of sharp, glittering shrapnel that caught the last rays of sun like cursed snow. The thing inside roared, not once, but dozens of times from different mouths lacking throats. Wach scream tuned to a separate key, some too deep for human hearing, others so high they pierced teeth and scraped nerves raw.

And then the world began to unravel.

Beams of negative light—wrong light—erupted from its mouths. Not beams of chakra or flame or poison, but something closer to corruption incarnate, reshaping not just the battlefield, but the logic the battlefield had once obeyed.

A line of trees wilted, then twisted upward as if remembering a time when they had been fingers instead of wood. A river reversed course with sudden violence, folding backward along its own spine, writhing uphill in spasms of hydraulic nausea. Hills grew veins. Valleys pulsed like the muscles of some buried beast. One boulder, large enough to crush a wagon, blinked and wept.

The shinobi line fell back as one. Orochimaru retreated with measured steps, his pupils reduced to slits; Temari called for wind spacing while flinging shuriken laced with concussive tags; Sasuke himself took the high ridge and began hurling explosive kunai in calculated arcs, not to damage, but to distract.

Others used flash bangs and explosive tags as they retreated but they saw little effect and the think continued to crawl towards them on chitinous legs.

Then the earth trembled. The sound came first—deep, pulsing, like thunder learning to speak.

A bull the size of a mountain with what looked like a similarly sized octopus latched to its ass crested the ridgeline. It barreled across the eastern ridge like a living avalanche. The eight tentacles were spread wide behind him in perfect balance and lightning crawled across his hide like warpaint. Each step fused the sand beneath into smoldering glass, and when he struck the demon he struck horns first.

The impact cracked the canyon floor and hurled the creature backward through its own tendrils. For the first time, it didn't just flicker or ripple, it reeled. It stumbled. It bled.

"I don't know what you are," came the beast's voice, "but I hate your face!"

Oh, it was the eight tails. A jinchuuriki was definitely what they needed for this engagement.

Tendrils lashed out from the demon, tentacles lashed out from the beast, and both were coiled by the barbs of hte other.

Then another voice came from the tailed beast.

"Can't latch on, to a beast so strong. I rhyme and fight, all battle long!" it said.

Was the bijuu rapping? Or maybe the Jinchuuriki was? Either way, odd, but Sasuke wasn't going to question it.

Then the most amazing thing Sasuke had ever seen happened.

The eight tails bodily lifted the demon over its head, turned it upside down and slammed it into the ground in a pile driver. The force of which buried the demon halfway up.

"Oooooh!" The watching army screamed, as if watching an actual wrestling match.

Even Sasuke made a fist pump at the display. Lee had nothing on this!

The Eight-Tails leapt back, kicking off a sloped column of half-melted stone, his tentacles coiling beneath him as he twisted in midair.

Its mouth opened wide and a sphere of volatile chakra gathering at its center, layered with spiraling bands of compressed destruction. The sphere of mind-boggling chakra launched with a soundless pulse, shooting through the charged sky like a black sun, a core of concentrated annihilation hurled straight into the thing's round form.

For a moment, the world held still, caught in the instant before judgment. The orb detonated in a soundless bloom, ripping the demon open from clavicle to gut, limbs scattering like shattered clockwork, dark ichor splashing against the far ridges. A concussive blast flattened dunes and hills in every direction, and everyone with two limbs crouched low with their bellies to the ground to survive it.

For a moment — just a moment — the field looked like victory.

Then the moment ended.

The creature's remains didn't slump. They rewound, slithering against gravity, stitching itself into shape like the memory of a wound reasserting its permanence. Tendrils unfurled in perfect imitation of the ones they replaced. Even the split chestplate of warped chitin flowed back into place like a heartbeat reversing direction.

The eight tails retreated into its host. A black man from stone who had to catch his breath.

It was time to buy him some time to do so, then.

"Burn it, this time properly!" Orochimaru yelled.

The next wave moved before the words had even finished leaving his lips.

Sasuke took the high ridge once more. The Fire Dragon Bullets he launched came in wide spirals and tight arcs, each one controlled mid-air with surgical precision, forced to bend and weave by flicks of his wrist and adjustments in his chakra pressure. From below, Temari followed the pattern like a conductor syncing to his lead, snapping her war fan in a crisscross rhythm, altering oxygen levels across the field to funnel flame where it was needed most, and starve it where it wasn't.

The firestorm that formed between them consumed the mass, and grew greater when every other fire and wind user. It rose like a living furnace, a gyre of fire and smoke so intense the sky above it warped, forming a mirrored dome of heat-distorted air. Wind howled through the center. Flame howled louder.

The lightning types made their move, save for Sasuke who broke his flame jutsu.

Shinobi from Kiri, Kumo, even a handful from Grass and Rain converged into a rough ring, hands flashing through seals. The air snapped with ozone. Arcs leapt from point to point, forming a tightening net, a cage of electricity aimed not at the surface, but at the gaps between armor plates, at the twitching synapses beneath the flesh. The jutsu struck.

Some tendrils spasmed and died, curling into brittle ash..

Sasuke clenched a fist, jaw tight.

The firestorm began to falter. What had moments ago been a hurricane of wind and flame now sputtered at its edges — patches of exposed sand and ash breaking through the inferno. The lightning net crackled with diminishing force, a dozen final strikes arcing off into the dark without purchase. They had used everything — every ounce of chakra, every prepared seal. Even Sasuke, whose reserves ran deep and whose control was second to none, found himself teetering on the edge of collapse. His hand twitched once, trying to call forth the technique he had been saving — but nothing came.

And still the creature rose.

Through the collapsing heatwave and dying embers, the thing clawed upward, its shape already reforming. Its tendrils swam in the smog like carrion feeders. Its body boiled with wrongness, and the shadows around it warped like they wanted to scream. Sasuke inhaled, readying to fall back and regroup—

Then it hit him.

A surge — no, a torrent of chakra — flooded his network. It didn't come from within. It didn't come from anyone near. It poured into him through the slug latched to his shoulder. Around him, others gasped or flared with sudden light. Flames reignited. Wind cut sharper. Lightning danced anew.

From his shoulder, Katsuyu spoke, her voice calm even amid chaos.

"Burami has ingested the Akimichi Red Pill," she said. "This excess chakra has been distributed across the allied network. Use it all or risk injury."

Sasuke didn't respond, conflicting emotions of concern for the man who just killed himself to give them this chance, and a grin at the overwhelming power and what he planned to do with it.

The fire storm came back with a vengeance.

Temari's fan swept low, and the wind didn't just carry flame — it sculpted it. A dozen wind styles joined hers, funneling and shaping the firestorm into a rotating wall of heat that seared the sky. Sasuke, drawing from the sudden wellspring of borrowed chakra, unleashed the Fire Dragon Bullet barrage he'd intended before, each one guided with sniper precision.

The storm doubled, then quadrupled in size and intensity.

Below, lightning returned in force — not just in strikes, but in strategy. Every nerve gap, every flickering tendon of the creature(assuming it had such things) was met with renewed assault. Coordinated blasts stitched through the air like spiderwebs spun of plasma. What had been desperation became momentum again — and the enemy, for the first time, faltered.

"Only use negative charges in direct attacks!" he barked, his voice amplified by a fire technique that turned his yell into an echo.

He turned to the jinchuuriki, who had not been resupplied through Katsuyu as he'd never received a part of her.

"You! Help me sharge the clouds. Positive polarity. Now!"

"We're makin' a railgun out the sky?" Bee shouted back, already dancing through seals with a grin that didn't quite reach his eyes. "Let the bolts fly!"

Holy shit, he understood Sasuke's intention that quickly? He was brighter than the Jinchuuriki he had met.

Together he and he reached their hands out to the sky above. With their vantage point above the other shinobi, atop a plateu overlooking the canyon they'd had it in.

Across the plains, lightning-natured shinobi grounded themselves. Kunai stabbed into scorched soil. Iron rods driven through broken boulders. Everything metal became anchor and guide, readying the field for something it had never carried before.

Sasuke performed the handseals and launched one last chidori spark directly into the clouds, imbuing it with his chakra, just as the eight tails jinchuuriki did the same.

The furnace created by the fire and wind chakra tightened, coalesced into a shorter but hotter disk.

The sky above had long since begun to cloud over from the combined eat and moisture from days of mist and rain jutsu.

Sasuke reached out with his chakra and uttered one word.

"Kirin."

A bolt didn't fall. It descended. No — it erupted. A tower-sized column of white-hot energy screamed down from the heavens with a crack that split the sky itself. It took the dragon-like form Sasuke had trained to create, save that it was several orders of magnitude larger than he had ever planned to make it, such was the unified power of the nations and the eight tails jinchuuriki.

The bolt struck the creature's core like the wrath of Raiden himself, hammering it into the earth with a force that turned stone to smoke and glass to powder. The inferno enveloping the creature was blown away and the allies maintaining it ducked for cover.

The bedrock cracked in fractal lines that raced to the horizon. The canyon collapsed inward, not in pieces, but as a single unified drop, like a massive hand had pressed down on the world's crown until it broke.

The plateaus and landscape for kilometers around burst upward, new spires of earth reaching out into the sky. Some were ten meters tall at least, others a hundred.

The shockwave that followed didn't expand. It erased. Everything in its path — dunes, machines, the newborn spires — all of it vanished into a field of obsidian stalagmites and jagged stone needles, the aftermath of energy too raw to obey tectonics.

And at the center of it all, where the monster had stood — a crater wide as a city and deep as the valley of the end had time to carve.

The smoke clung for a long time, refusing to rise as the survivors crawled out ot the new crags, fissures and canyons created by what might have been the greeted collaborative jutsu the world had ever seen. And when at last the smoke faded, when the wind pulled it aside like the curtain before a final act, the silence that followed was not triumphant.

It was wary.

No one spoke.

No one sheathed a weapon.

They just watched, every eye locked on that vast, empty wound in the earth, waiting in shared breath to see whether the impossible would rise once more.

It did not. Victory was theirs.

The following morning, Sasuke moved through the wreckage with the silence of veterans.

They had stayed the night in shifts. The injured were already removed by the summoning toads, and so the rest of them cleaned up.

Sasuke was naturally on roasting duty, cooking the corpses for Manda and his children.

Orochimaru had actually spent most of the evening monitoring snakes he fed the remains to. So far? No problems. Sasuke wouldn't be eating any, but knowing the mushroom meat was edible was useful knowledge indeed.

The rest of them just resumed their game of whack a mole.

The orks and squigs and what have you that retreated in preparation for their alien jinchuuriki returned in small waves, but they had already been decimated before their retreat. Now? Now it was such a non issue eradicating the small groups appearing that the taijutsu and other close-quarters combatants handled them while the spent warriors that took out the demon did recon.

Thankfully, the vehicles and weird boys did not return. So the fresh lightning nation shinobi were clear to wreak their havoc.

Like surgeons, the rest of them combed the landscape for survivors and samples of enemy organisms and technology. Guren led most of this, sealing samples in crystal like insects in resin, and sealing them in scrolls.

He knew she could crystalize even the flesh and blood or organisms, but could she seal them in crystal without crystalizing the organic matter itself? It wasn't his place to ask.

"Did you catch any alive," Sasuke asked.

Guren nodded once.

"The ones that were stable enough to hold. The rest shattered when sealed. Or before."

That was all she said. But it was enough. Between them, they retrieved seven intact living specimens. Eight, if you counted the one still twitching with a split spine and exposed nerves. That was the one weird boy they got. Beyond him they only got on ork, a grotling, and five different types of squigs. Plus samples of growths they'd found.

"Time for rotation!" Orochimaru's voice called out.

Oh good, the forces they releived, Kakashi included, were switching with them then.

The remaining forces, save those from the land of lightning who were fresh, gathered towards the man.

At the edge of the field, Orochimaru formed the summoning onto the glassed ground. Guren and Sasuke stepped back as the jutsu activated, curling into a spiral and expelling a thick burst of sulfurous smoke. Manda appeared in its wake with a hiss that seemed to hate the very air.

He then spat out the relief. Predictably, Kakashi was among the first and the forces were smaller than theirs had been after the weird boyz arrived.

"How many times do you expect me to serve as a ferry service?" Manda demanded.

"Until the Uzumaki boy can resume his role as transporter with his toads," Orochimaru said, not unkindly, as he placed one hand on the serpent's scales. "We need fast transport. And you're even better than those filthy amphibians."

The buttering up technique always worked on the greatest of the serpents and he once again puffed up his chest. Pride was so easily manipulated, wasn't it?

He lowered his head once again and opened his maw. They all, save Orochimaru himself, walked into it as quickly and gently as they could.

His mouth closed and a split second later they were unceremoniously vomited into the Konoha camp.

They landed at the expanded Konoha field camp, just past sunrise.

The changes were immediately apparent.

