A/N:

Back to my roots

with a special delivery:

A whole new chapter

Of my first story, String Theory

Sorry, just practicing for Killer B, whenever he makes an appearance. I need to get actually good at that if I want to even attempt it. Ugh. Anyway, I'm back! Was having some trouble on deciding how to do this, so I took a break to focus on my other two stories. It really helps, if I'm honest with you. Anyway, this chapter is gonna be the first part of a mini-arc in the story, riiiiight before the chunin exams. It'll feel like it's own small story, but don't worry about that too much. I am well aware.

On a side note, I have other things I plan on implementing into Naruto's character, so if you think the Naruto you see now is the one you'll have in, say, five to six chapters, you are sorely mistaken. Not gonna drop any serious bombs, but I will give you that, and this. A BIG one is coming. Enough of my rambling, though. Enjoy!... Or not. Still lack the power to force you to like it(sadly).

Laying back in bed, Naruto was REALLY glad he was himself at that moment. 'If I wasn't, that probably would've killed me... Would've died happy, at least.'

Shrugging, he sat up and looked at his clock. "Holy fuck on a stick," was all he could really say when he saw how late it was. It was already 10 in the morning, which meant he'd have to go decently fast to get there in a reasonable time.

With a thought, he appeared in front of his mirror, fully clothed already. "I look like shit." His version of looking like shit was his hair being slightly messed up from people gripping onto it. The shorter parts were sticking up, the longer parts bent at an angle. To others, it wasn't so bad, but to him, it was nothing short of evil.

Using chakra as a comb, he just disappeared, resolving to this on his way out. Appearing in front of the room he gave to Zabuza, he knocked quickly. When the man answered, Naruto didn't even give him a chance to speak, though it probably wouldn't have been much, with how tired the Kiri nuke-nin looked.

"Wipe the sleep out of your eyes or suck it up, because we're late. Grab Haku, Meizu, and Gozu in the next 10 minutes, else I'm coming for you myself." He neglected to mention that it was technically his fault, but that was beside the point.

His sharp voice seemed to shock Zabuza into his normal state of awareness. "Yeah, yeah, gaki. How about YOU try sleeping in the most comfortable bed you've had in years and just get up like that." Despite his grumbling, he went back inside and tried rousing the other 3 shinobi.

Naruto, on the other hand, rolled his eyes, though he understood. Arriving in the Hokage's office with a thought, he was surprised to see Jiraya on the ground, a large lump on his head, Kushina glowering at Minato, and Minato trying his hardest to calm her down.

"Ahem!" he interrupted, as his time was a bit tighter that it should've been.

Jiraya seemed to shoot up at his voice, embracing him before he could even put up any resistance. "I am so proud of you! Still a genin and already getting two at once!" Tears were streaming down the man's face, making Naruto roll his eyes.

"I don't have time for this. We can do this in a week, but I gotta get going if I want to get there before 5 pm. And I want to get there before 5 pm." It was a simple matter for him to appear outside of Jiraya's grip.

Minato was happy for the distraction. "Ah, yes. Here are your papers, allowing you permission for a long term leave, and a trade request between Konoha and whomever becomes Mizukage when you are done. Do enjoy the vacation. Oh, and don't bring back any granddaughters for me just yet." Despite saying that, his eyes were glancing at Kushina, who's eyes were shadowed by her hair.

Rolling his eyes for the second time in the past minute or two, he nodded. "We'll talk about you spying on me when I return." The group of S-Ranked shinobi stiffened, but he was gone before anything could be said.

Appearing in front of Zabuza's designated living spaced, Naruto knocked. He was greeted by a full dressed Zabuza, Kubikiri attached and all. Behind him were the other three. "Good. And here I was thinking I'd have to do that the hard way." Gozu and Meizu shivered, remembering what "the hard way" entailed. From their reaction, Haku was glad she didn't know what the hard way was.

It was a few minutes later that they were dashing out of the gates at high chunin speeds. It was a snail's pace to Naruto, but he knew this was the most efficient. 'Wait a second. The fuck am I DOING!?'

Stopping suddenly, making the others do the exact same thing, he face palmed. "Okay, so I was being dumb. Sorry about that."

A voice behind him agreed. "Yes you were, Naruto-sama. How could you leave me behind?"

"I knew you would get here, Medusa-chan," Naruto responded with a sigh, not even bothering to turn around to the pouting demon. "I meant that I'm doing this the long way for no good reason." Everyone but Medusa, who nodded, looked at him in confusion. "I can get us to the water in an instant. This is a waste of my time."

Zabuza's eye twitched, but he held his tongue. Annoying Naruto when he held the ability to save him time wasn't a good idea. 'When we get there, I'm kicking the gaki's ass. Super powers be damned.' The rest of his group was of a similar mind, though Gozu and Meizu were a bit more expressive. Naruto didn't even have to look to see the two brothers flipping him off.

Ignoring their actions, he just began concentrating. "Stay quiet for a moment," he said as Medusa was about to speak. His eyes were closed as he concentrated on pushing his chakra as far out as he could, even delving into nature. "It's an extremely long jump from here to the coast, and I don't normally stretch my range THAT much."

Complete silence followed his words, and it continue for half a minute. Suddenly, Naruto snapped his eyes open. "Grab on." he commanded, his voice stern.

In his head, Kurama yawned and asked, 'Why don't you just use the other one?'

'Some secrets,' he responded to the demon fox in his head, 'should be kept as long as possible. You know what it entails.' He felt a mental shrug from the fox. 'Oh, and wake the fuck up. Yagura's a jinchuriki, so I'll probably return the favor if he uses Isobu-san's power.'

Feeling the fox wave him off and snoring ensue not long after, Naruto began wondering if he should decrease the seal to let them have more energy. 'Nah. They asked for this. Who knows, I might be able to do a full body transformation at this point.'

It was a simple matter to teleport after that, having already locked onto his target destination. They all appeared above the water, the four Kiri-natives coming out a bit wobbly and looking a bit green but staying standing. They even managed to stay floating on the water.

Giving them an appraising look, Naruto commented on that. "Surprised you managed to stay up af-" It was at that moment that Gozu and Meizu simultaneously pulled up their masks and threw up in the water. "Never mind what I was saying," Naruto deadpanned.

Medusa laughed at them behind him. Then, she leaned on his back, wrapping her arms around his neck. "I think I'm feeling a bit nauseous too, Naruto-sama. Could you carry me?"

Flicking her on the head, he responded, though he couldn't help but smirk. "Don't try it right now, Medusa-chan." She pouted but let him go. Shaking his head at her, he just told them to get ready for the next jump. "I'm placing us right in front of Mei next time, so be prepared to defend yourselves. You know how jumpy they are." They nodded and, once the demon brothers got their shit together, they disappeared again, this time going underground.

Kirigakure Rebel Base- Office of Mei Terumi

Once they appeared in front of Mei, they were immediately assaulted by Chojuro, who tried to smash them into smears of blood with his Hiramekarei, and Ao attempting to turn them into pin cushions while Mei just looked up at them, a smile on her face.

Thankfully, Chojuro was blocked by Zabuza and all of the senbon thrown by Ao were stopped in midair, courtesy of Naruto. "Great to see you guys too. Love the welcome. Is there poison tea as well? Maybe spikes flying out the walls, no, the floors next."

Mei narrowed her eyes at him for a moment before they widened. "Naruto-chan?"

With a roll of his eyes, he made his hair blacken completely. His whisker marks receded completely, making him look just like the Naruto they knew. "The one and only. I have a few faces I go by, but I guess you know this one better." Everyone's eyes were locked on him until Zabuza began the chuckle.

"This kid..." he commented before shaking his head and continuing his chuckling. "Hehe. Fuck it; ain't even surprised anymore." Everyone but Haku nodded, as she hadn't even known him for that long, let alone as long as anyone there had.

Once the tension had been fully diffused by his reveal, Naruto went back to his "normal" look. "I prefer to look like this, nowadays." was his response to the looks he got for the change. "Now, I think we have some things to discuss, Mei." She continued to smile at him, but, just as she went to respond, he continued. "I'm kicking the shit out of Yagura later today."

She lost her smile at that. "On such short notice? We can't really organize an attack THAT quickly, Naruto-chan."

"You don't need to," he responded. "All you need to do is be ready to clean up. Not sure how hard the fight is gonna be, but I don't wanna deal with the fall out and clean up after this. Gonna try and keep the damage light, though no promises on the casualties."

Mei scowled. "And that's why you shouldn't do it. Wait for us to rally the soldiers. They'll be overjoyed to hear you're back, anyway."

"And they'll be even happier to hear I put an end to this. Besides, just because they are less destructive doesn't make them anywhere near as efficient as me." She had nothing to dispute his comeback with. "Fine, though. Rally the entire army. I guess it'll be better if they're ready to jump in. Don't get their hopes up on being too big a part; this really won't take long." He turned to walk out at that point but stopped as he reached the door. "By the way, how's Ringo-chan?" There was a silence that followed as his answer. "Ah. I see. She's still alive, though. Right?"

Mei nodded sadly. "Yes, Naruto-chan... but not for long."

Sighing, Naruto leaned against the door. Pushing himself upright, he turned back to face the group, finding Medusa right next to him. "Medusa-chan?"

"Yeeeeeees, Naruto-sama?" She tried to cheer him up slightly, as he looked a bit down, but her playful tone didn't help.

Closing his eyes, he put his hand over them for a moment. "Just... Mei, can she stay with you for a bit?" Mei nodded respectfully. "Good. She can find me if you need me for anything. Rally your soldiers, but don't tell them that I'm back." He managed a small smirk. "I'm in the mood to surprise them now. Be back in 2 hours." With that, he disappeared completely, making Ao tense slightly. The last time he fought someone that fast was when he fought Shisui, and it wasn't a good experience for him.

Mei turned to Medusa, who was pouting slightly. "So... who are you?" She was smiling again as she got up, rolling up the many battle plans she had on her desk.

"Oh me?" Medusa asked teasingly. "Nobody. I'm just Naruto-sama's mate." She smiled at the looks that came over Mei, Ao, and the now no longer tense Chojuro's faces.

Kirigakure Rebel Base- Infirmary

Naruto, on the other hand, had just appeared in the infirmary of the rebel's base, right on top of Ameyuri Ringo's chakra signature. "Wow... you look like shit, Go-tan." She'd been lying down, a somewhat depressed and defeated expression on her face. Her skin was pale and her chakra seemed to be weakening. He could feel her dying. She'd evidently taken out the IV that she was hooked up to anyway, making it worse, but it seemed like she'd accepted death.

Ameyuri opened her eyes and quickly grinned, her shark like teeth on display. "Nice to see you too, gaki." Somehow, she could recognize him no matter what face he took, which Naruto just took in stride.

At the title, though, Naruto's eye twitched slightly. "You're only a few years older than me." She grinned again, making Naruto scowl. "...Hag." Her grin dropped, and they began to have a staring contest, which looked rather odd with one of them bedridden.

After a few moments, they began laughing, even as she sat up. It was interrupted as she began to cough, bringing her hand up to her face. When she brought it away, it was covered in blood. There was even some dripping from her lips, though she quickly wiped it away, trying to put up a strong front. "I'm fine," she said, answering the question she thought was coming before it could be asked.

Naruto wasn't going to ask her that, though. He just looked at her sadly. "It got worse, huh?" She nodded, not looking at him. Her hands were clenched on her bed sheets.

Sighing sadly, Naruto sat on the side of her bed, not saying a word. Eventually, he spoke. "I brought something back for you." Sticking out his hands, he watched as they sunk into nothingness before coming back with his goal. In his hands had appeared the dual lightning-controlling blades, the Kibas.

She stared at him, wide eyed. "How... Raiga..." Then she grinned. "Nice. Figured he'd lose 'em fast, but glad it was to you. Do me a favor and take care of those, 'kay."

Naruto shook his head, placing them in her lap. "You can do that."

Scowling, she glared at him. "Don't fuck with me, Naruto. You know I can't wield these anymore. I can barely walk."

In contrast to her response, Naruto grinned. "And I plan on changing that." Getting up, he stretched. "Sorry it took so long, but I can heal you now. Seriously, I'm sorry you had to suffer for so long. But I sure as hell ain't letting you die while I can help it."

Ameyuri looked at him in disbelief before it turned to anger. "Stop getting my hopes up, you fuck! There IS no cure for this, and you know it!"

Shaking his head, Naruto responded to her calmly, making her anger spike before she calmed down, hearing his words. "I guess I should rephrase that, then. I'm not healing you, I'm fixing you." At her questioning look, he continued. "You're beyond healing, at this point, but if I get rid of the problem, literally, and add something that prevents it from resurfacing, you'll be fine." She blinked at him owlishly. "I'm gonna fix your lungs or replace them with healthy ones. These would be immune to the disease. Then, I'll alter your DNA sequence ever so slightly, getting rid of it completely so new, unhealthy cells can't spawn."

She blinked at him once more, but this time her confusion was less on what he was saying and more on what it implied. "You're a medic? Since when?"

"Nope!" he said, popping the 'p'. "I don't really wanna get down to the details, but let's just say that I can decide who lives and who dies. Not quite a god, but I'm getting there." She stared at him for a bit, unreadable to most people, but Naruto knew her well enough to know she was weighing her options. "You do know you have nothing to lose, right? I can patch you up, you'll recover in a day, two days tops, and you can get you're life back."

"Yeah," she agreed, "but I'll owe you."

He stared at her in disbelief, but he heard Kogo chuckling in his head. 'Hey, at least you matter to her.' He ignored the comment.

Shaking his head, he chuckled. "Just think of this one as a freebie." She scowled slightly, making Naruto rethink his offer so it wouldn't hurt her pride. "Alright, if that ain't good for you, then think of it as me paying you back for teaching me to use a short-sword... with a few year's interest. That good?" She nodded in acceptance. "Good. I'll get started immediately."

"Now!?" she asked, shocked.

Rolling his eyes, Naruto nodded. "I'm going and fight Yagura in a few hours, so I'll probably be a bit tired afterwards, and I need a decent amount of concentration for this kind of procedure. I'm only here for a week, you know."

She relented after a little bit of thinking. "Alright, fine. But if you fuck this up and I die, I swear I will haunt you." He rolled his eyes, but a small smile was on his face.

In an instant, a pre-filled needle was in his hands and he was ready to stick it into her. She looked at him in confusion, prompting him to explain. "I've been prepared for this for a little while now. I already made replacement lungs with the DNA sample I, ah, borrowed last time I was here." She glared at him but did nothing as he stuck the needle in her arm, trusting his preparations.(A/N: I'm pretty sure they are supposed to be hooked up before anesthetics are administered, but oh well.)

You can skip this part. It's just me testing my knowledge and research skills. Seriously, you may find it rather boring.

A few moments later, she was out like a light. "Well, she ain't getting up for a few hours." Taking a deep breath before exhaling deeply, he got down to business. As he decontaminated the air by filling it with enough youki in its naturally poisonous state to kill any bacteria then kept it up to stop anything microorganisms from entering, he began speaking to himself. "Okay, I've already minimized the risk of rejections, same for disruption of bronchiole anastemosis." He really got into a quick run down of every problem he could encounter and his fixes as he removed her swords from her hands, disinfected his hands, got gloves, then disinfected those before donning them.

Despite telling her that he wasn't a medic, he was currently in full doctor mode. He'd studied way too many books and practiced far too much to not be qualified at this point 'I thought it may have only been a nonlethal case of pulmonary embolism when the first signs of hemoptysis arose, but sadly, after feeling out her lungs when I got here, I can truly confirm TB, and a nasty case at that, along with a few tumors in there. I could just get rid of the lungs and everything in there, or I can kill everything in there. Thing is, I don't know if the tumors are benign or malignant... Gonna have to test, I guess.'

With a sigh, he reached his hand out, letting it sink into the air again, and pulled, a table of extremely pointy tools following it. With complete silence, he began to hook her up to all the necessary devices, knowing that this would be needed if he were to open her up. 'Ain't doing this blind, even if I can. No need to make it harder.'

Taking a long needle, he sent continuous pulses of chakra into her body, mapping it out to him in high detail. He guided the needle into a tumor, seeking to gain a biopsy sample just for confirmation. Once he got it out, he exhaled deeply, not realizing he was holding his breath for so long. 'Fine needle aspiration, complete.'

After storing the samples in formalin momentarily, he prepared his hyoton chakra conversion seals to quick freeze the tissue in a block of wax. 'Note to self: work on doing this one without seals. Maybe ask Haku for help...' Shaking his head, he put himself back on task.

Once he accomplished that, he sliced it into microscopically thin slices with a chakra string he focused most of his mind on in that moment, each slice as thick as a cell. Each slice he made was placed on a glass slide he made out of thin air. After observing it extremely closely, having a clone document every abnormality he called out to it, he went over everything he'd found, eventually diagnosing it as cancerous.(A/N: I know this should take longer, but he's all the specialists wrapped into one with a high-speed mind and skills that make it go much faster.) Thankfully, it was only limited to the lung, making this next job easier... well, not as difficult.

Sighing, he told his clone to prep Ameyuri for it as he went and dealt with his tools. When he was ready, he made a few more clones, each similarly dressed to him. 'I'm gonna need more hands.' Before he did anything, though, he checked everything he had his clone set up. "Catheter positioned in contralateral pulmonary artery, check..."

After getting that all done, he turned to one of his clones. "You monitor that display as if your life is on the line. Her pulmonary artery pressure, systemic arterial pressure, oxygen saturation, or anything else begins dropping, you call it out. I don't care if someone walks in, binds, and gags you before dropping you into a room with a drunk Mei. Get. Those. Stats. Out. Am I understood?" He got a salute from his clone, making him nod thankfully.

He turned to another. "We're doing a standard left lung first, okay? You cover the endotracheal tube." Another clone. "You get the blocking balloon." So it went for the few jobs, making sure everything was handled by a clone that could devote the entirety of its focus to the task. There were more than enough clones to go around, considering his nigh infinite clone production potential.

"Alright," he said after his clones started staring at him with annoyance from his constant management, "Let's just get this over with." (A/N: No, I won't type up the surgery, especially since he's doing the lungs one at a time.)

Okay, boring part over. Reading can commence once more.

After it was all over, Naruto, once she was awake and free of all the machines, looked down on her as she tried to feel what was different. "You know," he began, interrupting her thoughts, "it won't feel that different. If anything, they should feel normal. Like it doesn't hurt to breathe and you aren't coughing up blood." Her eyes widened when she realized he was right.

Looking down at her chest, she realized she was shirtless, though, with just some bandages wrapped around her chest. Just as her head snapped back up to him, he held the hilts of her swords in front of her face. "I'm professional enough to not cop a feel, Ringo-chan." Grabbing the blades, she just stuck her tongue out at him. "I accelerated your healing, but I recommend you still stay in bed for the rest of the day, even into tomorrow. Don't know how your body is reacting to the new lungs."

She frowned but didn't defy him. "I feel fine, though. Don't know why I gotta sit in this kami forsaken bed any longer." Naruto glared at her, showing he was not budging on this matter. "Fine, fine. I'll stay and rest." Naruto sighed, knowing she'd be up within ten minutes of him leaving.

Glancing at the clock, he saw that it was almost time for him to go. "I gotta go now, but I'll be back. So, uh, try not to kill yourself."

She laughed as he disappeared, and even after he did, loving the feeling of being able to do so normally, without worry of a coughing fit. Once she was done, she looked at the spot he once occupied and grinned. "You've become quite the meal, Naruto. Can't wait for our next fight." She just laid back in her bed for a little bit, though it only lasted a few minutes until she got up and started practicing with her Kibas.

Kirigakure Rebel Base- Main Exit Point

Mei was standing in front of every able bodied soldier she could muster, making them wait without telling them the reason. It was quite annoying for them to scramble so quickly without receiving an explanation, but they did it anyway, believing their leader had a plan. Her making them wait just made them all the more anxious.

"Where in the world is he?" is the censored version of what was going through her head at that moment. As if on cue, Naruto appeared next to her, though she'd been expecting it for the past 10 minutes, so she didn't even jump.