Tents stretched twice as far as they had before. Not just for sleeping — but for surgery, quarantine, and something in between. Medical lines had been redrawn. Sensor teams were stationed at regular intervals, casting genjutsu domes to shield internal operations from stray perception. And everywhere, there was motion. Shinobi on stretchers. Shinobi on their feet. Shinobi covered in bandages, reporting, limping and helping where they could.

Guren brought out the crystalized captives and samples and the specimens were handed over to the research team without comment. Kabuto, Ibiki, and two Hyūga medics already waiting. In a wooden enclosure. Sasuke carried one himself to ensure it arrived intact. Guren stayed with the bodies. The rest scattered to tend to wounds, deliver reports, or simply collapse.

The crystalized corpses were laid onto chakra-null slabs — flattened stones inlaid with metallic veins that pulsed dull blue, cancelling any residual energy the bodies might still emit.

Kabuto was already casting diagnostics. His hands glowed pale green, his expression unreadable as he checked for signs of life. A woman with spiral glasses took the preserved body parts collected and started cutting them apart with a buzz saw.

Sasuke opted to leave them to do their thing.

He had an important, proper reunion to get to, so he left and walked to a tent holding two people he loved, and one he hoped had been transferred.

He didn't enter the tent immediately. He could feel her chakra from outside — flaring bright and taut, not with anger but with concentration, the kind of focused resolve that could turn scalpels into weapons and battlefield dressings into lifesaving acts. He didn't want to interrupt that.

Instead, he sat beneath the half-shattered remains of a willow tree near the medical enclosure. Its wood was scorched in places, split in others. He leaned back with one hand resting near the hilt of his sword but not on it, a gesture of proximity, not threat. The sky was beginning to glow with brighter hues and the deep blue of dawn was turning brighter. Shadows crawled longer across the grass.

He waited without moving, gaze steady on the tent flap as the minutes stretched. Eventually, it shifted, not with the gentle rustle of wind, but with the brisk, exhausted gait of someone who had spent too many hours doing too many things and still had more left to do.

Sakura stepped into the growing light and stalled at seeing him.

Her coat sleeves were rolled high, her forearms streaked in a with splatters of blood old and new, hopefully none of it hers. Her hair was tied back in a knot that had clearly once been tight but had since unraveled into a war-zone approximation of order. She squinted at him like someone not entirely sure he was real, blinking once, then again, as though confirming that he hadn't vanished between glances.

"I did not want to enter without your permission," he said flatly. "And risk a confrontation."

The words were even, as always, but there was something underneath them — a note of practiced sincerity, rusty from disuse.

Sakura stared at him for a heartbeat longer, then exhaled sharply and pointed a stained finger directly at his face.

"We already forgave you, Sasuke," she snapped. "Now I'm just angry you didn't barge in and get the treatment you need."

She stepped forward, jabbing the air an inch from his nose. "Also the other medics wanted me to thank you kindly for burning out every single persons retina. Your eyes seem the worst off of all. Get in."

Ah yes, the flash from his Kirin had been pretty intense. He was starting to feel the effects or arc eye, usually reserved for welders too dumb to use proper eye shades, but one very familiar to lightning users before mastering using it without looking directly at it.

He stood and entered without argument.

Inside, he discovered more cots and people in them than he remembered. Sadly Itachi was still among them, one of only four conscious and seated. Him, Naruto, Lee and...

"Barumi?" Sasuke asked. "You're alive? And conscious?!"

He was surprised to recognize the man, but the grass headband and clothes were the same even now that he was emaciated and had rolls of skin falling off of him as loosely as his clothes.

He was in oddly high spirits.

"Yeah! I feel fine aside from the obvious." He said. "Miss Haruno patched up my earlier wounds and has cleared me of any chakra network damage. Apparently the entire Akamichi clan is throwing a fit and trying to get your Hokage's all clear to induct me."

"Mystery for later." Sakura said. "Sit."

He obeyed, sitting on the cot next to Naruto who grinned at him like a hyena.

Itachi, of course, sat ramrod straight with a bandage wrapped across his eyes, one hand holding an ice pack loosely against it like he'd somehow burnt out his eyes too.

Sasuke opted not to ask.

Sakura first placed a hand over his eyes, obscuring his vision with green chakra.

She tsked, telling Sasuke his eyes were worse than most. He had first damaged them by looking at that thing with the Sharingan after all.

She then raked her hands over his body and scowled.

"And chakra exhaustion to boot? You should have come back with an earlier group." She told him.

He shrugged at her, only for her to leave the tent, no doubt to get the supplies she would need to treat him.

He felt something metal tap him on the shoulder.

He turned around to see Naruto giving him an intense look, and when he glanced down at what Sasuke had tapped him on the shoulder with he felt both surprised and touched.

"My headband?" He asked, taking it from him.

"Yeah. You're staying this time. Whether you like it or not." Naruto said.

Sasuke didn't argue, in fact, he agreed completely. His revenge on Itachi was now pretty much assured. The man was right there, half blind and now crippled. When the war was over they'd have their fight, and he would win.

He took the headband and tied it around his forehead.

"You'll probably have to wait until its official before you'll be allowed to replace the plate though." Naruto said, smiling.

He looked into a mirror on the night stand. Right, he'd forgotten that Naruto had gone and slashed it in their fight back in the valley of the end.

A timer went off somewhere beside Naruto and he slapped it.

He got up and changed out of his hospital gown into his battle clothes, thankfully already having boxers underneath and every patient in the tent being men this was far from inappropriate.

"Alright! I am clear to go!" Naruto said. "Hey, Itachi."

The bandaged man tilted his head.

"You think you could call Madara here?"

Madara?

Itachi didn't question the request. He simply leaned to the ring on his pinky and whispered into it, breath barely louder than a breeze.

A man in Akatsuki robes and an orange swirl mask appeared in the tent without fanfare — just a ripple in the air and a step forward, like reality had briefly lost track of him and was now playing catch-up. The man was dressed for combat and, bizarrely, had a sharingan.

Sasuke opted to observe instead of asking questions or starting fights in that moment, though he very much wanted to.

The one eye visible through his mask narrowed at Sasuke before turning on Naruto.

"Have you been cleared to refill the battlefield?" Madara asked.

"You know it!" Naruto grinned. "Information lines and transportation grid ready to be deployed!" he said, saluting the man.

Madara folded his arms.

"Then let's get a move on. Leave a clone here obviously. I'm only taking you to the north, south and west borders. You can propagate from there." he said.

Naruto created a shadow clone and walked up to him and placed a hand on his shoulder. A swirl of chakra later and both were gone.

The room was left in silence. Sasuke glanced between Lee, Barumi and finally stared at Itachi.

The man was once again holding an ice pack over his bandaged eyes.

"I cannot see you, but am I right in assuming that you are glaring at me expecting an explanation?" Itachi asked in a deadpan.

Sasuke couldn't help grinding his teeth at that one and resorted to taking deep breaths before he once again did something he might regret. Good thing too, because at that moment Sakura entered the tent.

She held in her hand a tray with food, potato slices and pills of some kind.

"Oh, we're doing the potato slice facial spa thing?" Sasuke asked, trying to let humor distract him from his anger.

"And cold compress, yes." Sakura said. "I hear it also does wonders for dark rings in addition to helping with arc eye pain."

She saw Naruto standing and in his battle clothes, before glancing down at her watch and nodding for him to leave. The clone winked at Sasuke and exited the tent.

Thanks as always to my patrons and commissioners. And to fans leaving feedback.

Chapter Text

Chapter 20:

Officially United at Last

The last of his clones were let loose on the weetern front, running north and south to spread themselves further.

"Alright. Anywhere else we need to be?" Naruto asked. "Central forces maybe?"

Madara shook his head.

"You and I are needed at a meeting between the Akatsuki and the world leaders." Madara told him. "Dispel a clone to relay to them all that we are ready to begin."

Naruto shrugged at the unexpected order but created a shadow clone all the same. He immediately dispelled and the information was passed on.

With that done Madara placed a hand on Naruto's shoulder and the two of them warped one last time.

They reappeared in a dark chamber in front of an enormous and hideous statue. Madara turned around and when Naruto did the same it was to see the statue's hands, with all ten fingers stretched up like a starving man being handed food.

Atop each finger appeared a figure, a member of the Akatsuki. Konan arrived first, appearing like a hazy grey ghost. She was kneeling, and hlding onto her shoulder and in the same way was the Raikage. He was seated and looked like he was on death's door.

Itachi appeared next, he was seated in a chair and blindfolded with Grandma Tsunade standing over him. Some venus flytrap looking guy arrived with Orochimaru. Pain appeared with both Oniki and Princess Koyuki on either shoulder and Deidera appeared with Gaara.

Hiden, Sasori and Kakuzu arrived unaccompanied. Then they were all left waiting for the final finger, who Naruto expected would soon contain Kisame and the Mizukage, only for Madara's transparent form to appear with the woman.

He turned around to find the man had ditched him and teleported away. The asshole.

"Good, everyone is here," Madara said, still kneeling, but with a voice that made the word sound like an order. "Let this meeting of world leaders begin. Also, Naruto Uzumaki is here to pass the word of what we discuss to everyone on all fronts, save that which we swear him to secrecy on."

Naruto stood straight and saluted.

"I've got boots and brains on every battlefield," he said, tone clipped. "We see what they see. And they'll pass on what's said here."

Everyone nodded in agreement and went silent, as if unsure of who should lead from there.

Pain's voice followed, sharp and clinical.

"Every front reports the same thing. Resistance has ceased or scattered. The Orks are broken."

"But the ship isn't," said Konan, her voice a whisper barely louder than the hum of the seals.

"Can't even get near it," Ōnoki growled. "The anti-air net's still live. Stronger than ever. Vaporized half a squadron from Suna just for getting too close to the shadow of a dune."

"And we're all dancing around the question," Deidara said, with that explosive irritation that always made Naruto want to slap him or step back, depending on the mood. "Why didn't we just blow it up? The ship. That stupid, ugly, fungus-infested barge. Pain could've erased it from orbit with that move he pulled in the north. Boom. Problem solved."

His hands mimed an implosion — not an explosion — and Naruto hated how satisfying the gesture looked.

"We needed to know what we were dealing with," Tsunade said flatly, her hand still on Itachi's good shoulder. "No one makes a move that big blind."

"And if there's more of them," Gaara continued, "we need to be ready next time."

"We can't destroy what we don't understand," muttered Ōnoki. "Even if it's killing us."

Gaara nodded once, eyes hard.

"I allowed it stand. Not out of mercy — but because if we ever need to leave this world to finish the fight, we'll need to know how they came and how we can follow. This wasn't a war of choice. But it may become one of distance. Even I couldn't have foreseen how quickly they could proliferate."

Naruto let those words sit for a beat.

Mei hummed to get attention.

"That ship is worth more than all of our nations put together. It's the only tech of its kind. Even one piece of technology from it could revolutionize our world."

Koyuki, from the edge of the circle, folded her hands with ceremonial grace. "We in the land of springs thought ourselves the most technologically advanced with our airships, and then this falls out of the sky.

Her gaze sharpened as she smiled thinly at the rest. "I assume it goes without saying that our engineers should lead the reverse engineering of the vessel. At least in its capacity to travel, there are surely more technologies aboard, like its weapons, that some of you would do better at investigating. Collaboratively, of course."

Naruto almost chuckled. He didn't. But the word "collaboratively" had never sounded less sincere.

"Of course," came the chorus of responses.

All of them, almost at once, had said it. All of them lying through their teeth. Not necessarily about their intentions, but definitely about their ease of agreement.

They moved, slowly, toward the question none of them wanted to ask aloud — not because it wasn't obvious, but because it was too obvious.

"How do we kill them all without destroying the ship?" Madara asked.

There was no way to make that sound noble. No way to dress it up in strategy or necessity. Even cloaked in talk of survivability and national interest, it still came down to the same truth: how to commit mass slaughter with surgical grace.

Gaara's voice cut through the ritual air, low and heavy.

"Too many bodies already bought us the intel. I'm not spending more if we can end this clean."

It wasn't a plea. It was a verdict. Naruto didn't disagree. None of them did.

"Oh I can do that in a minute flat," Deidara piped up, too cheerfully. "No problem. Been saving this jutsu that's perfect for the job."

Even Sasori, who barely blinked through most war crimes, gave him a slow, dry side-eye that said really?

"You're sure?" Sasori asked, the words clipped and mechanical. "Eradicate all the enemy and leave the vessel intact?"

"Positive," Deidara replied, still grinning. "No hull breaches. Just a very quiet, very final mass extermination. Maybe not the spores. But the Orks? Grotlings? Squigs? If they've got lungs or skin, they'll die. Fast. Beautifully."

His expression twitched, and Naruto could tell he was already seeing it in his head. The bloom. The stillness afterward.

"But I can't get close enough to the damn thing to do my thing," Deidara added, frown replacing smile just as fast. "Not with the air grid. I need that net gone."

Gaara spoke before anyone else could

"The anti-air system burns anything that enters its kill range. Not just the two kilometers around it — that's the core radius. But the sky above it's warded for leagues."