Chojuro, on the other hand, yelped rather pathetically, making Zabuza, who was leading a company, snicker, many other joining in until Chojuro's face was a bright red. "Sorry, Chojuro," Naruto apologized insincerely. Not one person believed he meant it when he was trying to hold back his laughter as well.

Once everyone was serious again, they began whispering among themselves, questioning who he was. As he was standing in front of Mei, he just began speaking. "Oi! Shut it and listen!" Everything got quiet, as he'd enhance his vocal cord with chakra, making his voice boom out over the area, drowning out all other sound. "Good. Last time I was here, we were screwed over by a rat. I'd imagine you've taken care of that problem since then, yes?" They were beginning to piece together his identity, but not fast enough for his liking.

"Well, if that's taken care of, then I'm taking down Yagura today. I'm getting a rematch." With that, he made his face go back to lacking whisker marks and his hair became black with the blue tint. Once everyone recognized him, there was complete silence before they all began cheering.

"Naruto-sama's back!"

"We can't lose now!"

"Yagura is goin' down this time! Naruto-sama is so much stronger than last time!"

Naruto took a bow, letting himself bask in it for a few moments. After a bit, he raised a hand, signalling for silence. "Originally, I planned on taking Yagura down alone, as a surprise for you all, but I feel like you should get to decide how this goes. Should I just go out there and handle this, like I intended to, or should I let you fight. No one would judge you for backing out, honest. I can't fight at my fullest when my any allies are around, but you would be there, which is good, I guess."

They were all silent, as Kiri shinobi had a sense of pride that made them averse to retreating or letting someone else take care of their problems, but, at the same time, Naruto was one of them, in their minds. That also made things worse. Should they put all the responsibility on one of their own? Naruto, seeing the conflict running across their, decided to make this easier on them. "Okay, lemme say this. I'm not cocky. I'm not an ass. But no one here but Mei has a chance against me, and even she doesn't have the ability to kill me, no matter what she does. I hate saying this, I really do, but you guys will only make this fight harder."

A few of them sounded outraged at that, while others honorably accepted this, knowing it was true. "I know that's a bitter pill to swallow for some of you, but you can ask Zabuza. I am not exaggerating."

All eyes turned to the wielder of the Kubukiri Boucho, who nodded reluctantly. "Gaki managed to make a giant-ass crater while just playing with his opponent." Knowing what he was talking about, Medusa began to blush a bit, rubbing her legs together. No one noticed her but Naruto, who smirked.

Back with Zabuza, he was telling them something so they could get an accurate grasp on the scope of Naruto's power. "He was fighting both Kisame, yes that Kisame, the Montai Bijuu, and Shunshin no Shisui, and was pretty much winning. Then, this other lady that made quick work of Kisame popped up. She's right next to Naruto, by the way." He gestured up to the demoness, who Naruto was smirking at. "He sent us all away then went to town on the chick. Blew her the fuck up with one giant blast of something. Cut off the top of a mountain before hand. Tamed literal lightning before that and struck her with it. Made a giant ass pillar with another explosion before that."

Everyone, once he was done, turned to Naruto with stunned eyes, even Mei. Naruto nodded at Zabuza in thanks before addressing the crowd. "I hope you get it now. Medusa-chan here is actually the only person I know who survived all of those... well, any of those, actually. Most others dodge it or die. Those are my army killers, but I won't use them if they destroy the army I'm fighting with as well. Counter-productive, you know." The entire crowd seemed to understand just how outmatched they were, and how doomed Yagura's forces were. They were fine with Naruto going through with this alone.

Turning to Mei with a smirk, he stuck his tongue out. "Ha! I told you I should go alone! They even agree with me now!"

Mei scowled but said nothing. Naruto had a bad feeling that she'd do something dumb, but brushed it off. 'I'll try and finish this before she has a chance to. Shouldn't take THAT long.' Shaking his head, he turned to the rest of the forces. "I'll move this entire area underneath Kiri. Once things are over, you guys should probably go up there to detain the more zealous survivors and deal with the civilians. Sorry that you're delegated to clean up duty. I really am. Now, hold on tight." Naruto, once he finished giving his little announcement, closed his eye and seemingly concentrated for a second or two.

Moments later, everyone felt the ground beneath them shift suddenly, throwing many of them to the ground. Originally, the base was underwater a good distance from Kiri, but Naruto was forcing the entire base to change shape with his mind, much to their astonishment.

Once he was done, and everything stopped shaking, Naruto turned to Medusa. "You can come with me. Do well, and you get a reward..." Seeing the sparkles that entered her eyes, Naruto made sure to add a stipulation, and quickly. "...when we get back." She nodded vigorously, none the less, making Naruto sigh at her enthusiasm. 'I find it easy to believe she is half succubus. The rumors are right, though. The half-breeds ARE worse.'

With a thought, Naruto pushed open part of the ceiling, making it look similar to a box opening. "Be ready to get out here." With that, he jumped up, Medusa following along behind him. A mere second later, they appeared in the center of Kiri, and Kiri ANBU appeared around them.

They didn't bother asking any questions, only attempting to slit Naruto's throat. The ANBU froze less than an inch from his target, a flash of thread becoming visible for an instant as he struggled before Naruto twitched a finger and his body was sliced to pieces. As were all his comrades.

Naruto just began walking towards the tower that he remembered held Yagura's office. Eventually, he was surrounded by a large amount of shinobi by that point, as the death of the ANBU had sent civilians running off and screaming, attracting the attention of any shinobi.

It was a simple matter for Naruto to send his strings out, entrapping many of them and slicing them to bits, but the rest were undeterred bu the display. Naruto pulled his hands in a diagonal motion across his chest, slashing the air in front of him. With the element of surprise on his side, he cleared a path for him to walk easily, leaving bloody patches, limbs, organs, and miscellaneous body parts in his wake.

Sadly, the advantage wouldn't last. The shock wore off quickly and, with multitude of tactics and the advantage of numbers on their side, the shinobi began to attack en mass, coming at Naruto in waves. The ANBU were roused in their entirety by that point, and all of them convened on Naruto's position, making his job harder, as they managed to dodge him, as he had all his seals still on. Having had enough of the bullshit, Naruto summoned up 200 clones and told them to go to work. Turning to Medusa, he gave his orders in a voice that made her blush. "If you do well enough, I'll reward you today."

With a sense of glee, she jumped into the fray, her jabs passing right through their bodies like a hot knife through butter. Landing in the middle of a group for a moment, she grabbed the arm of a man that tried to stab her in the back of the head with a kunai, ripped it off with ease, and bashed his skull in with it, creating a sickening thud, though it was music to her ears. She did a small back flip, as they backed up to gain some space from her.

Landing on a tail made of a black arrow stuck in the ground, she chuckled darkly as she surveyed her targets. "Why'd you back away?" Her voice was back to being as demonic as before, and the sound alone was enough to paralyze many of them. "I have a prize waiting in Naruto-sama's pants, and you're keeping it from me. Let's make it quick." Just as the arrows came from her back and hovered in the air ominously, many of them picked up on the name she'd said. Naruto.

The fear that she'd implanted in them doubled upon the realization of who the one they would've fought was. Thankfully for them, they weren't fighting him. Sadly, Medusa had surrounded a group of hundreds of them in a ring of arrows, one that was shrinking without their knowledge.

The arrows on her back shot forward at the same time the arrows she had on the ground forced many of them towards her against their will, flinging them right to their deaths. BY the end of the wave, it was a literal blood bath, as bodies hung of the arrows, bathing her in blood.

As her smile broadened from the look of horror on the faces of the shinobi outside the original range of her circle, a red glow entered her eyes, her face shadowed by her hair. "C'mon. I don't wanna spend the rest of the day with you guys. Naruto-sama is so much better than any amount of you, so stop trying to entertain me with your inferior ability." No one was sure whether she was talking about fighting or not, but they had more important things to worry about, like trying to stay alive. Not that worrying about it helped much.

With Naruto

Many of the ANBU, along with over half the army, had remained in Naruto's way, so he had to deal with them himself. Deciding to go with a divide and conquer strategy, Naruto split into his normal four forms. Ura Naruto glanced at Nagare, Kyodo, and Mujihi, giving them a silent message to begin immediately. Nagare went straight over the group of ANBU directly in front of them, while Mujihi shot off to the right, tearing through shinobi with invisible strings, Kyodo mirroring him on the left.

Ura Naruto just looked at the ANBU in front of him with a bored look. "You know I don't really care about you too much, more about Yagura. The more of you get in my way, the more of you will die. Not threatening you, just tellin' you what's gonna happen." He shrugged. "Well, the moment you go against me, your life is mine to do as I please, and that tends to be ending it. Your doing it willingly now. Washing my hands o-" One of the ANBU rushed him mid sentence, tanto drawn and poised to run him through the heart, though he just took it, the blade breaking against his skin once it got past his skintight sleeveless shirt. "I was talking, you know."

The ANBU jumped back, surprised but not forgetting her training. As soon as she was clear, a ball of water and a ball of lightning was headed Naruto's way. "Wow, you guys are suicidal." Naruto swung his leg in an arc, a compressed blade of pure force flying from it and blowing through the two jutsu with ease, carrying on to each of the casters, splitting them in two.

Naruto yawned, covering his mouth with his right hand as he put his left in his pocket. From his right side, a much larger bullet of water came at him from another ANBU, though he just brought his hand from his mouth and pointed a finger at it in a gun shape before jabbing his finger forward impossibly fast, a compressed bullet of pure force flying off. "Shigan: Dan(Finger Pistol: Bullet)." It flew through the attack, making it disperse around the point it was penetrated, but went on to go through its casters forehead, making the woman drop to the ground with a hole through her skull. Naruto just blew at the tip of his finger like a gun.

Naruto hooked his fingers together before cracking them. "Okay, I'll try to make them all as fast as that one, but no promises. It'll probably only get worse if you try too hard to dodge, but it'll only take a second or two longer, so be my guest. Or give up, that's an option too."

With Kyodo

Kyodo, once he'd stopped his run through the crowd and the pile of bodies ceased to grow, he stopped to take a look around. "Not the best, but I guess that makes my job easier." Thinking twice about it, he deactivated his chakra strings and brought out his two zanbatou. "At least try to make this interesting, ne?" With a single swing, he made a trench in the ground, splitting a house in half and utterly annihilating those who stood directly in the blast. "Gatsuga."

Lifting the sword from its position in the ground with ease, he looked around at the crowd of shinobi ready to attack him. "Tell you what, I'll even call out my attacks so you know when they're coming. Gatsuga." With that, he swung his sword horizontally, beheading the shinobi who'd jumped at him, and over a dozen behind him who were too slow to dodge. "I'll even keep them that weak."

With a series of them, Kyodo quickly found himself getting bored. They threw jutsu at him, but it was a simple matter to deflect or demolish them. They attacked him physically, but that ended rather badly, so it became rather rare. A few even tried illusions, which he barely felt and didn't even need to try in order to fend off. The even rushed him all at once at one point, but a quick spinning motion had ended that assault, decimating their numbers greatly.

Disappointed, he got rid of his swords. "I feel like I've shamed my blades by drawing them on grunts like you people. I'll just end this now, 'cause I don't see things getting too much better from here." Releasing many of his chakra seals, he let his ears and tails out, though they were distinctly... different. Specifically, they were feline and black. "Huh, that's new. Was expecting fox, but I like cats, so it ain't too bad." Some of his enemies would be laughing at him right then and there, if they weren't paralyzed by the output of raw chakra. It was enough that Kyodo was actually covered in a dense haze of it.

Shrugging, he turned his attention to the shinobi once more. "If you still wanna fight after this, you are officially crazy. And legitimately suicidal." Putting his now clawed hands in front of him, he channeled a large potion of his extremely potent chakra into the claws, creating a blue version of the claw attack that was used against Medusa. "Desgarron(Laceration). Hope this doesn't kill all of you, 'cause I don't wanna damaged Kiri's military TOO much." With that, he sent each set of five, huge, chakra claws off on either side of him, creating another set in the event of the rest of them being suicidal.

It tore through their ranks with ease, ripping bodies in two when it encountered a person and blowing those directly next to it away. Kyodo scoffed at the pathetic display. 'This is so much weaker than the one used against Medusa, but they can't even block it, let alone stop it. I don't think Kiri's military will miss these guys all that much.' Shaking his head, he just looked to the remaining soldiers, finding them drop to their knees in surrender.

"Huh. Normally, they fight on in some fucked up sense of honor or pride. Glad to see Kiri shinobi are smarter than that. Hope for you guys yet, I guess." Kyodo shrugged. "Until then, gonna have to arrest ya'll. Sorry about that." With a snap of his fingers, cuffs appeared around each of their hands and wrists, but each of these were made purely out of chakra, and they were using up any decent chakra sources to sustain themselves, draining the ones they kept captive until they were too weak to break them then draining chakra at the same rate their body produced it to keep it that way.

With Mujihi

It was a simple matter for Mujihi to kill each and every shinobi there, as there wasn't a single kage-level ninja in the group, nor anyone even close, for that matter. "Ugh, I got stuck with the runts, didn't I?" There were genin, chunin, jonin, and a few ANBU thrown into the mix of those he was slaughtering, but he couldn't really tell the difference, as they all fared the same against the chakra strings, or youki strings, in his case, he was emitting from each finger tip.

They couldn't even get close to him through the storm of strings. He didn't even have to try in order to cut them down, just walk towards them, really. "This is getting real boring. C'mon, gimme some sort of challenge!" His request was met with absolutely nothing substantial. In the end, he turned them off, having been completely disappointed in the shinobi, but understanding the difficulty of his chakra string defense.

Instead, he made two clones, each of them landing in the crowd a distance away from him. "Gonna end this quick, because you shinobi wannabe's are starting to annoy me. Cero." He charged up a beam on a finger from each hand, aiming at his clones. At that point, he felt Kyodo spike his power. "I ain't releasing for these fuck-nuggets, but whatever. He probably just felt like ending it pretty quickly too. Unless he actually got someone strong in his crowd..." Thinking it over, he answered his own question. "Nah." With that, he fired, taking out the shinobi who'd jumped at him, trying to take advantage of his distracted state.

She was incinerated instantly by the beam, as were countless shinobi behind her. He'd fired the other one at the same time, creating two beams of destruction that carved a path through the forces. The beams impacted with the clones pretty quickly, but they just held out a hand each and bounced it back. Now Mujihi had a beam of chakra that got stronger with each passing second. So, naturally, he began to spin with it, using it like a lawn mower of doom, with the enemy shinobi being the grass. He'd definitely sell the creation, as every single one was cut down evenly, leaving not one standing.

With Nagare

Floating above a group of them, Nagare stared down with blank, green eyes. Even as they threw jutsu after jutsu at him, projectiles ranging from kunai to fuma shuriken, he didn't bother moving. He just stopped the simple attacks with a thought, the power nor chakra behind them strong enough to penetrate his barrier.

One of them even happened to have a katon chakra nature, rare for Kirigakure shinobi, but he still just stood in midair, staring down even as the excessive ball of fire engulfed him, though parted around him would be the more accurate way to describe it.

After a while, he just descended to the ground, the shinobi making a ring around him as he landed. Many drew kunai and braced themselves, other drew swords and prepared to attack or to receive one. But nothing happened. He didn't move a muscle. Until he spoke, that is. "I bear you all no grudge, but you stand in the way of Naruto-sama's will. For that reason, you will all fall. Blame your own stubbornness for your fates, as he only wishes to uproot the corruption of your government... No, blame yourselves, your own blindness, for following orders that you know would cripple your country."

Finally, he shook his head, the first real move he'd made since he'd arrived. "Even as I am," he said, referring to the strip he had around his eyes, "I see far more than any of you. Now come, embrace the fate you have chosen for yourselves with honor, and die with some dignity." Despite saying this, he didn't raise a hand, nor draw his sword. He just stood there, waiting for them to come to him or, in a sudden burst of intelligence, surrender.

One of the swordsmen, well, swordswomen, who was shaking in her sandals, managed to get out a message. "Why don't you draw your sword?" Her voice was surprisingly calm despite the tenseness and obvious fear her body language portrayed, something shared by many of her comrades.

Nagare bothered to shake his head, though he didn't bother to turn it in her direction, as his eyes were covered anyway. "A sign of a master swordsman," he began, "is never needing to draw their sword until their opponents prove their worth. Now fight or surrender before I am forced to chose for you."

With his words, they charged him, many trying and failing to cut him. Not one attack even touched him, though they likely couldn't touch him. He just dodged around each attack, breaking necks and other bones with quick blows, twitches in the eyes of his observers. Organs ruptured, skin broke and let blood flow. Weapons shattered and/or clattered to the floor as their masters fell en mass.

In all of it, he hadn't moved from his starting position, just reacting to those who would condemn themselves to death despite his warning. Eventually, the tide of the truly suicidal ebbed, allowing for a reprieve in the battle, though Nagare would've preferred to end it all there.

He didn't bother looking around, as he knew exactly where every one of his opponents were already, took to the air. "If you wish to surrender, speak now. I will not give you another chance. This is the extent of my mercy for those who would stand against Naruto-sama." A great many of them shook, and at least half of those who remained surrendered, dropping to their knees and holding up their hands. "Good. For those of you who wish to live, take refuge within the homes temporarily. I will deal with those who wish to die in the way they've chosen to fall."

Those who wished to leave scrambled to the surrounding buildings, going out of their way to get away from the betrayed stares of their comrades. Nagare bowed his head in honor of those who remained. "For those of you who have chosen to stay, as your soul leaves your physical form, remember this: you have chosen this fate." He put his hands together, a green energy pouring out of the space between them. "I bear you all no grudge..." He pulled his hands apart, releasing a lance of sorts. "But, for the sake of my master, I must end you all. Peace unto you in the next life."

Grabbing the lance with a hand, he rose higher, going back wards a decent amount as he threw it. The moment it left his hand, he appeared atop one of the homes some surrendered shinobi resided in. the resulting pillar of green energy could be seen for miles around. It went up high enough to part the skies, leaving naught but an impossibly deep hole in the ground where there was once a road.

He dis appeared, appearing in the center of the gaping pit that now resided in Kiri. Much to the further shock of the onlookers, he just snapped his fingers, causing the hole to fill itself in an instant. "The will of god... will not be denied."

Back with Ura Naruto

After he had given that display, they all just rushed him, trying to take him with numbers, as they all knew from the fact that he could kill with a flick from a distance they couldn't match him in skill. "Okay, so you ARE gonna make this easy. Smart." With a thought, he was gone in a blur. "Soru." He appeared in front of the group, his leg ready to be brought around. "Rankyaku." He kicked horizontally, creating a wave that beheaded a large amount of them in an instant.

Landing, he turned and released another, pushing back or outright killing the shinobi who tried to rush him from behind. Releasing some of his physical seals, he stood, observing the recovering army. "You know you're outmatched, yeah? Just quit and go home. I got nothing against any of you sorry sods." None of them moved, looking at him with a sense of hate that he sighed at. "Why must you all throw yourselves at your death?"

Suddenly, one of the men sprung at him, rage burning in his eyes, though the fear was still very present. "YOU KILLED KIRA-CHAN!" His blade bounced off Naruto's chest, as he'd activated his tekkai technique.

Looking up at the man, he blinked. "Better now? I can bring her back, you know." The man, along with many of the others blinked at him. "My abilities go far beyond firing of blasts of pure force or hardening my body to the point of deflecting sword strikes. The measure of a god is not how much they can take away, but how much they can give. I can give the gift of life, the most valuable gift one can give. I can also give it back to someone who's lost it, if I so chose." The man started shaking before falling to his knees.

Tears began falling out of the man's eyes as he stared up at Naruto, as many did. "Y-you would d-do that for m-me?"

Ura Naruto nodded. "A soul is a simple thing for me to drag back from the after life."

At that point, the man bowed before him on all fours. "I surrender. I don't care what happens, just bring her back. Please." A great many of them took the same stance, bowing in different forms in a sense of reverence to him and his apparent power.

Naruto waved him off. "After everything is finished here, I will aide you. Worry not, I don't wish to harm any of you, but if you stand in my way again, I will end you, and will not return you to this world." There was a mass "Hai, Naruto-sama!" that ran through the crowd, which Naruto nodded at.

Walking through the crowd towards the tower, he gave orders. "Collect any dead you can find. If I have a body, I can return them, even if it's only one part of their body."