"And it can pick off aircraft from a country away, as we saw when it annihilated our fleet," Koyuki added grimly

Pain's voice echoed, cold and controlled.

"If we can take out the lasers, you are certain you can destroy the Orks in one strike?"

"Yes!" Deidara snapped. "Did I stutter? One jutsu, No more aliens. Just don't be in the way."

He looked proud. And terrifying. And maybe a little in love with the idea.

Naruto didn't like how quiet everyone went after that.

Mei broke the silence, flexing her gloved fingers like a woman prepping for surgery.

"Once the Orks are gone, I'll take my people in. Fire users. Acid specialists. The ones who know how to burn slow and accurate to not damage any of the machinery within."

"Spore burns," she added "Give us ten hours. I'll make the ship sterile enough to eat off."

"And then," came Orochimaru's voice, smooth and slick as blood on tile, "we can begin the real work. Disassembly. Study. Distribution."

He smiled without showing teeth. Then showed too many.

"Collaboratively, of course."

"Of course," Everyone said in unison again, as if it were a running joke.

"We'll share data," Orochimaru added, smiling now with far too many teeth — too even, too white, too practiced. "For the betterment of the shinobi world."

That smile was a threat dressed in a promise. Naruto didn't flinch, but he did log it. Tucked it away alongside a hundred others like it.

He didn't like the idea of Orochimaru having access to alien warship tech. No one in their right mind would. But he had to admit, the man had risked himself, not just his operatives, but his own skin and blood. He'd stood on front lines that shattered mountains and melted summoning beasts to bone. That counted for something.

And if the Lands of Fire, Stone, Mist, wind, and Lightning all had a claim in this… then so did Orochimaru. So did Lady Koyuki for that matter. Those smaller nations that opted not to send in forces would surely regret it for the rewards they missed out on.

"The problem is getting past those lasers and close enough to take them out." Said Oniki. "A here is the only person I know of who could do it, and he's crippled now.

"He danced through fire like it was air," Konan said, voice barely above a breath, as if recalling a ghost. "No one else has that speed and durability combined."

The Raikage stood there silently like he was unaware of the fact people were talking about him. Considering the state he was in, he might not be with all the painkillers he was surely on.

Naruto felt the desire to dispel a clone to tell the one in the rain camp to go in and tap him on his good shoulder, but opted not to.

"I can get past them," Madara said.

His tone was iron, confident, and wholly unremarkable — until the room went quiet again.

"But only by myself," he added. "And maybe one other person. More than that, I risk chakra exhaustion when I arrive. But I can take one at a time. Might Guy is an obvious first choice, as is Lord Oniki.

"Too thin," Konan said, voice like snow brushing over steel. "Two, maybe three people penetrating the grid? It's not enough. Even if Deidara's jutsu works, even if Gai clears the net… we're betting the entire war on a pinhole entry."

There was a murmur of agreement — not loud, not argumentative, but there. Even in this chamber of illusions and monsters, no one wanted to admit she had a point.

"Naruto Uzumaki should be the first one there." Itachi said. "His ability to summon all of our forces through sealing toads will allow everyone to arrive. He is also an instant army."

Naruto felt the weight of every gaze shift to him, then past him, as if trying to look through him toward whatever Itachi had seen.

He nodded in thanks to the Uchiha, just enough for Itachi to see.

"I'll go," he said. "Then I'll bring the whole army with me"

Ōnoki scratched at his beard, frowning. "That... actually works. But maybe not as the initial entrant. I prefer the idea of me and the master of the eight gates going in first and clearing your entrance, then you summon the army when it's safe for you to do so."

"It works," Tsunade confirmed, slowly. "But the initial strike's still a bottleneck. Having more heavy hitters in the first wave," she said, glancing toward Gai and Madara, "ensures the army actually survives long enough to be summoned in."

"I would prefer to be there as well, I can clear the ground forces while the heavy artillery is dealt with." Gaara said.

Then A grunted — a short, pained noise that had more meaning than a paragraph.

"Really?" he muttered. "Am I going to be the one to say it?"

Everyone looked at him.

He stared at them like they were all idiots. "The Fourth Hokage could manage that. You take a handful of those accursed kunai with you, and he warps a proper strike force as one. Can any of his protege's do this?"

The silence that followed was not contemplative. It was dread.

"No." Tsunade said flatly. "They can only move one at a time, and the person transport tends to arrive with serious injuries needing minutes to recover before fighting. I do wiht Minato was here, he would solve this issue of ours.

Orochimaru chuckled, slow and silky, like venom starting to take effect.

"I can make that wish come true."

Naruto didn't move. The others did.

Tsunade straightened. Mei stepped forward. Ōnoki's hands clenched behind his back.

"Absolutely not," Tsunade snapped. "We are not desecrating Minato's grave for convenience."

"We don't need him," Mei agreed. "We have enough power to do this without clawing up old ghosts."

"It's a war, not a circus act," Ōnoki said flatly. "We're not dragging corpses into the front line like this is some Kabuki nightmare."

Naruto listened. And then, when they didn't stop, he stepped forward and cut them off. He caught onto what Orochimaru was hinting at, fully aware of his fight with the third Hokage and the details of it.

"I don't see the problem." he said

Tsunade spun toward him like she'd been struck.

"Naruto, you cannot really think that bringing back and forcibly enlisting the fourth Hokage is ethical, even in our dire circumstances." she chastised him.

He didn't know when his hands had started to shake.

"Oh, you mean the guy who sealed the Nine-Tailed Fox into a newborn orphan so the village could keep pretending it was safe?" Naruto asked, voice hard and rising. "The man who made me a weapon before I had a name? The man who is at fault for my life of loneliness and exclusion? That guy would have his afterlife interrupted?"

Naruto took a deep steadying breath and measured his next words to make sure he would never regret them.

"Good," he said, "Fuck him. He doesn't deserve a restful afterlife."

The words dropped like a boulder in a still pond.

Even Orochimaru, who had seen more betrayals than most men saw birthdays, was looking at him with his mouth slightly ajar.

Madara turned his head — slowly, deliberately. He didn't speak. But Naruto could feel the shift. The subtle spike in chakra pressure, the weight of curiosity behind that one visible eye.

Naruto didn't back down from his position. Didn't look away. He'd meant every word. And worse — he'd felt every word.

Orochimaru, to his credit, was the one who recovered first. He cleared his throat like brushing dust off a priceless scroll.

"Then there is the matter of the necessary living sacrifice to perform the technique," he said, slipping seamlessly back into business. "Preferably a close relative, but barring that — a suitable substitute. Someone whose body and chakra can align with the soul being summoned. Willingness is, of course, a bonus."

"So me, then," A said.

His voice didn't rise, didn't hesitate. He said it the way he said move out, the way he said hold the line. Like it was obvious.

"My organs are cooked," he said. "Docs gave me a few days, at best, to live. I'm living on opiates and stubbornness. Might as well make it count."

He looked to Orochimaru, unflinching.

"You said alignment, so combat synergy matters, right? Then my speed should transfer. Our styles are close enough."

Orochimaru nodded, slow, almost reverent.

"Yes. Outside of his original apprentices, you would be the most ideal match."

Naruto looked at him then — really looked. In his current state Naruto should have felt sympathy at a pathetic man, instead he saw a leader of eminent masculinity and pride. What a guy. Naruto added him to the list of people to emulate when he became Hokage.

A turned toward the rest of them.

"My last order as Raikage, then," he said, voice heavy with finality, "is that I am to be sacrificed for the resurrection of Minato Namikaze."

Several people, including a few members of the Akatsuki, looked like they wanted to protest but Orochimaru but a stop to it before they could.

"Unless of course, you think you can stop us?" He challenged, motioning between himself, A and Naruto.

That shut them up. He did have a point.

Sakura moved through the triage tent with practiced quiet, the kind of stillness that settled in after too many hours, too many wounds, and not enough time to mourn any of it.

Naruto and Sasuke were gone — the latter released not long ago with a warning he'd ignore. She'd sent them off with clipped words and full chakra reserves, and now that they weren't in front of her, she felt the fatigue start to slink back in. Without them there, the room felt emptier, somehow — not quieter, but hollow in a different way.

Low moans broke the rhythm of the chakra scans, distant and fragile. Somewhere, someone coughed wetly and didn't stop. The scent of scorched linen clung to the air like smoke from an old battlefield that refused to be forgotten, mixing with antiseptic and chakra balm into something sterile and intimate and overwhelmingly human.

Itachi lay on the far cot, barely breathing, pale beneath the blankets. His eyes, when they opened at all, didn't track well — the vision damage was holding, maybe worsening. She'd done what she could. But some things were beyond healing. And then Tsunade had to go interrupt his rest.

And the worst part, the part she couldn't admit aloud, was that she cared.

God help her, she actually cared about the monster!

She rubbed her temples, shame and exhaustion mingling until she wasn't sure which was which. What next — pity for Orochimaru if he got cancer?

"Sleep-deprived and losing it," she muttered to herself, only half-joking.

The flap rustled behind her, and Ino stepped through, already tying her hair back into a functional twist.

Sakura gave a tiny smile. "Not like you to be out of the fight."

Ino grimaced.

"Not allowed near it," she said, dropping her satchel with a thump. "After what happened to Lee — the Yamanaka, all of us mental sensing types, we're grounded. Strict orders: no contact with the hive mind. They think it could spread through us like a plague."

Sakura blinked.

"That's... actually reasonable."

"Sure," Ino muttered, pulling gloves on. "Still sucks."

Sakura stifled a snort and let herself imagine it anyway — Ino, possessed and feral, charging through the Ork ranks with her fists, punching her way through like a blonde berserker while quoting perfume ads. It was the dumbest image, but it helped.

She excused herself a minute later, relived of duty for a restful night.

Her feet led her away without clear purpose. Not quite wandering — not quite retreating either. She was just moving, and trying not to feel aimless in a world that had only just stopped burning.

She passed one of Naruto's shadow clones, this one standing with Jiraiya at a teleportation post. They were packing up Orochimaru's cursed seal experiments into those same toads that she hoped to never be inside again, and sending them away to Mt Myoboku where a clone of his waited to summon and receive them.

Word had already gotten around that Jiraiya would not be taking part in the battles to come, instead he was being sent to rehabilitate the hundreds of victims Orochimaru had dropped on them.

She didn't interrupt. That clone was focused, talking gently to a trembling teen with black marks coiled across her collarbone.

Further down the path, another clone sat outside the makeshift research tent — Orochimaru's domain now, with Ibiki and the science corps combing through the alien remains. This clone didn't move. Didn't blink. Eyes open but mind far away, listening to everything going on inside and waiting to relay it to his many twins.

Sakura walked past without a word. Even Naruto had begun to look like a system.

Up the hill, the trees waited — what was left of them.

They rose taller than they had before. Their canopies stretched wider, clawing at the sun with the raw tenacity of things that refused to die. As if the flames hadn't broken them — only cauterized the weak branches so the strong ones could climb higher.

But as the treeline broke and the sky flared wide above her, streaked with orange and bruised purple from the setting sun, she saw two figures silhouetted on the ridge, seated just above the craggy slope like they'd always belonged there.

A Naruto clone, twirling noodles with one hand and sipping from a battered canteen with the other. And beside him, Sasuke — posture relaxed, legs splayed out, sandals planted in the dirt like it was his again. As if this were just another break in training, just another day they didn't know would be rare until it was nearly gone.

Both of them looked up as she approached, mouths full.

Sasuke gave a quiet snort through his nose. The sound was familiar in a way that made her throat tighten unexpectedly. The kind of sound that once meant you're late, and now might've meant we saved you a spot.

She sat between them without needing to be invited.

Naruto handed her the last of the food without a word, a dented metal container with the final tangle of lukewarm noodles in tomato sauce clinging to one side. It was overcooked, undersalted, and one of Sasuke's favorites.

She accepted it, eating slowly.

It wasn't the flavor that mattered. It was the weight of shared silence. The press of shoulders that didn't flinch. The way the air didn't feel like it might ignite again at any second. It tasted like camaraderie, like the moment you realize you're no longer alone.

She glanced sideways at the clone.

"You ever use them to relax?" she asked, voice light but not teasing. "Make a few clones, send them off to rest, then soak in the secondhand peace?"

This was what she assumed this one was for, that or Tsunade had assigned one to babysit Sasuke. The latter guess felt unnecessary with him wearing his headband again.

Naruto grinned around a bite of food, swallowing quickly.

"No," he said, laughing. "But that's a really good idea."

He set the empty canteen down and brushed crumbs off his lap.

"I'm here 'cause… well, some really nice stuff happened a few days ago. Thought I'd hold onto it. Like a morale booster, you know? Might need it later."

He tapped the side of his temple.

"But I'll pass your idea on to the others. Tell them to do something fun next time — hammocks. Or foot massages. Ooh, ramen taste tests. Let the clones find the best broth in the world while I fight aliens."