He didn't even have to look to see the others return to his location, not too surprised to see everyone kneeling in his wake, for some reason. Instead, they just dispersed into their respective energy, Mujihi into youki, Kyodo into chakra, and Nagare into natural energy. Flowing back into Naruto, his form morphed back into his multi-colored hair state, his suit coming back into existence around him too.

Stomping his foot, he opened up the floor for the rebels to pour out. "You guys... help with collecting the dead and dealing with the civilians. Don't burn any bodies, though; I have a plan. Nothing better to do anymore." With that, he made his way toward Yagura's tower.

Unsurprisingly, Yagura decided to come out and greet him. Naruto just stared at the diminutive Kage once he appeared, giving him a stare that would unnerve anyone else. "Hello again, Mr. Mizukage." Yagura looked at him blankly. Internally, he prompted Kogo and Kurama to get up. 'Oi! Lazy-ass fox #1 and Lazy-ass fox #2, get the fuck up! We're facing a jinchuriki!'

He got a mumbled 'I'm up, I'm up.' from Kogo and a growl from Kurama, but he knew they were paying attention now. Nodding, he refocused on Yagura, getting closer to him in an instant.

Yagura stared at him impassively, his eyes the same glassy purple Naruto remembered. "I do not believe we have met." Naruto didn't verbally respond, but he shifted into the form he'd dubbed "Kyodo", the one every single person with shinobi training was familiar with in Kirigakure.

Every "loyal" Kiri shinobi stopped to gawk at him, many beginning to shiver in fear, knowing that many of them would die if they fought him again, or even his clones again. Suddenly, those who hadn't pieced it together previously were extremely glad that they'd taken the chance to quit when it was given to them.

Naruto didn't give his customary condescending smirk at the response of the Kiri shinobi. He didn't even take his eyes off Yagura. He just kept staring. 'He's worthy of at least this much respect. He could match me in a fight five years ago, and that is more than the majority of shinobi could even dream of claiming.'

A simple thought later and Yagura was sent flying into the ocean that surrounded Kiri by a pillar of earth that popped up. Stomping on the ground, he opened up the box that the rebels were still in. "I'm fighting Yagura now, but we're doing this where there'll be little collateral damage. Watch the rest of them, but don't attack. I've allowed them to live for surrendering." With his quick commands given to the stunned silent Mei, he disappeared, speeding off towards the area Yagura landed like a bullet, leaving a trail in the water and kicking up substantially sized waves.

When he arrived a few seconds later, he stopped and waited for Yagura, who he sensed underwater. While waiting, Kogo decided to give an observation. 'Uh, Naru-chan?' He nodded, still staring down where he felt Yagura's chakra. 'You were right. Something is definitely wrong with him.'

'How so?'

Surprisingly, Kurama was the one to get into the specifics. 'I feel a Nise Gaiken around the ningen. After seeing Kogo's memories, it has been there since you met him in Kiri for the first time. His chakra is also for too... calmed for a container. That's not HIS control, it's him BEING controlled.' Naruto just nodded again, as this only confirmed his own suspicions.

He would've conversed more on it if not for Yagura taking that moment to attack. With his chakra, he was able to make an army of mizu bunshin, which he promptly sent at Naruto. Having no time to activate his seals, he just deflected them as they shot out of the water.

They came in an almost never ending barrage, so Naruto just kept his fist moving. Smacking one to the side, bringing his other fist over to deflect the next, using his foot to smack the following one to the right and using that momentum to flip sideways, out of the way of the next. He jumped after that, dodging another barrage, but the next wave had already corrected their trajectory, leading their shot to hit him. Jumping around off the clones bodies was all Naruto had to do there to dodge each barrage of clones until he thought of what to do.

In the end, the answer was simple. Find the real Yagura. Dedicating a portion of his mind to concentrating on dodging, as it'd already become easy, he found Yagura's chakra signature and grabbed him with a chakra arm. He was still underwater so he dragged the small Kage up, dismissing his resistance easily, as he caught him off guard.

This ended the never ending waves of clones, as he'd been making more the whole time. When he brought Yagura to the surface, his grip was broken, much to his annoyance. 'Shit. Could've ended it all right there.' Sighing, he just got into a simple taijutsu stance, as he wasn't doing any serious hand-to-hand combat with Yagura.

With that, Yagura took his staff off his back, preparing for Naruto to come. It was a good thing, too, as Naruto came at him, invisible to anyone under Kage level as he released ALL his physical seals. Naruto slammed a chakra covered fist down on Yagura, or at least would've, if not for the staff that blocked his attack.

Yagura swung the staff, trying to gut Naruto with the hook on the end of it but missing Naruto entirely due to his speed. Naruto just appeared further behind the Kage, out of his sight, and sent chakra strings to wrap around him. It was simple enough, and extremely effective.

It would've been a battle finisher, too, if Yagura hadn't noticed at the last second, blocking with his staff. It was an adamantine staff, so nothing Naruto did in his current state would cut through it. Naruto, despite his inability to cut through the weapon, knew it couldn't protect all of Yagura at once, so made the strings wrap around him, trying to encircle the Kage, and, inevitably, shred him.

The maneuver worked, slicing Yagura to bits, but Naruto jumped to the side as soon as it did, dodging an extremely large water dragon in the process. He'd heard, if only barely, a muted cry of "Suiton: Suiryudan!(Water Style: Water Dragon Technique)." from below him, giving him a split second warning. Glancing back at his strings, he confirmed that what he just killed was a clone.

Not wasting the time to acknowledge his failure further, he jumped just as the dragon came down on him and Yagura surfaced, coming out of the water as his grey hair fell in front of his pupil-less, purple eyes, dripping wet. Naruto, while sky high, threw his hands forward, twisting his middle finger over his index on each hand. "KYOFU(Gale Force Wind)!"

Sadly for Yagura, Naruto released a large amount of his chakra seals while he flew upwards, so instead of a small twister, he released a true natural disaster, and it was all headed towards the child-like powerhouse named Yagura.

Yagura wasn't a Kage for nothing, though. He'd mastered raw water manipulation to the point of not needing his bijuu's connection to water to accomplish what he was about to do. Quickly putting his staff on his back, he thrust his hands out to the side and concentrated, not having enough time for a full technique.

The water flowed around him and finished forming into a shell that surrounded him just in time to receive the punishing force for Naruto's technique. And receive it it did, barely withstanding the assault of the wind pounding down on it.

When everything died down around Yagura, he released the shield, already grabbing his staff in preparation. When he got a view of what was around him, he was confused before shock settle in. It was the bottom of the ocean he was in. Looking around frantically, he saw that the water that'd been pushed aside was rushing in.

Above, Naruto was looking down with a smirk. "Can't reflect THAT now can you?" he muttered to himself, remembering how his conventional attacks were rendered useless last time he faced the Kage. He scowled when his sensed alerted him to the Kage shooting upwards at an extremely fast pace.

Naruto, who'd stayed airborne, blurred left as Yagura shot up past him, gaining a long, deep cut on his right arm which healed moments later. Unfortunately, that wasn't all there was to the attack. Yagura had been propelling himself upwards with water, creating a water spout. Said water shot out spikes at Naruto, impaling him in multiple places.

While it didn't kill him, it immobilized Naruto temporarily, though just for a moment. A moment was all Yagura needed, as he'd been going though seals, though they were with one hand. The moment he passed Naruto and began falling, he said in a monotone voice, "Suiton: Bakusuishoha(Water Style: Exploding Water Shockwave)."

The spikes were pushed through Naruto's body, dragging him in that direction as well. Yagura had been concentrating to make a few more stab through him, though they weren't quite as big. The force from them, though, sent Naruto skipping across the now blood tinted water like a stone. He went all the way until he hit the walls of Kiri, passing straight through that and a few towers until he landed in front of the Rebels.

Everything on the former battle field stopped when he landed in a heap in front of them. Yagura appeared moments later, having kept up by having a mizu bunshin(water clone) throw him from midair before he skated on the water with the momentum.

He wasn't completely unscathed either. His right arm was broken in multiple places, just about every patch of skin you could see on his body was bruised, and a lot of his clothes had been removed or torn by the rushing water, leaving him without much of his clothing.

All the still "loyal" shinobi began to get excited, thinking their leader had managed to kill the powerhouse, though that thought quickly faded when they saw him twitch, then begin to get up as if he HADN'T just been impaled in multiple areas. He did stagger a bit when he reached his knees, making the rebels worry even more.

Naruto, gaining the undivided attention of every other shinobi, reached his feet, letting out an unholy growl. When he got to his feet, everyone gasped as they saw him. He just chuckled, though his eyes were glowing. His voice was oddly playful when he spoke. "You are going to pay for that one, Yagura-tan."

His body was riddled with holes. His chest had a giant one in the center and a few more around it, some even intersecting to make a bigger one. His right arm was ripped clean off at the shoulder, a curved ending at his shoulder showing that the spikes had done that. His legs were no better, though they managed to stay on. Thankfully, he managed to keep the damage minimal to his head, meaning he'd turned his head to the side and only got a hole blown through his cheeks.

Cracking his neck casually, though the air was gradually getting heavier, he continued. "I can play hardball too, Yagura. Strings may be my favorite way to kill, but I'm better at..." As he paused, everything on him began healing at an astounding rate. Holes closed up before everyone's eyes, muscle and skin formed and fitted together miraculously, his arm regrew, and any broken bones from the landing snapped back into place. Even his clothes returned. Then, after releasing ALL his chakra seals, he started to glow. After a moment, he split into four parts.

They were Nagare, Kyodo, Mujihi, and Ura Naruto, and each of them were giving off something as well. Nagare had a green aura around him, Kyodo had a blue one that faded to white as it got closer to him, and Mujihi had a black one that switched to a blood red as it reached the edges. Naruto himself just stood in the middle of the triangle they formed, arms crossed and eyes closed. He didn't visibly radiate a thing, but he gave off an aura of power unlike the other three.

As one, they opened their mouths, and eyes, in the case of Ura Naruto, and continued. "Utter annihilation." No one moved. No one breathed. They couldn't. The extreme force bearing down on them was beyond what most had experienced in their lives, and those that had were having bijuu flashbacks.