Sakura smiled, genuinely. For the first time in what felt like days, it didn't feel forced.

"I'm glad," she said, softly, "to have the whole team back together."

The words were quiet, but they landed with the weight of memory. And disbelief. Like she didn't entirely trust the moment not to disappear the second she blinked.

Sasuke didn't look at her — just kept his eyes on the sunset.

"I can't wait," he said finally, "for Kakashi to sit with us. Just once. Like this. All four of us."

The air caught.

"When that happens," Sasuke said, voice level, "I'll be able to say the journey has finally started. The path back to us being whole again."

He didn't say forgiveness. He was too cagey to come right out and say that word.

"It won't fix everything," he added. "But it'll mean we survived long enough to try."

Before the moment could get too sappy Naruto leapt up to his feet in a panic. Sakura and Sasuke were on theirs a split second later, watching him as he looked left and right like he expected to be jumped from a blind spot.

"Naruto?" Sakura asked, hesitantly.

"Want to tell us what the danger is?" Sasuke asked.

"My clones… They're dying. "Not dispelling," Naruto clarified, and his voice smaller than usual. "Dying. Something is killing them, and I don't know what."

Thanks as always to my patrons and commissioners. And to fans leaving feedback.

Chapter Text

Chapter 21:

A Well-Oiled War Machine

To say Hidan was bored would be an understatement.

Standing on a hill that smelled like boiled metal and old ash, watching absolutely nothing happen on the western front north of Sasori's position, was not his idea of divine service. Jashin required sacrifice, not surveillance. But no — he and Kakuzu had been posted here like unpaid interns. Glorified scarecrows with murder issues.

"You see anything?" he asked for the fifth time in as many minutes.

Kakuzu didn't answer. Just turned one stitched eye in his direction and resumed scanning the horizon like the statue-faced tax accountant he was.

Hidan sighed.

His boredom ended when, a moment later, his head came off. It was a clean and quiet decapitation with no warning. Just a sudden pressure on his neck — then nothing.

The world spun. Sky, grass, the side of Kakuzu's mask, sky again then dirt.

From his new vantage point on the ground, Hidan saw a shimmer — a faint warping of the air, like heat rising off a forge. The shimmer drove forward, and a long, transparent blade plunged into Kakuzu's chest.

Well, Hidan thought as he rolled slightly, that's not good.

Kakuzu hit the ground hard, cloak splayed around him, still as death.

Kakuzu, ever the professional, played dead.

He kept his eyes half-lidded, watching the strange distortions move — two of them, now spattered faintly with blood, like the outline of ghosts caught in a spray of red.

They shifted, hands rising to clean themselves.

"That was a rather rude fucking greeting." Hidan said, voice muffled slightly by dirt.

Both heads turned toward him — or rather, the suggestion of heads. The shimmer bent in surprise.

"Oh," he added, "and very unsporting."

They lunged for him — no doubt hoping to crush his head like a melon. Fine. Let them try. Because Kakuzu was already up.

With the kind of timing only greed could perfect, Kakuzu rose like a stitched-up revenant, casting aside his cloak to reveal the monstrous masks embedded in his chest. Black tendrils snapped out like whips, and with a whispered word, twin forces tore the air in two — fire and wind, searing and slicing, a cone of elemental fury so intense it left the soil glowing.

The invisible assassins screamed once. Just once, and then there was silence.

What was left of them — charred black, rimmed in violet metal that looked like half-melted armor — crumpled and smoked next to Hidan's body.

"Bout time," Hidan grumbled.

A Naruto clone crested the hill just as the last embers died. He looked to be in a hurry until he saw the scene before him.

"Oh," the clone said. "I came to warn you something's been assassinating clones. I take it you caught the assassins?"

"Yes," Kakuzu replied, walking over calmly and retrieving Hidan's head by the hair.

"They were invisible until killed," Hidan added helpfully, as Kakuzu began the thankless job of aligning vertebrae and prepping thread. "Sneak attack bullshit."

The clone got over the weirdness of Hidan's severed had talking with admirable ablomb. He then nodded, grim-faced, and formed a new clone with a pop before dispelling himself in a puff of smoke.

The mountain was quiet again.

Kakuzu hummed under his breath — the sound of a man threading a needle through neck tissue like it was a leisure activity. His hands were as steady as ever.

"Mr. Uzumaki," he said without looking up, "is it true that you can make up to a thousand shadow clones at a time?"

"Uh. Yeah," the new clone replied. "Why?"

"I realize it is rude to discuss finances," Kakuzu said, "but I must ask. What is your net worth?"

Naruto blinked. "What?"

"With a jutsu like that, your income potential must be extraordinary," Kakuzu continued. "Even accounting for living expenses. So — how much are you worth?"

Naruto rubbed the back of his head.

"I'm broke. Why would I be rich? I'm a genin. I don't get paid much. And I've been on the road for two years."

Kakuzu tied off a knot at the base of Hidan's skull and turned with that peculiar look he reserved for financial horror — somewhere between offended dignity and soul-deep disappointment.

Hidan felt the stitch pull tight and stood up, rolling his shoulders with a satisfying crack.

Kakuzu, meanwhile, looked personally insulted.

"You can do up to 1,000 D-ranked missions a day," he said flatly. "Each pays between 5,000 and 50,000 ryo. At minimum, that's 5 million a day. At peak? Fifty million. That's two billion ryo per year."(6.35 million usd, btw)

He crossed his arms, the sound of his cloth rustling like disdain.

"Have you not been doing this?"

Naruto stood motionless. His mouth opened, closed, then opened again. But no sound came out.

He looked like someone had handed him a map and told him he'd been walking in the wrong direction for ten years.

"I want a do-over in life!" he finally yelled, voice echoing over the burnt ridge like a man realizing he'd forgotten to collect free money his entire childhood.

Hidan clapped him on the shoulder — hard enough to hurt.

"Welcome," he said dryly, "to the exclusive club that includes the fucking most of us, kid."

Sasuke activated his sharingan and checked their surroundings.

"They're everywhere," Naruto said, his voice sharp with tension but not panic, not yet. "All at once. It's coordinated."

Sasuke narrowed his eyes, the chill of that statement cutting deeper than the wind curling through the trees. From the top of the ridge, the camp below looked deceptively calm — tents glowing with chakra lights, figures moving in measured rhythm, a village born from the shell of a battlefield. And yet…

"They're not hitting just anyone," Naruto added, glancing at some unseen thread of information that only his dispersed consciousness could follow. "They're targeting the Akatsuki. And my clones. Hidan and Kakuzu already killed a pair — said they was invisible. Purple Orks."

There was a beat of silence.

"How do you know it was purple if it was invisible?" Sasuke asked.

Naruto sputtered for a moment, his mouth working before his brain caught up. As was usual.

"Because it turned visible after they killed it! That's when they saw the armor. I'm not making it up!"

Sakura, who'd been crouched next to the cooking gear they hadn't had a chance to use, straightened at once, urgency flooding her posture.

"Then we need to protect the wounded," she said. "Itachi's still down and is a target. We have to go guard him."

Sasuke exhaled through his nose, slowly.

"Or," he offered, voice low and sharp, "we could… not?"

The look she gave him was instant and unamused.

"He's not alone, Sasuke. Ino's in there. Half the med corps is. They won't see it coming. We have to warn them."

He didn't reply at first, but the silence wasn't disagreement — only grim acquiescence. After a long second, he gave a short nod and stood.

They moved fast, but not recklessly, cutting through the tents and hastily re-formed watch stations, down the hill and back toward the heart of the camp, where nervous chakra pulses made the air feel electric.

One of Naruto's clones stood near the center, cupping his hands around his mouth as he called out

"Enemy has invisible assassins! I repeat — invisible! Targets are clones and Akatsuki!"

Sasuke's Sharingan raked over all of the movement. He didn't trust himself that close to Itachi. Not right now. Not yet. Instead, he veered toward the interrogation tent — toward the clone that sat outside it like a stone sentinel, unmoving and unblinking. Hiashi Hyūga arrived from the opposite end of the camp, calm as a monk but with every inch of him taut as bowstring.

His byakugan was already active.

Around them, the shinobi began forming into a loose but careful perimeter — bodies equidistant, vision locked, each holding perfectly still.

Sasuke scanned again, sweeping left, right, then over the shadowed earth.

"Clear," he said. "No movement. No chakra signatures."

"Same," Hiashi said, his voice as neutral as ever.

"I thought the aliens didn't have chakra?" the clone asked, turning slightly toward them.

The words had barely finished leaving his mouth when his head snapped sideways — no, off — severed clean in a gruesome, fluid motion. The body stood for a heartbeat longer, blood fountaining into the air, then vanished with a soft puff, leaving only a splatter of red that also faded into jutsu smoke.

Every head in the camp turned to the sound.

Sasuke stepped back, eyes narrowing at the sudden indentations appearing in the grass — the faintest pressure marks, like footprints etched into sand.

"You fucked up," he said, one hand going to his sword.

"Indeed," murmured Hiashi.

Without another word, the Hyūga spun forward and drove his palms into empty space with a ferocity that made even Sasuke blink. Sixty-four strikes in less than three seconds, each one slamming into what appeared to be nothing, and yet each strike was resisted by the unseen solid form.

He beat the invisible ork against the walls of the wooden structure like it owed him money, and Sasuke struggled not to laugh at the bizarre scene.

Dust exploded in plumes from the ground as the final strikes landed, and the shape of something struggled against the blows before slumping downward.

Around them, a swarm of shinobi converged. Dozens of blades pointed inward. Kunoichi crouched with scrolls half-drawn. Explosive tags flared, then dimmed as it became clear there was nothing left to fight.

Finally the enemy shimmered into view. Purple armor, exactly like Naruto had warned.

A crash sounded behind them — not an explosion, but the meaty slam of something skipping across earth like a stone hurled over water.

All heads turned again.

Another of the invisible beasts rolled to a halt near the medical tents — its limbs at impossible angles, armor crushed inward like a can beneath a hammer. It flailed once, then went limp, stopped by a single, boot-planted wall of muscle.

Chōza stood there like a mountain with his foot on its neck.

A few paces back, Sakura shook the stinging hand she'd used to punch the thing out of her medical tent.

Ibiki emerged from the research tent, squinting into the light.

"Dammit," he growled. "You killed it. I wanted one of those alive."

"This one lives," Hiashi said, nudging the still-breathing form at his feet with calm detachment.

Ibiki stopped in his tracks.

The expression that bloomed across his face was not joy, not exactly. But it was the closest thing to glee Sasuke had ever seen from him. A strange, boyish light glimmered behind the scar-torn mask of the man who, moments earlier, had looked as if he hadn't smiled since birth.

It was deeply unsettling.

Sasuke exhaled and turned away, the Sharingan still spinning faintly behind his eyes. Whatever these things were, they were getting smarter.

This one had completed its pointless mission, at a cost it was about to pay dearly.

The report came from the edge of her awareness, a shadow clone flickering into being beside her like a puff of smoke that smelled faintly of ozone and urgency.

"Invisible enemies," the Naruto clone said without preamble. "Targeting me and Akatsuki members. Assassins. They've already hit multiple fronts."

Mei didn't pause. Her first instinct wasn't panic, it was math.

"Then they are likely targeting Kage as well," she said calmly, scanning the mist-blurred edges of the encampment with a narrowed gaze. "Where is Ao?"

"Here, ma'am," came the answer, crisp and immediate, as the veteran sensor stepped into view from behind a cluster of tents.

"They don't have chakra," the clone added quickly, turning toward Ao with visible urgency. "You won't be able to see them. Not even with the byakugan."

Ao frowned. "Then—?"

"—they're voids," Mei said, already piecing it together. "Mass without signature. Like cold air in steam."

She raised her voice, sharp and precise.

"Mist jutsu! Infuse it with excess chakra! Now!"

Across the camp, Mist shinobi responded instantly. Hands formed seals, and within moments, the air thickened into a rolling bank of dense, chakra-imbued fog — alive and moving, guided by design and discipline.

Turning back to Ao, Mei pointed into the shifting whiteness.

"Look for Ork-shaped voids," she said. "Anything that breaks the flow."

The clone blinked, then grinned.

"That's brilliant. I'll pass this strategy along."

"Wait to see if it's actually effective first." Mei ordered.

"Yes ma'am." the clone said respectfully, making an exaggerated, but genuine, salute.

Such a polite and charming young man. Konoha really knew how to grow them.

Ten seconds later, Ao's hand shot up.

"There." he said, pointing to a spot ten meters away.

A ripple formed in the mist where none should have been — not a shape exactly, but a distortion, a hole that wasn't air, wasn't chakra, and wasn't part of their camp. It moved, ever so slightly, like a beast that thought itself unseen.

Mei didn't hesitate. She took a single breath, formed a single hand seal, and let loose a gout of lava, molten and seething. It burst from her mouth with the smooth precision of years of training. It flooded the ripple, clung to the unseen flesh, and a moment later, the invisibility peeled away like burning gauze.

The creature screamed, or tried to, before collapsing into a puddle of scorched armor and bubbling slag.

The clones stepped forward.

"That was… absurdly easy," he remarked.

Mei smiled, just enough to show teeth.

"The fruits," she said, brushing a speck of steam from her sleeve, "of good communication and information. Now communicate this information to the other yous."

The five of them appeared in Konoha.

The warp left Madara gasping — not visibly, not in a way most would notice, but A saw the tightness in his stance, the way his shoulders stiffened as he exhaled, how his feet took a split second longer than usual to settle fully into the dirt. Space-warping a team this distance, with this much precision, clearly cost him.

He, the real Naruto, Orochimaru and Lady Tsunade all waited for him to regain his composure.

A sat in the wheelchair Naruto had secured for him without ceremony, and the young man pushed steadily down the wide, weather-worn roads of the village. They went past buildings too familiar to be foreign and yet somehow more distant than any battlefield. The boy didn't speak. He simply guided him forward, slow, steady, careful, allowing the old warrior his moments of silence.

Orochimaru trailed behind them, his stride long and lazy, like a cat with a full belly and too much time.

"Forgive me," he drawled eventually, "but what exactly is the point of this scenic detour?"

Naruto didn't look back.

"He deserves a little peace in his last hours," he said simply. "I want to show him how beautiful my home is before he goes.

A cleared his throat loudly, his voice dry but sharp.

"I am right here, boy," he said. "And quite conscious. You needn't narrate my demise in the third person."

Naruto looked sheepish for a moment, as much as someone like him could look, and gave a small apologetic shrug.

Still, A turned his gaze toward the sun-drenched rooftops, the scattered petals drifting across the stone, the quiet murmur of a village still standing.

"…But thank you," he said. "For the consideration."

Then, softer, more bitter: "This is enjoyable, but it is time that we cannot afford to spend on luxuries."

They left the village without ceremony. The guards let them pass without question. Everyone knew something monumental was underway, as clear by the fact Orochimaru, the Raikage, an Akatsuki and Naruto Uzumaki were being escorted by the Hokage herself.

It definitely got them a lot of looked but they didn't pass all too many people. By the sound of things there seemed to be some kind of party going on near the village center.

Past the graveyard they went, past the stones with names carved into silence, some still fresh, others worn by rain and years and too much loss. A saw none of the ones he'd personally killed, but he knew they were there and he felt honored to be in their presence.

The path ended at a ruined temple, its stone face cracked and moss-eaten, half-swallowed by vines. The Uzumaki Clan's emblem was barely visible above the doorframe, a spiral worn thin by time and rain. Naruto wheeled him through the broken doors without a word.

Was the boy not aware of his heritage or did he simply not care?

Inside, the dust hung thick — old dust, sacred dust, the kind that choked memory more than lungs. The far wall was lined with masks, pale and hollow-eyed, arranged like watchful spirits in a silent council.

Orochimaru gestured toward them with something approaching reverence.

"The Reaper Death Seal," he said. "Each of these masks is a conduit — a key. If worn correctly, it allows the bearer to access souls trapped by the reaper death seal's binding. But it comes at a cost."

He turned his head toward Madara and Tsunade, who now stood just inside the temple, silent and grim.

"The Fourth Hokage used it to seal the Nine-Tails," Madara said. "If we are to summon him back through Edo Tensei, we must first retrieve his soul."

A stared at the masks. Each one identical. Each one waiting.

Orochimaru stepped forward again.

"The process will kill you," he said, his voice no longer teasing. "Not immediately. But soon. The death god will claim your essence, but only after the soul is released. You'll have a few moments. Long enough for me to complete the jutsu."

A laughed once — low and brief.

"So, you're sacrificing me twice," he said. "Clever."

Naruto didn't speak. Neither did Tsunade.

He stood up from his wheelchair and reached for the mask himself. It felt cold and dry against his palms, like wood carved from old bones. He lifted it, placed it against his face, and breathed in through the slits.

"How did you know which was the correct one?" Orochimaru asked.

A shrugged.

"Just a feeling." he said.

Orochimaru motioned for everyone to back away and once they did, A put the mask on.

The reaper answered immediately.

It did not appear, not in any traditional sense — it unfolded from the air itself, like parchment catching fire in reverse. One moment, there was nothing; the next, a towering, deathly figure loomed behind him, blades in its hands, its mouth wrapped around a dagger.

It took the dagger out of its mouth and sliced open its own stomach.

A's stomach was sliced open with it.

He felt the rupture — knew his body had been opened from gut to sternum — but the pain did not reach him. His nerves were already dulled, drowned beneath painkillers. He watched, detached, as the thing's other hand reached inward, drawing out something wrapped in golden flame.

A soul. Untouched by time. Two other lights were ejected and attached to Orochimaru, making his arms glow.

Orochimaru moved quickly. His hands flew through seals with inhuman speed, and moments later, the summoning began.

A felt the edge of life crumbling beneath him.

He was falling. Not backward, not downward, but inward.

As the death god pulled back, satisfied, A saw the squares of earth beneath him begin to rise and consume him, like his body was being broken into pieces and folded into the land itself.

He felt the wind once more on his skin. He felt the weight in his bones begin to lighten. And then he smiled.

It was a warrior's smile. Tired, and proud.

I decided not to add the other scenes of the Sneaky Gitz getting boofed. Did you really need me to show one getting crushed like a soda can by Pain or drowned by Kisame? This was an overwhelming countermeasure.

Thanks as always to my patrons and commissioners. And to fans leaving feedback.

Chapter Text

Chapter 22:

The Final Battle Begins

Naruto stood near the front of the formation, his breath coming steady despite the knot in his chest. A chill wind moved through the valley behind them, stirring flags, coats, and the faintest scent of ozone and damp grass — not rain, but the kind of air that lingered before something catastrophic.

Madara stood just ahead, his stance still and unreadable and beside him stood the Fourth Hokage.

Minato Namikaze, freshly torn from the afterlife and bound into service again. Lean and golden-haired, his expression calm, almost serene. Like none of this was surprising to him. Like he'd expected the world to fall apart in his absence.

Gaara stood a pace to Naruto's left, silent and composed, eyes on the horizon. Onoki crouched slightly behind him, spine curved despite his years, arms folded in grim readiness. Tsunade stood like a carved monument beside them all, the image of unshakable strength, while Mei's hands were already glowing faintly with chakra, her eyes scanning the treeline with deliberate calculation. And of course, Kakashi and Guy were there.

Naruto kept his own face impassive. He had, after all, snuck here. He was supposed to send a clone along, but Naruto hadn't fought this hard, bled this long, and endured this much just to be a sidelined commander.

Not a chance in hell!

Behind him, four figures stood in quiet readiness — the other jinchūriki, or at least, the ones that the allied nations had.

Two were from the Land of Lightning: a dark-skinned man with a manic grin and chakra so wild it felt like a live wire, and a tall, elegant woman with golden hair and blade-sharp poise who looked more like royalty than a weapon. The other two hailed from the Land of Stone — one bulky, red-haired and pale, his eyes half-lidded but calculating; the other a walking fortress of crimson armor and silence, his only visible features the glowing orange irises beneath his helm.

Behind those four stood the army. Every single fighter that could be spared.

Every medic, scout, sensor, tactician — every shinobi not assigned to guard the northern, southern, eastern, or western fronts and a dozen storage toads. Their bellies soon to be swollen with waiting reinforcements, and sat in meditation near the edge of the clearing.

The plan was as elegant as it was risky: Madara would take Minato directly to the ship. Minato, using his flying thunder god technique would jump the first strike force in. This included the remaining Kage, Naruto, Kakashi and Guy. Madara would then take the other jinchūriki to reinforce the fronts to lead a push inland and cage in the enemy in case it tried to fly away.

Naruto's role was the same as ever. Once inside and the coast was clear, he would summon the toads and release the army. His job was still information sharing and troop transportation. The fourth Hokage would do the same job with his flying thunder god, which was faster but not suited to moving large groups of people. He could get individuals where they needed to be faster than Naruto could.

It would work. It had to.

And then the man who had ruined everything turned to him and spoke.

"So," said the Fourth Hokage with a smile that had once, perhaps, melted hearts. "Jiraiya been training you up?"

The world did not freeze. But Naruto did. He heard the words. Saw the lips move. Watched the tone settle into casual inquiry like this was some father-son picnic and not the precipice of cosmic extinction.

He stared.

The Nine-Tails stirred inside him like a muscle twitch. Nails lengthened. He knew his eyes shifted — red and rimmed with the hate he felt.

It took everything he had not to let it out.

"I have a lot of choice words to share with you, sir," Naruto said, voice taut, low, and bitter. "But for now we have work to do."

Kakashi placed a hand on his shoulder and shook his head when Naruto looked to him.

Madara chuckled beside him — that dry, dissonant sound of a man who'd watched too many worlds die.

"Oh," he said, gesturing lazily toward Minato, "I cannot wait for him to find out what I did. And the rest of the bad news about you, too."

Minato's expression, for the first time, changed. His eyes narrowed — the steel beneath the gentleness suddenly visible. If he could've struck Madara then, he might've tried.

And Naruto realized, in that instant, how close they were to disaster. One wrong word. One flash of old rage. And all of this — this delicate lattice of coordination and vengeance and fragile unity — would fall apart.

So he steadied himself. Reminded himself that the man who destroyed his life was dead, and this resurrected puppet of duty - this echo of a legend -was bound to serve the cause. That was justice, in its own small way.

The nine-tails chakra continued to flood through him though.

Then the alarm went off, the one Hiashi and his scouting team were given the means to set off remotely when they were clear to warp in. Madara vanished into the void, taking the fourth Hokage with him.

In a blink, the small strike team reappeared on the steel back of the Ork vessel. It was massive, angled, crusted in rust and strange symbols, floating above the deadland like a scar that had never healed.

They were surrounded. Dozens — hundreds — of Ork marksmen filled the deck facing outward. Every single one of them had their backs turned to the nine intruders. As such, none of them noticed them

He tried not to laugh at the scene in front of them.

The Orks were too focused on the horizon, their oversized rifles and jagged scopes trained on nothing in particular, waiting for a charge that never came. Their armor clanked as they shifted in place, huge and loud and overconfident, like boulders preparing for war without realizing the mountain was already collapsing around them.

The five kage, two jonin and one Akatsuki member just stood there for a moment as if they were equally amused by the sight as Naruto was.

And then the forward team moved.

Mei surged ahead first, a sheet of lava spilling from her palms in a low, seething wave that hissed against metal and melted through barricades like wax. Kakashi blurred past her, Chidori screeching like a hawk in agony, the glow at his hand illuminating the twisted glee in the eyes of the Ork he rammed it into.

Tsunade followed a second later, no finesse, no warning — just raw force, her fists denting steel platforms and sending bodies flying like leaves in a cyclone.

Onoki floated above them all, rising like a slow-moving star, hands weaving seals as the dust beneath him gathered in glittering clusters.

The Fourth vanished in a flicker of yellow light, his signature kunai already soaring through the air like falling stars.

Madara was gone before Naruto even registered his departure — silent, surgical, and infuriatingly fast.

Naruto smiled. Then he did what he always did best. His hands flew into the familiar seal, the cross-shaped sign that had defined his entire ninja life, and with a deep breath and a roar of will, he flooded the battlefield with himself.

Hundreds of clones erupted around him like a wildfire fed with pure chakra. Each was perfect. Each brimming with just enough Nine-Tails energy to give them claws and fangs. Crimson eyes flared across the rooftop like glowing coals in a dark furnace.

They moved as one — not with elegance, but with purpose.

They charged the ledges, each selecting a target, and launched themselves bodily into the Orks stationed at their sniping posts. The force of the collisions alone sent the towering aliens toppling backward, their weapons flying from massive hands.

And as they fell?

Boom.

Each clone detonated on impact, the explosions thundering up the sides of the vessel in blinding bursts of flame and force. They were louder than Naruto expected — sharper, hotter — and he realized, with a small jolt of pride, that the additional ninetails chakra might have put a bit more oomph into it the kamekaze clone jutsu than he expected.

"When did you learn to do that?" Kakashi asked.

"Yesterday evening." Naruto said flippantly, not letting it spill that he'd trained with Itachi.

The few clones that remained nearby — eyes still red, breath even — looked at him without looking. Ready.

"We'll go inside," Onoki said, voice steady despite the carnage, gesturing to Mei, Tsunade and Gaara. "This Gitznash fella wants a fight with us Kage, so we'll give it to them."

"We'll handle the ship's weapons," Guy added, cracking her knuckles. Beside him, Kakashi simply nodded.

"Make sure to steal one intact," Mei called as she turned. "And remember — steal everything. Any tech you find."

Tsunade gave her a wordless nod, and then they all split — vanishing into corridors, launching into the sky, flickering across space in bursts of chakra and light.

Naruto took one final breath.