Suddenly, it shut off. It all just came to such a sudden stop that they could only gasp as their bodies recovered. Many fell to their knees, staring at Naruto in awe. The amount of chakra that now saturated the air made it rather hard to breathe for most of them, and just looking in his direction was enough to make the feeling increase dramatically. The only one who didn't react like that was Medusa. And Yagura.

Feeling the need to respond to such a display, Yagura closed his eyes for a moment before they opened suddenly. He began to saturate the air with youki as he went into his version two, full three tailed state. Surprisingly, it was more potent that any of their displays of power, though it paled to what their power would've been combined.

There was a tense silence as Yagura stared at them with his now white, pupil-less eyes. Before anyone moved, Naruto spoke. "I recommend we move. I'd rather not destroy the village as I turn you to ash." Yagura didn't respond verbally, only dashing at Naruto at speeds that were outright invisible to anyone under Kage level, even managing to match his previous speeds.

He almost stuck his hand through the chest of the blonde Naruto, or at least attempt to, but Mei appeared there, spitting globs of lava at him which were shrugged off, much to her shock. She was even more shocked when she found an arm through he chest, its claws touching Naruto's shirt lightly.

The silence seemed to grow heavy as everyone registered what that meant. Naruto's eyes were wider than they had been in a long time. In his head, he felt Kogo face palm and heard Kurama mumble, 'This dumb bitch.' He was far too shocked to reprimand the foxes.

She didn't get a chance to respond as Yagura ripped his arm out of her chest, flinging her to the side, only to receive a blast of lightning in the face, courtesy of Kyodo, and get slammed by a chakra sword, courtesy of a now crying Chojuro. "HOW DARE YOU!?" both of them shouted, but Chojuro had always been one of the most devoted to protecting Mei.

As soon as he saw that, he went to town on Yagura, slamming him relentlessly with Hiramekarei in the form of a hammer. Kyodo let the boy have his moment, despite how much he wanted to take his place. By the time the boy had tuckered himself out, there was an enormous crater in the ground. Instead of gloating, he fell to his knees, crying despite his best efforts to not.

Naruto, on the other hand, hadn't moved. The air around him got really dense. A column if the really dense air seemed to surround him, growing grey and wavy. It sped up, becoming unstable as it did, and black streaks appeared in it. Instead of moving to help, he just addressed Nagare. When he spoke, his voice showed none of the rage his eyes did. "Do not let her die, Nagare."

Nagare made a clone out of natural energy, sending it to Mei. Nagare nodded once the clone moved, bowing to Naruto a moment later. "By your will, Naruto-sama."

Naruto turned to the crater that Yagura was in, only to see a tail slam through Chojuro's stomach, coming out the other end covered in blood. Naruto raised his hand, pulling him off and dragging his now limp body towards him with chakra. "This one too, Nagare."

He didn't even wait for a response as he made his way towards Yagura's crater. It was a simple matter to grab him by the throat, as the naturally corrosive properties of youki had no effect on him. Before anyone could move, Yagura was on a crash course back through the wall he'd sent Naruto through not too long ago.

Naruto barely had to glance at the other three. They knew how he felt at that moment. In an instant, they were back in him, empowering him further and making the aura get denser, obscuring his body. He didn't change back to how he normally looked, though. He didn't change much at all. He just kept walking slowly towards the hole Yagura had made, contacting both demon foxes in his head. 'Six tails, version two.' It wasn't a request, it was a command. He didn't even stop to consider if he was ready for that much, as he'd only been able to use five previously. He only stopped at the hole, getting on all fours.

Around his body, a cloak of youki formed, only visible as the haze around him dissipated in a wave of force. Naruto was feeling overkill, so he turned into Mujihi, adding his own youki to the mix. His hair went the deep red that was associated with the youki based form. As he was going all out now, own ears and tails came out, the tails growing as numerous as the youki tails, though, oddly, there were only 5 at that moment. His eyes turned fully red and his skin began peeling. Opening his mouth and exhaling, a stream of red came out. At this point, he was breathing pure power. So much that everyone backed away from him, even as far away as they already were.

A flash happened, and all of his body was covered in a dark red. His eyes were white, as were the visible parts of inside his mouth. He had claws on both his hands and feet, and he was digging them into the ground, growling. Suddenly, the sky got darker, and more of the dark substance he was covered in came down, a swirl of youki guiding it down to him.

Once it hit, it merged with him, calming down for a moment before his tails flashed, increasing to 6 in number, and bones formed around him. Fox bones. A bone paw fell next to his own. Vertebrae formed down his own spine, reaching his head. Shoulder blades formed above his. A skull formed around his own. Sadly, even though it was Naruto fighting, he was most definitely not in control.

After a moment of silence, the fox skull around his head opened, showing his face. He exhaled dangerously, visible youki coming out in a cloud before he disappeared, moving at impossibly fast speed for almost anyone. He was perched on top of a wall, staring out at where he'd thrown Yagura.

Instead of dashing off in the direction, he formed a sphere in front of his face, its contents becoming so dense at a certain point that the already compromised wall he was perched atop began to crack and crumble. It was only at that point that he stopped, condensing the ball then... eating it.

Yagura had apparently recovered by that point, as a trail of displaced water was lining his path towards the village, though it had turned a sharp 90 degrees when he felt the concentration of youki. It was then that Naruto released his bijuudama(tailed beast ball), but it wasn't in the normal ball form, or even beam form. This was a gatling gun. And it was carrying explosive ammo.

He fired off a multitude of shots at Yagura until he ran out, many of them almost making contact but being barely dodged by the bijuu enhance Kage. Once the barrage ended, everything was silent for a moment as everyone surveyed the damage.

The small domes of exploding youki were still visible in the distance, many of them hitting the small, thankfully uninhabited(for the most part) islands that surrounded Kiri. With the distance, it was difficult for any of them to judge just how large they were, but, as they could still feel shock waves in the village, the loyalist shinobi had to hope it was close, else their Kage stood no chance.

Yagura hadn't been completely still during this, though. He'd begun dashing toward the village, going underwater in the beginning as cover. Naruto wasn't fooled, and began dashing along the waters surface, not even needing to using chakra or youki to stay afloat. He was going that fast.

Eventually, Yagura surfaced, less than a second away from Naruto, though that was still rather far, with the speed they were travelling. He jumped out of the water, using it as a launch pad to get above Naruto. Rolling into a ball, he spun at high speeds, surpassing even those they were moving at.

Naruto jumped as well, seeing Yagura go airborne. Even as Yagura went into a ball, he made no move to dodge. In the end, as they were about to collide, Naruto just brought his claws against the side of the Kage's rolled up form, sending off to the side with a show of strength that would make Tsunade feel threatened.

Yagura had no way of stopping the momentum he gained from that blow, so, in essence, he became a skipping stone. Naruto, on the other hand, still had the ability to push on the air with youki/chakra. Still going at high speeds, he chased after Yagura, pushing himself to go faster and faster as his blood-lust rose. Every second he spent in that form made him want to kill the object of his rage even more. It was only through sheer force of will that he hadn't just blown Yagura up already.

Catching up with the Kage/skipping stone, Naruto batted him to another side, repeating the process a few time and dealing major damage to the helpless Yagura. Eventually, he went fast enough that he beat the sphere to his intended collision point, so he just used his tails to slam Yagura into the ocean, hitting him so hard that he sent him into the ocean floor from where they were, creating a clean hole down into a part of the earth.

All was silent until the column of water collapsed. Then, Naruto let out a deafening roar, one that people in Nami no Kuni could possibly hear. The roar itself was filled with power, making the water create many foot tall waves originating from his position.

Sadly, that wasn't the end, as the water beneath the jinchuriki bubbled before blue spikes began to jut out of the water. The water began to bend upwards ominously, still concealing the full form of the now fully transformed jinchuriki. Now, he was facing the fully formed Sanbi.

Naruto's white eyes stared into Yagura's single golden left eye before one of Yagura's tails came up from below Naruto at a surprising speed, sending him flying up until a large palm came out of the water, sending him flying towards Kiri once more, though he was angled a bit off.

The one touch was enough to active Yagura's Sangosho(coral palm), making his body get encrusted with the stuff. It was enough to jolt him out of his trance when he hit an island right outside Kiri, completely covered in coral.

Drawing natural energy into the shell, he quickly managed to shatter it, though, when he came back out, his six-tailed form had faded. "F-fuck. It should've lasted longer than THAT." He didn't have long to come up with a battle plan, though, as he was able to feel Yagura coming closer. Using natural energy and the two fox's youki, he quickly replenished his reserves, shocked to find that they had almost doubled.

Despite himself, and knowing the work the increased chakra represented, he smiled. 'Okay, I think I have enough chakra to pull off full power now. I'll need that bijuu transformation here.'

Surprisingly, Kogo denied him. 'Maybe you have enough chakra, but we haven't even BEGUN training that. You'll just go on a rampage, then become one of us, killing you.' If only to further his shock, Kurama was in full agreement. Sighing, he knew he'd have to face him the old fashioned way, with a technique he didn't want to use unless he faced an Uchiha.

Taking deep breaths as Yagura drew nearer and nearer, he took the time to gather ALL his energies, condensing them into his core as best he could. He turned into his blonde haired form once more, though, this time, none of the others were visible. Behind him, a giant clad in armor that obscured every part of it appeared. It was a complete chakra construct, requiring maximum concentration for Naruto to make with his screwed up control. Shouting towards Yagura, though the now silent Kiri heard it too, Naruto announced, "Uzumaki Hijutsu: Kami no Sozo Siasho no Keishiki: Kokujo Tengen Myo(Uzumaki Secret Technique: Creation of God First Form: Vidyaraja of Kalasutra's Heavenly Punishment). Prepare for divine wrath."

It had a grey material below its armor, visible in whatever spots the armor left. The armor itself was seemingly made of bone. Two halves of a jaw covered its face, the teeth coming together where its mouth would be. The horned skull of... something inhuman was the top of its helmet, giving it horns of its own. A rib-cage surrounded the constructs own, and to layers of bone like plating covered down to its waist. Shoulder pads made of layered bone and forearms guards in the same fashion were present. Along the back of the fingers of each hand were the bones of another, larger hand, sharpened at the end to give claws. The waist down had many plated bone coverings in the front, back, and on each side.