Then his hands flashed again into a cross-seal, and another battalion of clones exploded into being.

These weren't for tackling. These were for raining hell.

They sprinted for the ledges, weapons already drawn, and hurled kunai and shuriken by the hundreds. Each clone then performed a half-seal mid-throw, and in the blink of an eye, every weapon multiplied — hundreds became thousands became tens of thousands, a cascade of steel that howled through the air like a storm of razors.

Below them, the battlefield was consumed in a screaming metal hail.

And still they did not stop.

The clones followed their own weapons, diving over the edge in synchronized arcs. The few Orks who had survived the initial bombardment — many of them now huddled in crude armored vehicles, trying to regroup — never saw what came next.

"Kamikaze Shadow Clone Jutsu!" they shouted in unison, their voices cutting through the wind.

They collided with tanks, walkers, gunships — and detonated.

The explosions lit the earth in orange pillars, blooming in staggered waves like fireflowers erupting from stone. Each impact peeled apart machinery, flung Orks into the air like ragdolls, and left blackened craters in their wake.

Above, Naruto stood watching, his heart thudding against his ribs — not in fear, but in something closer to awe. This was what he'd built himself for. This was what years of pain, training, and fury had led to.

Beside him, Kakashi exhaled through his mask

"Again," he asked calmly, as if discussing the weather, "when did you learn how to do that?"

"Yesterday evening," he repeated.

Below, the clones that hadn't self-destructed dropped to the ground and began forming seals. One after another, they slammed their palms to the earth, summoning the massive storage toads — great, warted beasts who opened their mouths wide and spat forth wave after wave of waiting shinobi.

Dozens per toad. Then hundreds.

In mere seconds, the scorched land around the vessel — previously flattened by explosions — was now crowded with allied forces, weapons drawn, chakra flaring and eyes forward.

Obito and the Fourth Hokage reappeared in a flicker of warped space, the air around them distorting before snapping back into place with the sound of cracking glass.

The base camp sat quiet now — deceptively still, like the air before a thunderclap. The wind had changed since morning; there was an edge to it, something sharp riding beneath the surface, and even the tents seemed to breathe slower, as if the land itself were holding its breath.

The four remaining jinchūriki were already waiting.

They stood apart from each other, but not out of distrust — more like wolves pacing different edges of the same battlefield, each tuned to a different rhythm.

"Who wants to go where?" Minato asked.

The first to speak was the red-haired man with flames dancing just behind his eyes. His voice was low, almost drowsy in tone, but there was steel in it — the kind that didn't crack.

"West," he said. "Dry terrain. Fewer civilians. Better for fire style."

"North. That's where my kin are stationed. I know the terrain." Said the armored giant. His voice rumbled from somewhere deep beneath the mask.

The third stepped forward without pause — a tall, dark-skinned man who radiated confidence like heat off summer asphalt. He grinned wide and crooked, then immediately broke into a beat with his hands and began to rap:

"Yo! I'll take the south, no need to pout,

'Cause my water style's what that beach is about.

Eight tails and the blade, that's two times the clout —

So back it up now 'fore I knock you out!"

The other jinchūriki looked sideways, unimpressed. The giant in red armor audibly sighed.

Obito stared at the man like he was a puzzle missing every edge piece.

"…Right."

The final jinchūriki, the blonde woman, crossed her arms loosely and gave the others a once-over, her tone even and unimpressed.

"I'll stay here, then. Reinforce command and protect the summoning structure. Someone has to make sure the kids don't die while you're off posturing."

With no further ceremony, Obito placed a hand on the Eight-Tails' shoulder. The man grinned wider and flexed once — needlessly, but dramatically — and tipped a wink toward the two-tails.

The Fourth reached into his cloak and pulled free one of his special kunai — tri-pronged and etched with sealing script so fine it seemed to shimmer in the light. He offered it to the Eight-Tails without a word.

The man took it, flipped it once between his fingers, and tucked it into the band of his sash.

"Much obliged, blondie."

"Remember." Minato said. "Focus chakra into the kunai and I will come running and take you where you need to go or bring in backup."

Then the world twisted again — and they were gone.

Gitznash watched the monitors with slow, deliberate blinks. The light from the screens cast jagged reflections across his polished tusks, now longer than ever, glinting like curved knives beneath the control room's ambient glow.

The invaders had breached the hull.

He could see them now — small, quick, flickering heat signatures worming their way through torn plates and molten seams. He zoomed in on one of the forward camera orbs, rotating the feed with a greasy lever until the image centered on a blond figure darting through the corridor with unnatural speed.

They were four in number, and all of them wore hats just like the one on his head. Save that they were cleaner.

His thick fingers curled into fists, the new plating of his knuckles creaking under the pressure.

"Boss?" came a voice behind him — wet, rasping, meat-thick. "Got yer parts ready."

He didn't turn. Just tilted his head, the rivets at his neck hissing as they adjusted his gaze to the figure behind him.

The pain boy stood proudly beside a table of gleaming, half-assembled pieces — slabs of armor, pistons coated in oil, a jaw with saw-teeth and a reinforced hinge. The kind of kit meant for endurance, brutality, and screaming.

"How's the leg?" Gitznash asked, voice like gravel shoved through an exhaust pipe.

"Stable," the pain boy that was already working on him replied. "Titanium tibia, reinforced knee cap, triple-locked ankle bolt. You'll boot-kick through a tank and not even wobble."

"And the arm?"

"Pressure-calibrated, boss. Fitted with a rotating blade housing and a plasma vent. Lifts three ton — four if you ain't picky about what breaks."

Gitznash nodded slowly. The meat of his torso twitched in satisfaction.

"And the jaw?"

The pain boy beamed. Or rather, his face split into something approximating a smile — wide, crooked, littered with surgical scars and rusting staples.

"Riveted. Reinforced. Reinvented. You'll bite through plate. Chew through bone. Speak louder than the guns, even."

"Modifications?" Gitznash asked, eyes narrowing, a dull thud in his chest as his heart clicked against the rhythm of his breath engine.

The smile faltered.

"Still runnin' calibrations. Neural bindin's takin' longer than planned. Your blood kept eatin' the wires."

Gitznash grunted.

"And the suit?"

"That's ready, boss."

A silence settled — thick, humming, pulsing with the quiet awareness of distant war. Through the monitors, smoke rolled into the air like black lungs exhaling failure. Somewhere deep in the vessel, gunfire started — slow at first, then hungry.

"Send the Shadow Knights," Gitznash growled, turning fully at last.

A row of pods hissed open at the far end of the chamber, steam pouring out like ghosts escaping containment. One by one, the figures stepped forward.

The first was rimmed in frost, the metal of its plating fogged and dripping with liquid nitrogen, veins of ice spider-webbing across its shoulders. It moved with the fluid stiffness of a glacier about to collapse.

The second was aquatic — fluted limbs, hydro turbines affixed to its hips, and tubing that hissed brine from its spine like a whale's blowhole. Each footstep echoed like water pressure shifting under a trench.

The third shimmered faintly, the air around it flexing. Its armor was layered in reactive gels and kinetic dampeners, designed not only to absorb impact, but to reflect it — every strike redirected, every blow returned.

And the fourth—heavy. Colossal. Matte black tungsten with no shine, no pretense of elegance. Just weight. Just inevitability.

Each was built to counter a Kage.

He'd fought the lightning man and lost a jaw. He'd underestimated how literal these humans were. Fire burned. Earth crushed. Water drowned. Wind cut. If he had known that the lightning shadow was purely a lightning-based psycher and fighter, he would have prepared better.

After that fight he knew to expect the fire kage to be all fire, the wind kage to be all wind, and so forth.

Hence these knights, each designed to counter one of the specific elements. Ork Knights modified to be hyperspecialized.

With a final tap on the console, he opened the bay doors.

"Go," he commanded.

The Shadow Knights moved without hesitation — four titans, each shaped to crush a god.

Gitznash watched the Shadow Knights vanish into the corridor, their footfalls a thunderclap rhythm of war drums on steel.

The pain boy hovered nearby, fidgeting with a length of soldered cable. "What of the rest of the knights?" he asked. "The prototypes, the shock troopers, the big lad with the railgun gut?"

Gitznash didn't hesitate.

"Send them out into the battlefield," he said. "Our boyz need backup more than I do."

I decided the scene with the fourth's rebirth was unnecessary. Everything you think happens, happens. They tell him the situation and he agrees to help. Naruto learns his parentage and is pissed. I can't imagine you guys need that spelled out but if you really want to see it I can right a side chapter. But right now it would have broken the pacing of this chapter.

Also yes, Gitznash is wrong in his estimation of the other Kage. He's about to find that out.

Thanks as always to my patrons and commissioners. And to fans leaving feedback.

Chapter Text

Chapter 23:

When Enemies are Underestimated

Naruto crouched low behind a melted slab of what had once been a turret, his arms crossed as two shadow clones flanked him, lobbing kunai into the descending flight paths of airborne Orks. Thereby shielding Guy and Kakashi as they moved along the deck so they could do their job.

"Guy-sensei! That one next!" Naruto called out, pointing at a mounted laser turret reorienting on the east wing. "It's locking on!"

There was no response — just a deafening boom and a burst of green as Might Guy, already shimmering with the aura of the Fourth Gate, launched into the air and ripped the cannon from its base with a single, spinning heel kick. The weapon shrieked metal-on-metal as it tore free, trailing sparks and broken tubing like spilled entrails, before Guy landed in a crouch that cratered the deck.

Naruto whistled.

"Show-off," Kakashi muttered, barely audible over the wind. He was crouched near one of the exposed energy ports, slipping a seal tag into the junction box and triggering a controlled overload — just enough to short the system and prevent it from auto-repairing.

Naruto didn't wait. With a flash of chakra and a slap of his palm against the hot deck, he summoned a storage toad. This was a squat, purple beast with a cavernous mouth and perpetually bored eyes. It blinked twice, opened wide, and swallowed the entire cannon whole.

"Dismissed!" Naruto barked.

The toad vanished in a puff of smoke, leaving behind the scent of ozone and frog breath.

"Alright," Naruto said, brushing ash from his arm, "we've got one souvenir for the nerds. May I please blow up the rest now?"

Kakashi straightened, eye narrowed.

"Permission granted."

That was all he needed.

Naruto formed the cross sign with practiced ease, and dozens of clones burst into existence with a rush of smoke. They broke off in pairs, each duo flanking a turret like a hunting pack. The first clone of each pair spun up a Rasengan in the hand of the other. As one, each pair drove the spear of rotating chakra into one of the laser turrets and, once it dissipated, detonated.

"Kamikaze Clone Jutsu!" they shouted in eerie unison.

The deck shook like thunder on repeat. One by one, every weapon emplacement along the vessel's spine vanished in clouds of fire and metal dust.

In under a minute, the ship was disarmed.

Naruto grinned.

"Alright, mes," he called, already mid-seal, "go inside and loot the place!"

His clones didn't need encouragement. They surged toward the access ramps and torn-open corridors, leaping like runners at the bell. They funneled into the ship in waves, their chatter fading into the echoing hollows of its innards.

Naruto followed, not to lead — just to see. Inside, chaos reigned.

One clone tore an entire monitor wall from its bracket and fed it to a summoning toad that belched with confusion before swallowing it down. Another pried open a door panel with chakra-enhanced fingers and summoned two more clones just to start unscrewing things. Someone was halfway through wrestling with a glowing blue tube connected to the ceiling. Someone else was surfing down the hallway on a rolling cart stacked with blinking alien consoles.

Naruto looked around and could barely process it — half of it was beyond comprehension. Spindly glass panels that vibrated at a frequency he could feel in his bones. Levers without hinges. Screens without wiring. A machine that looked like it ran on gas, steam, and screaming.

And the clones loved it. Every last one of them.

"Whatever it is, bag it!" one of them shouted, kicking open a door.

"We'll figure it out later!"

Naruto couldn't help it — he laughed. Even as alarms began to rise in the distance and echoing footsteps thundered from deeper in the vessel, he felt ready.

The deeper they moved into the vessel's gullet, the more it stank of war.

Not fresh blood or broken steel — no, this was older. A slow, rotting musk clinging to every surface like a wet skin: thick air, thick walls, thick breath. Naruto had warned them that the ship was alive in ways it shouldn't be, but even Gaara hadn't imagined it like this — a beast hollowed out and rebuilt around a gun.

Their task was clear: find the ship's heart.

If this floating fortress had any kind of core — a power generator, or worse, hidden artillery not yet revealed — it had to be destroyed or contained before Deidara unleashed his apocalyptic jutsu. The man was many things, but durable was not one of them. One lucky shot from an unknown weapon while airborne could ruin the entire plan.

So they moved fast. And where they met resistance, they did not hesitate.

The first wave of Orks came charging around a bend in the corridor, armed with plasma-cutters and jagged scrap-blades, roaring in unison. Onoki didn't even raise his hands. He floated forward, the tips of his sandals grazing the floor, and simply muttered, "Particle Style: Atomic Dismantling Jutsu."

A line of pure white light split the hallway in half. There was no explosion, no drama — just erasure. The Orks vanished mid-charge, reduced to ash that curled upward like paper burned from the inside.

Tsunade crushed the remains of the next wave with her fists, tearing through reinforced doors like they were made of dry grass, her boots snapping bone and steel alike with each strike. Mei incinerated stragglers with jets of lava that hissed as they struck the already burning walls.

And Gaara — Gaara just kept moving.

His sand slithered ahead of the group like a scout animal, devouring threats before they could even finish raising their weapons. He never raised his voice. He never lost step.

Eventually, they reached a bulkhead marked with symbols none of them recognized — jagged sigils glowing faintly green, pulsing in sync with the low thrum of the ship's inner systems. It opened with a hiss and a shudder, revealing a vast cargo hold beyond.

The smell hit them first.

The chamber was immense — cathedral-sized — but coated wall to wall in fungal growth. Black veins and bulging white sacs lined every surface. Spore-pods bobbed like tumors suspended from mucus webs. Some of the fungus pulsed, some twitched. A few even breathed.

Tsunade drew her cloak tighter.

"Gross. This must be their... breeding chamber." she said. "I don't see females though."

Indeed, these creatures did not seem to have female variations. Instead they had what looked like birthing sacks. Now that he thought about it, even considering the regular orks "male" was probably a misnomer. Although he'd never checked personally, they might not have genitalia. They were just fungal, sexless, monsters.

"We burn it," Gaara said simply.

He raised both arms, and the sand rushed in through gaps in his sleeves, forming a writhing cyclone that ripped through the chamber like a sandstorm forced through a keyhole. The fungal matter shrieked. Or maybe it was just the ship reacting. Either way, spores burst into clouds and stems snapped in half, shredded into airborne pulp.

Before the emulcified organic matter could settle, Mei stepped forward.

"Clear a path."

The others took her meaning immediately and retreated behind her, Gaara pulling his sand close to act as a buffer.

"Boil Release: Corrosive Mist!"

The air sizzled as her chakra flooded the room. A rolling fog of acid bled from her mouth and filled the hold in seconds, clinging to every wall, coating every spore, burning every remaining tendril. The shriveling screams of the biomass didn't stop until the entire chamber had gone quiet — not silent, but quiet in that way only scorched things are quiet.

When the mist finally dispersed, what remained of the growths was a black, bubbling sludge, still steaming in puddles that hissed with each breath the ship took.

"Well," Tsunade muttered, stepping over the half-melted jaw of something that might once have been an Ork, "if they were growing new weapons, they aren't anymore."

The moment she said it, a low mechanical whirr echoed across the far wall. A lift, long dormant, began to rise from a recessed panel. It screeched as it ascended, chains rattling, old metal struggling against fresh weight.

When it reached the top, it released a loud clang — and the four machines stepped out.

Four Orks, if they could still be called that.

Each stood nearly twice the height of a man, their bodies grotesquely fused with armor and machine. Not power armor — integration. Cables ran through skin, plating grew from shoulder joints like tumors. One leaked vapor — frost fogging the air around its mouth. Another moved with fluid drag, water tubes pulsing along its limbs. A third shimmered faintly, kinetic energy dancing off its layered plating. The last moved slowest, its footsteps leaving dents in the deck with every step.

Each raised a hand — and pointed, finger extended. One at Mei. One at Tsunade. One at Onoki. One at Gaara.

There was no roar. No taunt. Just challenge.

The four Kage looked at each other — one glance passed between them, reading years of battle instinct in a single shared breath — and then, as one, they shrugged and stepped forward to meet the challenge.

Gitznash stared at the screen, jaw slack, tusks twitching in disbelief.

Four feeds. Four knights. All gone in seconds.

The fireproof one — 'Da Burn-Brix Basha' — took a single punch from the blonde humie in the red hat. One punch. It didn't even fall over — it just exploded into a slurry of plate mush and twitching meat.

The waterproof one? He'd been built for full submersion. Gilled lungs. Pressure-hardened chestplate. But the water shadow didn't hit him with water. She hit him with lava. A whole river of the stuff. He barely had time to raise a claw before he went down gurgling, armor dripping off him like candle wax.

The big boy, the weight-brick built ta withstand any push, shock, or blast, got swallowed in a wave of sand that moved like it thought. Then it squeezed. Hard. What came out the other side wasn't a corpse — it was a ball. A metal-cored, crushed-ork meatball.

And the last one... Gitznash didn't even understand what happened to the last one.

The midget humie, barely waist-high, floatin' like a scrapfly, tapped him. Just tapped him. And the knight rose off the ground like he weighed less than a bullet. Then the humie twitched his fingers and the knight just... stopped existing. No explosion. No noise. Just gone. Weird boy magic beyond his understanding.

Gitznash's took a deep breath and though. One hand slowly rose to adjust his new command hat — not out of pride, but because it was slipping from the sweat on his brow.

"…Right then," he muttered, voice low and rattling. "We'z not winnin' dis fight."

His pain boy turned toward him, bolt-gun still in hand, one eyebrow bolt cocked.

"Say again, boss?"

"I said we'z leggin' it!" Gitznash barked. "I can't believe I'm sayin' it, but — get da ship prepped. Dis is now a tactical zoggin' retreat."

"But da hull's still busted in three spots," the pain boy said, confused. "Drive-cores still got exposed valves, and one a da aft fins is held on wiv rope."

Gitznash snarled.

"It's fine! We don't need perfect. We just need space!"

He stabbed a clawed finger toward the ceiling as though orbit itself might be listening.

"Get us off dis cursed dirtball, up inta da sky. We'll pick a spot, crash somewhere less explodey, rebuild, an' come back when we got more boyz. More teef. More dakka."

He paused, eyes still locked on the screen, where the four Kage had already begun sprinting deeper into the ship like they owned the place.

"Roit," the pain boy grumbled. "Tactical retreat it is."

Alarms began to ring across the control room. Launch systems groaned to life, ancient engines beginning to spin. Red lights. Steam. Shouting.

And under it all, the faintest sound of sand sliding through metal vents.

"And fit me for battle." he ordered at last.

The dust had begun to settle across the battlefield — not because the war was over, but because the front was shifting. The outer deck of the alien vessel now bristled with allies — hundreds of shinobi, many still breathing hard from the chaos they'd been birthed into. But the ship itself, that grotesque slab of metal grafted from foreign war gods, still had roots deep underground.

Tunnels. Whole networks of them.

They'd found the entrance — a massive crater-rimmed borehole, rimmed with half-melted steel and the charred bones of what must have once been guards. It yawned open before them, wide enough to swallow a three-story building, and from its depths came nothing but a slow, wet breeze and the scent of meat and oil.

Hundreds of elite shinobi braced at the edge, ready to storm into the underground hell to finish the then Naruto's clone appeared, hand raised, expression stone-serious.

"Hold up," it said.

Another of him stepped forward, already forming the hand signs. With a puff of smoke and a thunderous crack, a familiar form loomed into being — Gamabunta, Chief Toad of Mount Myōboku. The elder amphibian's appearance split the ground beneath him and startled several ninja into drawing weapons by reflex.

"Oi," the massive toad grunted. "You better not've summoned me for another pissing contest."

Naruto's clone pointed toward the hole.

"Did you swallow the toad oil like I asked?"

Gamabunta belched — once, deeply.

"Yeah. Feels like a keg party in my gut."

"Good. Dump it."

There was no flourish. No battle cry.

Just a long, wet retch as Gamabunta leaned his bulk over the crater and poured his stomach's contents into the abyss.

A flood of glistening, viscous oil, tons upon tons of it, churned as it rushed downward, cascading into the tunnels like a flood of molten lacquer. The scent was immediate and suffocating. The wind shifted with the sudden pressure of descending fluid.

"Light it up!" someone yelled — a jonin from the Stone, already forming a fire seal.

"Wait!" Naruto's clone barked, faster than the flame.

The ignition was stopped mid-hand sign. The clone glared, then tilted his head toward the hole.

"Wait until we know it's fully saturated. I want the whole nest lit, not just the front porch."

So they waited.

The sound of oil rushing downward was at first deafening, then steady, then faint — a distant gurgle vanishing into darkness. Then silence.

Naruto's clone turned to the side, eyes falling on a man leaning against a half-melted Ork vehicle.

"Asuma-sensei."

Asuma flicked the half-spent cigarette from his fingers. It spun once through the air.

It dropped into the abyss.

The effect was immediate.

The ignition was not a fireball — it was a detonation. A sun birthed underground. Flames roared from the mouth of the pit, rising into the sky with such force that the shockwave knocked several shinobi backward. The shriek of ignited oil meeting flesh rang out like a choir of banshees — hundreds of Ork voices screaming once, then none.

There was a moment of silence before a new noise caused some alarm.

The ground began to tremble beneath their feet. Not the trembling of jutsu or battle — but the tremble of engines waking from slumber. From somewhere deep in the ship's belly, turbines began to scream.

"The thrusters—" someone breathed.

Naruto's clone whipped around.

A huge portion of their forces — hundreds, including medics, chunin and genin — had drifted behind the ship during the chaos.

And now the thrusters were powering up.

"No—"

They wouldn't be fast enough. Not even Guy and Lee, giving it their all, could evacuate all of them in time. And the fourth Hokage had not been given enough time to create his daggers for every single individual in the forces as a contingency.

It was Gamabunta moved while everyone else was left thinking about what to do.

The Chief Toad, launched himself over the group — his great shadow blotting out the sun for a heartbeat — and landed between the massed shinobi and the thrusters.

He didn't shout. He didn't hesitate. He simply brace, throwing his arms out protectively.

The ship launched.

The flames that blasted from the engines turned everything in its path to glass — sand fused mid-air, rock melted into molten rivers, sky turned white-hot. The earth behind the ship cracked open under the force of it, and when the light finally faded, Gamabunta was gone.

Not wounded. Not unconscious. Gone. A shadow on the earth shaped like him in which survivors huddled was all that remained of him.

His massive sword lay half-melted in the slag where he'd stood and where once had stood the proudest of the Great Toads… now there was only a silhouette burned into stone.

Naruto, and all of his clones, stopped in their rampage within the bowels of the ship.

They had all dropped what they were doing to find something to hold onto for dear life. The g-forces they were subjected to a moment later destroyed all of them and Naruto felt his own shoulder dislocate when the sudden moment fought against his grip.

The ship was taking off! And worse, their contingency for this exact scenario was such that if he, Kakashi, Guy and the Kage would be killed by it.

He channeled chakra into both feet and his hands, crawling along the walls on all fours despite the pain in his shoulder. He had to get to everyone else and get them out of there with storage toads even if it killed him.

Then the memories came. First the memories of the shadow clones inside of the ship that died, which was painful to say the least. But it served as a chaser for what came next. The memories of the shadow clones outside of the ship.

Dozens were burned by the thrusters, and all of their last moments showed the same horrors. Comrades being vaporized by thrusters, and Gamabunta doing his best to shield everyone. The moment of his death and the deaths of shinobi flashed through his mind over and over again, each time feeling like a sledgehammer to his skull.

The crimson chakra he had already been drawing upon flooded out of him, the thick crimson chakra bubbling around him. His skin peeled and burned away, and he slipped into unconsciousness.

Oh yeah. It's 4-tails vs warboss time baby!

Thanks as always to my patrons and commissioners. And to fans leaving feedback.

Chapter Text

Chapter 24:

Gitznash' Last Stand

The clone of Naruto stood on a jagged ridge of blackened glass, eyes fixed skyward as the Ork vessel tore through the morning clouds, belching flame and steel in its retreat. It climbed like a wounded dragon, banking northward in a sputtering arc.

Then, without warning, or sound, a red bloom of chakra erupted from within its hull, not like fire but like an exploding sun on a battlefield, vivid and hateful and alive.

The ship split in half.

A yawning gash opened along its belly, and from within poured not flame or wreckage, but raw fury — malice made manifest. Every shinobi on the field staggered where they stood, their stomachs flipping in recognition. Either conscious recognition, or something more instinctual.

The nine-tails chakra radiated with such hatred and malice that all shinobi could feel it, even non sensors.

Gasps filled the air like an aftershock.

Shikamaru, standing far from the front, turned pale and stiffened. Darui and Kurotsuchi fell into ready stances by reflex alone.

The ship's front half, still roaring forward, dipped and spiraled before slamming into the distant mountain range with a quake that cracked the horizon. Fire and smoke billowed up like the hand of a giant clawing at the sky.

The back half, still smoldering, shuddered mid-air, engines flaring unnaturally bright before it veered, screaming back toward the ground.

Naruto's clone grit his teeth and turned toward the gathered forces behind him.

"Come on!" he shouted. "They're gonna need backup!"

No one hesitated.