And, in each hand, it held a black sword parallel to the ground, blade facing down. Each sword was longer than the already huge arm that held it, curving up towards the sky. It's guard was a skull that had the blade coming out of its mouth.(A/N: Google hollowfied Kokujo Tengen Myo for a good visual. Also, this is Naruto's answer to Susanoo... at least part one of it.)

All in all, it was a terrifying sight for the entirety of the Kiri populace, Rebel or no, shinobi or civilian. There was no movement going on at that moment, no clearing of bodies or ushering of civilians. All of them were focused on the ground breaking(literally) battle they were able to witness. It was a clash of titans. One that none were going to forget at any point in their lives.

Suddenly, Naruto brought one hand down, making the giant slam its sword into the corresponding place. When the rubble cleared, Naruto scowled, as Yagura had arrived. He had to divert his attention to the jinchuriki as he rolled into a ball and barreled towards him. As such, he was unable to witness a man popping out of the rubble, and barely able to feel it through the haze of Isobu's youki.

Spinning around with his hands parallel, he made his giant do the same motion, slamming its swords into Yagura's side. The jinchuriki's giant form slammed into the ground, making a small trench as it traveled back into the water.

Once it resurfaced, which took seconds, it stared at Naruto. Much to Naruto's surprise, a figure jumped on Yagura's head. It was black robed and masked, so Naruto had nothing to identify the person by, except the single eye hole of the mask itself and the messy hair the person had.

Naruto stood silently, observing the figure, who did the same. After a tense silence, the figure spoke, though it was in a voice only Naruto could hear. "You almost broke my toy, Naruto-san." Naruto nodded, his movement smooth enough that one might think he was relaxed.

After a few seconds more of silence, Naruto decided to respond, as the man seemed to clam up. "I'd say sorry, but you're toy was a bit of a dick. I have two questions, though. Were you in control of Yagura this whole time?" The figure nodded silently. "Okay. Now, will you give up peacefully? I don't really care about capturing you at this moment, so you can just leave."

Surprisingly, the figure adopted a thinking pose. "Well... I COULD do that. Or... I could kill you."

Naruto smirked. "Sadly, you don't have the ability to do that. I'm not saying you aren't strong or anything, but there is a special kind of power needed to end my life at this point. And I don't sense a shred of it in you."

Naruto wasn't sure, but he had a good feeling that he'd made the man scowl. "Oh? That's quite unfortunate... if you are being truthful. Let us test that, first." One of Yagura's tails came up from behind the duo, pointing at Naruto.

Thinking it was gonna shoot forward, Naruto went into motion the moment he saw movement on the tail, dashing to the side. He stopped, but then felt something enter his chest and stomach, pushing through his clothes and making them fall to the side. Looking down, he realized that it was some of the spikes that were on Yagura's tail. Looking back where he was, he saw that the ground was covered in them.

Normally, this would heal, but, for some reason, Naruto felt himself getting weaker. 'W-what? Again!?' Putting up a tough facade for as long as he could, he sent youki to the opening as soon as he pulled out the spike. "See? This can't kill me. Only a select few on this planet can end my life, and you are most definitely not one of them."

His tough act worked. "Well, it would seem I am in a battle I can't win. In that case, I will concede. Violently." With that, the man disappeared in a spiral just as Yagura roared in anger and pain, his single eye's pupil contracting, a Sharingan pattern appearing in them.

Naruto, thankful that the man was gone, fell to his knees, his Kokujo Tengen Myo falling to pieces behind him. 'Guys. I'm in a bit of trouble. I don't know how, but that attack manage to actually hurt me.'

Kurama was the one to answer as Kogo was working extremely hard on keeping the boy alive. 'All of the bijuu's powers came from a mass of natural energy, Naruto. We got the biggest portion, so we got the closest connection to nature, but the others still have it. Isobu, no, Yagura attacked from the water, so he could've collected as much natural energy he wanted in that environment. Now, no more questions, we have to heal you or yo-'

He was cut off by Yagura's palm slamming into Naruto, sending him into the ground. Again and again, Yagura slammed, creating a deepening crater with a hole in the center. Eventually, he switched to his tails, slamming them down into Naruto. 'I-I'm gonna die...'

The word die echoed through his mind over and over again. He'd always thought he'd be cursed to outlive everyone he knew, restricted to only knowing the bijuu themselves and any others who discovered the secret and didn't throw their lives away. 'He. Well ain't this a bitch. I guess I'll be seeing my baa-chan again after all.' He closed his eyes, accepting the blows that Yagura rained down in him. Oddly, dying wasn't that bad of thought in his mind.

Eventually, they stopped, and Naruto dimly wondered why. It was then that Yagura began charging a bijuudama, aiming it at the hole. 'Ha. That's a bit overkill, Yagura.' It took his pain addled mind a few more seconds to register what would've happened if it hit. 'Shit. That'll hit the village.'

Naruto could still feel Kogo and Kurama desperately trying to keep him alive, and he felt an odd sense of warmth at the thought. 'Never thought someone would be keeping me alive again. Maybe they'll help me with this, too.' He decided he wanted to see the two of them at that moment. It wasn't like his body was going to move any time soon.

Naruto's Mindscape

He relished the feeling of not having every bit of his body not screaming in pain to the point of his mind reflexively muting them."Oi!" he called out to both demon foxes in his head, watching sadly as the forest he'd made for Kogo began to wilt and die. "Instead of this futile effort, why don't you go out there and stop that bijuudama. I feel like that's more important right now."

Kurama scoffed as both he and Kogo sat on the yellowing grass, still concentrating. "You matter far more than any of those villages, you know." He went back to concentrating, trying to force more of his youki through the seal.

Sighing, Naruto sat down across from them. "You know, it's been real fun." They ignored him, still concentrating. "I mean, seriously. I wish I had a bit more time to get to know you both better. Especially you, Kurama. At least with Kogo, we had almost two years in which the only constants were each other. I never really got to spend too much time with you, now that I think about it." Neither of them responded, though, now there were tears trailing down Kurama's face, surprisingly.

"You know you can't save me, right? The natural energy is taking far too long to leave the wounds. I can't really live off JUST your youki until it does." Still, they didn't say a word to him. "C'mon guys. Don't do thi-" He was cut off by a punch from both of them, Kogo's landing in his face and Kurama's in his stomach.

As one, they shouted, "SHUT UP!" before going back to their concentrated states.

Naruto just fell back onto the grass, barely flinching from the blows. He chuckled as he stared at the crumbling sky of his mindscape. "Fine, fine. If you guys are so adamant about trying, who am I to-" He was cut off again as Kogo jumped on him, punching him repeatedly.

"Why?" she began to mutter as she wailed on him over and over until it grew into full blown screaming. "WHY!? WHY!? WHY!?"

"Hehe, sorry," he managed to get out once she was done, now crying her eyes out. His words seemed to have no effect, though. No positive one, at least. Once he said that, Kurama seemed to be struggling to hold himself together as well.

Kogo, once she regained the ability to speak, though barely through he sobs, began to speak to him. "I was so happy when you weren't scared of me, when you were willing to talk to me as an equal. You don't know how lonely it gets, when you know the only ones you can even talk to have one arm around you, and the other on the door."

At this point, Kurama punched the ground, feeling the futility of his efforts. Instead, he listened "Your the first person to trust me completely. You worked on letting me out, on giving me freedom. You made me comfortable, you never forgot me, and you visited me so often... I-I don't wanna be alone again, Naruto. Please don't go." Kurama had lost it by the end, unable to stop either, though he turned away so neither of them could see his face. They could see his body shaking violently, though.

Naruto sighed. "Well, I don't have much choice."

Glaring into his eyes, Kogo was about to say something but Kurama beat him to it. "What happened to that iron will of yours, Naruto? You're giving up so easily." Kogo nodded, wonder just that.

Naruto looked away from them, wondering just the same thing. "Nothing. Logically, there isn't much we can do to stop it. None of us have enough power to stop this. I never liked trying when it's futile."

To his surprise, Kogo's response came instantly. "Bullshit." She got up off him, staring down angrily. "You never thought that when you fought grown men who had nothing to lose for food scraps, knowing you couldn't beat them. You didn't give up when you were forced into the redlight district as a child. Why in the fuck aren't you trying your heart out now!?"

Sighing, he sat up. "Fine. Let's give it a go or two. Never know, it might work." Both of them looked at him, surprised it was so easy to convince him. "What? My only other option is to NOT try and die for sure. You rather that?" The shook their heads and got to work, Kogo sitting down again.

It was still a rather futile endeavor, though. His body had sustained a ton of damage from the nature enhanced, Sanbi-transformed, rampaging Kage, and, even with all their youki and control over natural energy, they couldn't heal enough fast enough.

They felt Naruto's mindscape fading around them, everything turning into a black void. Sighing, Naruto gave up. "Well, we gave it our all. Maybe I can move my arms enough to release the seal now." Casting his gaze to Kurama, he held up a fist. "Kurama, would at least perform a bit of ninshuu with me?"

Kurama looked at the fist sadly before a glimmer entered his eyes. He wasn't done yet. "No. You are going out there, and you are kicking the shit out of Yagura, then that masked man. Now we have two reasons to kill THAT one." Naruto looked at him with exasperation, wondering what else he could do. The answer surprised him. "You are doing a full body transformation, and I don't give a fuck about what's supposed to happen. I won't LET it to kill you."

Naruto looked at him, then Kogo, who nodded resolutely, before sighing. "Well, if I don't die from the wounds, I might die from this. Worth a shot, I guess. Who knows, you might do it." Just as they began falling into the void below them, Kurama and Kogo grabbed each other's arms, growing back to their fox forms. Those then merged back together, making a fox that was far, far bigger than either of them, and they were huge alone.

Naruto barely had a chance to gawk as a claw that made him look like an ant flew at his face, tapping him on the forehead.

Real World

Marking traveled along Naruto's body, originating at the seal. The spiral grew out, before becoming rectangular lines that traveled across his body, even his face. 'This again? No... it's different.' Around him, stone was being pushed away and bubbling, gold youki was pouring out of him. Said power was strong enough to override the natural energy that kept his wound from healing, saving his life. It was child's play in front of the amount of power bubbling through him.