Hundreds of sandals struck earth as one — sand-nin, stone-nin, leaf and cloud, the scattered remnants of the allied shinobi army surging toward the distant crater like a living tide. Even the wounded who could still move, whose arms worked, whose legs held, followed.

Followed the trail of smoke.

Gitznash grunted as the last plates o' his shiny new krump-suit locked into place with a hiss and a grind. The boyz had done good — this one wrapped 'round him like the looted humie void-walker armor, airtight and covered in whirlin' bits copied from his fallen Shadow Knight lads. Useless gitz, though they had been.

Then the aft end of the ship kissed the dirt behind him with a bang that shook his gutteks.

He didn't wait for the crash to stop, or the ship to settle, before getting up.

Gitznash stomped his way through the broken guts of his krump-fortress — split metal walls, fire-licked corridors, rooms mashed into each other like bad stew. The sun bled through twisted hull cracks and smashed bulkheads, callin' him back to the fight.

He followed it.

Crawled out like a proper warboss reborn — soot-covered, fists tight, jaw clankin' with every step — and found...

Nothin'. No fightin'. No yellin'. Just sand.

Still desert, yeah, but it looked wrong. The wreck had skidded who knows how many teef-lengths across the planet. Maybe a hundred kilometers, maybe more. Either way, the shinies weren't here yet.

But somethin' else was.

It crawled out behind and above him. Outta the metal bones o' the ship like it was hatched there. Crimson. Snarlin'. Eyes like blood made into rage.

A demon? A Khorne boy?

No — no, this one was different. Wilder. Meaner. Didn't look like it had a name, just instincts and hatred wrapped up in energy and meat.

It stood tall on the ruin, muscles ripplin' like corded cables without skin to coat it, with four squirmy limbs or whippin' tentacles twitchin' from its back like a nightmare with opinions. Drippin' red, gleamin' with murder.

Gitznash squared his shoulders, raised a fist. And then the thing vanished.

Next thing the warboss knew, the world flipped upside down. Then right-side up. Then upside down again. Sky, earth, sky, THUD, sky again, THUNK, oh hello again earth.

It played bounce-the-WAAAGH with his body across the sandscape, each hit a thunderclap of pain wrapped in gravity and fury. His shiny new boots dug trenches, sparks flew off his shoulders, and his vision flickered from red to static to rage again.

Finally he stopped tumblin'.

Mostly upright, one leg half buried in sand, Gitznash blinked hard and tried to stand proper. His krump-suit hissed, vented, and dumped all the excess smashin' force down into the ground in a pulse that cracked the sand like a jawbone.

"Impact force exceeds dampening and absorption limitations," said the helmet in that smug humie lady voice.

Gitznash snarled through his tusks.

"No shite!"

The front plate of his helmet was cracked like an old squig egg.

Gitznash squinted through the fractured visor and spotted it, that crimson monster, leggin' it toward him on all fours like a proper savage beast. Must've belted him a whole kilometer away with that first swipe.

Impressive. Annoyin'. But impressive.

Now he saw it proper. Those flailin' things on its back weren't just squiggy tentacles, they were tails. Four o' them. Like it were built to whip things to death as a hobby.

Gitznash bared his teeth in a grin.

"A real fight at last."

He yanked both dakka-sticks from his hips, twin bolters big enough to make a Dread cry, and kicked on the double-zappy wrist cannon on his left arm. Las-eyes glowed. Everything hummed.

He opened fire.

Bolt-rounds roared through the air like a choir o' angry fliers. The earth lit up, the sky thundered, and the beast just—

Kept runnin'.

A few bolts clipped it, yeah, but they might as well've been gob spit. The thing didn't slow, didn't flinch, didn't even blink.

Then it jumped again and his wrist-cannons sang.

Twin beams of molten sun carved through the beast mid-air, sliced it clean in two at the waist. The top half spun off, the legs flopped away but the torso still kept comin'.

It missed him by a hair thanks to the altered arc, but Gitznash was ready. He grabbed the flyin' slab of beast-flesh mid-spin with his claw-hand, las still hummin', and SLAMMED it down like he was plantin' a warbanner.

The ground cracked.

But before he could gloat, the bloody legs — just the legs! — sprang up and kicked him square in the chest.

He twisted with the blow, armor flaring, vents screamin' as his suit drank up the force and burped it out the soles of his boots — detonatin' the ground beneath him and scatterin' both monster-halves like dice.

By the time he scrambled upright, the two halves fused. Again. No scars. No burn marks. No weakness.

"Bloody cheatin' freak," Gitznash muttered. "Redirect the next krump to my claw."

"Affirmative," chirped the humie voice in his skull.

He charged.

The beast was still prone on its back, crouched, waitin'. Just like before, it lashed a tail and kicked upward, tryin' to boot him back to orbit.

But this time the suit drank it in — all of it — and poured it into Gitznash's right fist like liquid dynamite.

He punched with all of his might combined with all of its absorbed might. The hit landed dead center, straight into the beast's gut.

The air detonated. Stone buckled. The sand beneath them evaporated.

The crater that formed spat Gitznash out like bad meat. Even with the tungsten slabs weighin' down his legs and gut — the ones he'd welded on to stop wind-wizards from tossin' him about — he still went flyin'.

This time, when Gitznash hit the dirt, he didn't bounce. The tungsten weights, bless their dense bloody hearts, held.

His boots bit into the stone, knees bending with a metallic groan. The impact cracked the dust-blasted ground, but he held fast.

'Course, now the monster was gone again. Over the next rise. Skulkin'.

Gitznash growled — just in time to see a glow. Not red. Not orange. Not even a proper orky green. No, this was white. A core-meltdown kind o' white. Sun-born and hell-sent. And it was gatherin' over the ridge where he knew the creature was.

"Drop the dead weight!" he barked.

The suit clunked in response. Big tungsten bricks crashed off his legs, chest, hips — thudding into the sand like coffin lids.

He sprinted. Not forward. Sideways. Like dodgin' a crashin' Rok. And a moment later…

BOOOOOM!

The world behind him went white.

A beam the size of a battleship carved through rock, sand, air — everything. It wasn't just bright. It howled. A scream of heat and rage and light that turned the horizon into a smear.

He hadn't been in the blast but that didn't save him.

The aftershock, the backhand of the beast's fury, picked him up like a sack of squigs and hurled him. Heat scorched his suit, armor bubbled, the air inside hissed like bacon.

He skidded. And skidded. Until the smoking ruin of his boots finally found enough grip to drag him to a stop.

"Thermal damage exceeds heat negation parameters," chirped the voice in his cracked helm.

"No shite!" he snarled again.

And now, without his weights, the next smack from that beast'd knock him into low orbit.

But the creature didn't leap this time.

It cheated again.

Two arms, not attached to anything, erupted from the earth in front of him, clawed and flexin'. They slithered toward him like they had a brain of their own.

Gitznash snarled, stomped forward, and grabbed 'em both by the wrists. One in each claw.

He yanke, really putting his back and legs into it.

The rest o' the beast was attached — the whole writhin', tail-whippin' mass of it — and his pull flung the bastard right into range.

It adapted mid-flight, twisting midair. Came at him feet first like a pro.

Gitznash grinned behind his scorched mask.

"Redirect all krumpin' force to me HEAD."

"Affirmative," replied the voice, cold as ever.

The thing hit him with a double-footed stomp to the chest.

And Gitznash gave it back in the form of a headbutt.

Their skulls collided like boulders in a quarry. The shockwave made the dirt jump.

Both of them blasted backward, buried in the trench they made with their bodies. Stone cracked. The sky flickered.

Then the suit fizzled.

"System damage critical. Shuttin' down."

Gitznash coughed smoke and screamed, "Fat lotta good you did ANYWAY!" and punched the ground for emphasis.

Gitznash was already back on his boots before the words even finished leavin' his lips. Legs screamin', ribs grindin', lungs feelin' like burst fungus sacs — but he didn't give a squig's arse. That thing was still movin'. So he was still movin'.

Armor cracked and fell off his chest in jagged slabs. The last of his helmet peeled away like a shed shell. Air burned his throat. Didn't matter.

He was already rippin' the cryo-tanks off his back. Two big canisters of hissin', angry liquid nitrogen. Still cold. Still useful.

He clutched 'em both in his clawed hand.

The beast, that mad red demon, had got back up too. Just as fast. Of course it had.

They both charged. Two nightmares on legs. One howlin', the other growlin'.

And right as it lunged, right as that demon's ugly mug came into reach, Gitznash crushed the tanks in his claw.

SHHHHRACK!

The canisters ruptured with a shriek like the soul of a frozen banshee, blasting both of 'em in a white-out hurricane of liquid nitrogen. The air snapped cold enough to bite.

Gitznash's whole arm froze solid in an instant — bone, meat, muscle, blood, all of it. Dead weight. Useless.

He used it anyway.

CRACK!

He punched the beast with it, a frozen warhammer of limb.

Chunks of red hide shattered like glass. Every hit sprayed pieces. His arm was breaking with each swing along with the monster.

Crack-crack-CRUNCH.

Fangs and tails and armor fragments spun into the air like confetti at a warboss birthday. But the bastard didn't stay broken.

The pieces swirled and regrew. It reassembled itself again, perfect as ever. Didn't even look tired.

And then it roared.

Gitznash barely heard it before the force of it hit him. A sonic wall. A wave of hate.

He flew. Again.

This time, his whole body went slack mid-air. Ribs splintered. Spine crunched. One of his lungs folded like wet paper and something inside started leaking in ways it wasn't supposed to.

He was dead. He knew it. It would be a good minute before his body knew it though.

Didn't matter. Couldn't matter. If he still had one second, he'd use it. The demon was charging. Screamin'. Bloody eyes wide.

Gitznash gnashed his teeth, lips flecked with black blood.

"One more trick…"

He tilted his head. Clenched his teeth around the base of his wrist-lascannon, bit down and ripped it off.

Wires, meat, and blood tore free.

With his one good hand, he grabbed the barrel. Lifted it up. Held it right between them as the red bastard closed in for the kill.

"Say cheese, ya git."

BOOOOOOOM.

White light. Red fire. Black smoke.

And then, silence.

The Naruto clone sat on a rock overlooking the Konoha base perimeter, legs swinging, eyes half-lidded. He considered making more Ppasta and inviting Sasuke for lunch. It was quiet here — deceptively so. But the unease in his gut hadn't faded. Not since the ship had taken off. Not since the others left.

And then it hit him.

A torrent of memories — dozens of them — flooding in at once. He stiffened.

He stood.

It was time. The rainy day had come.

He formed the hand seal — "Kage Bunshin no Jutsu!" — and the air cracked with the arrival of a dozen more Narutos, each identical, each carrying the same solemn look.

They all sat, cross-legged, in a circle around the original clone.

The wind stirred their cloaks. They closed their eyes… and meditated on a single memory he knew could wake up the original.

One by one, each clone opened his eyes. One by one, they dispelled.

He could still feel the fire in his veins.

It hadn't gone away. Not really. The claws had shrunk, the tails had faded, and the fur was gone — but the heat still pulsed under his skin. He stood where the monster had stood. Still hunched. Still trembling. Still breathing like every exhale might kill something.

And then the memories came.

Hinata.

The ghost of a kiss, soft and trembling, brushed against his cheek like she was still there. His knees buckled, just a little. Not from pain — but from that warmth. From the contrast.

Hiashi's voice. Proud. Clear.

"It pleases me to see you develop into such a competent young man ."

The fire began to die.

The last tail slithered away into light. His eyes dimmed from bloodred to blue. His muscles stopped clawing at the world. He was just Naruto again. Shaking. Burned. Naked. Standing amid the glassed crater that used to be a battlefield.

Something cracked nearby.

He looked down.

Gitznash was still alive — barely. The Ork was twisted metal and ruptured flesh, more armor than skin now. What was left of his chest tried to rise. His mouth split into a broken grin, exposing tusks and sparks.

He wheezed something — then laughed. Not weakly. Not bitterly.

He laughed like he'd just seen the most beautiful act on a stage.

"Bwahahaha… the galaxy is gonna love you's." he said.

Naruto said nothing, just stared down at the alien with contempt.

"The necrons, all of da boyz, da empire... Korne. They're all gonna love you. Galaxy's got a new favorite monster.""

The Ork's eyes glazed. His breath hitched. But he forced one last line through shattered teeth:

And then he died.

Naruto knelt beside him — not out of respect, but because his legs finally gave out.

A long silence followed, broken only by the whisper of scorched wind.

Then he felt a presence materialize behind him.

Naruto turned his head — barely — and caught the bundle tossed his way. A cloak, black with red cloaks. He wrapped it around his waist and rose slowly, smoke still rising off his skin.

He didn't look at Madara when he spoke.

"Is Deidara in position?"

"Yes."

Naruto exhaled once.

"Then do it. Wipe them all out."

What a fight! I'd been planning that one for weeks.

One chapter left in this first arc. I'll see you guys there tomorrow.

Thanks as always to my patrons and commissioners. And to fans leaving feedback.