Going by instinct, he tried to make the youki pull him up. It did, dragging him to the to surface and slamming into Yagura's bijuudama, causing it to explode prematurely. The explosion was massive, but not big enough to reach the distant Kirigakure, as it would've been if the rampaging Yagura had managed to finish charging and fire it off. Once it dissipated, Naruto was standing across from a mostly unharmed, extremely angry, and totally out of control Yagura.

The blast had destroyed much of the chakra Naruto had around him, making him fall to the ground, surprised at how much power it consumed. Closing his eyes and opening them with resolve, he got up, concentrating on drawing more power out of his seal. His almost fully open seal.

He clenched his teeth as the power rushed through him. Most people describe having more power than ever rushing through you as a pleasant experience, and it normally was, but, at that moment, Naruto was struggling to keep it together. It was even more than on the bridge.

Fortunately, he wasn't keeping it all in his body. It traveled through him, reaching the blob of youki and making it grow. With a shout, he snapped his head upward, staring right at Yagura as a golden, 9-tailed fox formed around him. It wasn't completely defined, but it was getting a tiny bit better with every passing second.

Yagura just rolled into a ball, charging Naruto at high speeds. Instead of dodging like a normal person would, or even batting it away, like he did on a smaller scale, Naruto grinned as he grabbed the rolling ball of death, letting it spin futilely against arms made of youki.

Eventually, Yagura ran out of steam, and that was when Naruto struck. Grabbing Yagura by the tail once he emerged from the ball, threw him into the air. Once he let go, he let Yagura float for a moment before reaching up and grabbing him by two of them, slamming him into the ground on his back.

With his unarmored underbelly exposed, Naruto went to town, laying the largest beat down he could on it. At some point during the whole endeavor, Naruto began laughing, getting lost in the battle and in the power. He continued to slam his fists into the helpless Yagura, never even stopping to consider if he'd already won.

He just kept going. Yagura tried to charge up a bijuudama at one point, but he grabbed the Kage's face with another chakra arm that formed, making it explode in his face, the onslaught not ceasing as this happened. At this point, darker, normal colored youki began to saturate the fox, originating from Naruto. His laughter increased in volume, become somewhat malicious.

Inside, Naruto was going into his version two state, the tails increasing as time went on. A dual voice of Kurama and Kogo rang out in his head, making him pause. 'Don't lose yourself to it, Naruto. Enjoy it, but don't let it control you.' He nodded with a malicious smile still on his face as the seventh tail formed on him.

Getting down on all fours again, he grabbed Yagura in the forming jaws of the nine-tails, the bone of his fox form coming in moments before it was covered in muscle. Flinging him high into the air, which is extremely high in his massively larger form, Naruto used a tail as a bat and sent him off in the distance.

Releasing a roar that the people in Nami no Kuni definitely could hear this time, Naruto allowed himself to feel a sense of triumph. He was in control in a full Kyuubi transformation. He kicked Yagura's ass. He'd gained a jump in chakra that he could just let his clones take care of.

Kiri

Everyone was staring at the enormous fox with equal amounts of awe and fear. Ao was the first one to say a thing about it. "K-Kyuubi... but..." He couldn't even make a proper sentence, though, with the amount of youki in the air, weighing heavily down on them.

Taking a deep breath, he tried again. Looking to one of his comrades, he asked them what he was trying to say. "Omaeda!" The man snapped to attention, though he couldn't stop his body from shaking, even with all his training. "Isn't the Kyuubi supposed to be in Konoha?" The man nodded.

Ao managed a shaky laugh. "In my time, a hidden village wouldn't even think of letting their jinchuriki leave their walls like this. Let alone the strongest of them." A somber mood came over him at the thought. "Things are changing...

Medusa looked on with a blank look on her face and drool coming out of her mouth. The blush that covered her face was unlike anything she'd experienced before, even when he was manhandling her before. Because now he was doing it without even trying. "Sweet Yami-sama..." Shaking her head, she made up her mind. "I don't care how. I am getting some of that tonight."

With Naruto

Naruto looked out in the distance at where he launched Yagura. He felt a buildup of youki from the Kage, this one much stronger than before. Smiling maliciously at the blatant challenge, he roared to the sky, bringing his tails up to his mouth. It all felt so natural, somehow, so he just went with the flow, pouring power into the technique. He had more than enough to spare.

In front of his still open mouth, a ball of extremely dense youki formed. This one was like none of the others before it. Even the one that Yagura had been charging before was overshadowed, as was the one he was charging at that moment. It just kept getting bigger. Eventually, it got to the point of being more than twice his already massive size, at which point it quickly shrunk, getting even denser and making the island he was on nothing but a crater that was quickly filled in by the turbulent water that surrounded it.

Once his mouth closed around it, he felt a spike of lust from Kiri, which he attributed to Medusa. 'Note to self: learn to control how much youki is spilling out, or Medusa will cream herself on the battle field... and people will die from my presence, but that's secondary.'

With as close to chuckle as he could produce in his current form, he shot off the bijuudama in a beam, as he felt Yagura release one as well. There wasn't even a struggle as Yagura's was completely overwhelmed. It made a depression in the ocean as it traveled over it, flooding many islands and completely engulfing Yagura, when it reached him. A moment later, Naruto shut it off, remembering that he shouldn't kill Yagura.

Sighing, Naruto dashed off in the distance, still in his fox form to cover as much distance with a single bound. It was more of a test drive than anything else, since he had no clue how the body worked. Thankfully, he felt Kurama and Kogo working with him.

Not too long later, he arrived where the transformed Kage was. Well, the once transformed Kage. Now, Yagura was floating face up in the water, burns all over his body and clothes torn beyond the point of being usable, unless you were a stripper.

Naruto looked down at what was little more than a spec on the floor from his perspective. Sighing, he released his transformed state, which he did by just releasing his hold on the youki that maintained the transformation. A burst of red escaped from his form, leaving him suspended in mid air until he hit the ground. Once he stood, he felt all the youki in the air rush into his seal at once, pushing all the natural energy in him out as it traveled through his chakra system at different points, strengthening his own youki and chakra one last time before settling in the seal once more.

Now, as his chakra slowly returned to a more normal state and natural energy flowed back in at a much slower than average rate, Naruto kneeled in front of Yagura's damaged form. He stared at the defeated Kage for a little while as he wondered if his original plan would still work. Closing his eyes, he tried to probe Yagura's chakra, and still felt the oppressive youki of a bijuu behind it. 'Good, I didn't kill him.'

He put his hand on Yagura's forehead, but before he did anything, he contacted his partners. 'You sure you want to do this? I mean, we've been planning this for a while, but it won't be easy to get it from the others...'

Kurama scoffed, taking Naruto by surprise. 'You felt what we just did, and it was the first time you've ever done it. If worse comes to worse, we'll spend a few weeks upping our power by abusing this seal of yours until we don't need anything else. Just do it. Besides, Yagura's chakra is far too weak to put up any resistance right now, and Isobu is definitely resting after all that. All you need is a sliver, remember? She won't notice if you take it now.'

Nodding seriously, Naruto focused on Yagura's chakra, grabbing a good hold of it. Reaching his hand out, it sunk into seemingly nothing before coming out with three tags in its grip. Placing them on Yagura's now burnt chest, Naruto got to work.

The first one glowed as Yagura's body began healing, returning the Kage to a state in which he wouldn't be battered beyond movement, or even thought, when he woke up. The second glowed a deep purple, which was increasing as time went on before maintaining a steady glow. This one was suppressing Yagura's chakra and Isobu's youki, in the event that the masked man still had some semblance of control over them.

The last one glowed a deep red before a smokey red substance flowed out of Yagura's mouth and eyes, though it lasted for barely a second. Reaching his hand forward, he grabbed another tag out of the distortion his hand previously entered. Holding it up, he used it to suck up the red, smokey substance that just flowed out of Yagura before placing the seal tag back into the distortion.

Now that that was finished, he pushed his own consciousness into Yagura's mindscape, as he had done to Minato years back, and to the victimized girls a week or so back.

Yagura's Mindscape

Naruto appeared on a body of water that stretched out indefinitely. Not even his enhanced eyesight was enough to let him see anything but the murky depth he currently stood upon and the clear sky it reflected with a moon hanging above. Well, nothing he noticed immediately, that is.

In a loose circle around him, there were ruins of walls that were somehow floating in the water. He didn't know how big they were, how deep they went, or anything of the sort, but he knew that they'd been torn down brutally at one point.

Suddenly, crying reached his ears, though he could find no source. Following his ears, he reached the point where it was loudest, walked by it, then turned around when it began getting softer. Looking around him with a careful gaze, he found nothing.

When he looked up, he saw nothing. When he looked down, he saw his own reflections staring back at him from the murky depths. Well, until he realized that there was something else staring back at him at the same time, this one having the same pupil-less, purple eyes that he'd come to associate with Yagura, though these lacked the glossiness he'd seen before.

Looking back up and seeing nothing, Naruto realized what all of this was. 'This is how his mind manifest what the man did to him... Gloomy, but expected.' Reaching down and touching the water, he felt resistance that one shouldn't be receiving from water.

Attempting to push through was a process that was long and arduous, but he managed regardless. Yagura, who looked extremely scared at that moment, tentatively grabbed onto his hand and allowed Naruto to pull him out.

It took a good bit of effort, but, half a minute later, Naruto was dragging Yagura above the surface of the water. Even as Yagura broke the surface He looked as though he was resisting something. Something strong. It was then that Naruto noticed the shackles around Yagura's hands and feet, which extended deep into the water.

Grabbing the shackles and pulling them up from the water, Naruto found it extremely difficult to move. It was a full ten minutes to him before he could make out what the shackles were attached to. It was a circular object of some sort, the origin of which Naruto couldn't even come close to fathoming.

Eventually, Naruto could make out details. A crater here. A few rings with tomoe on them. A large dot in the center. By the time it was nearing the surface, Naruto recognized the object. It was the moon. Looking up, he found that the moon above them had similarly dropped, coming close to them. It, too, began to gain a red hue and layers of three tomoe around a pupil-like dot in the center.

Mind made up, Naruto kept hold of the moon with the chain as best he could with one hand and aimed the other up at the moon in the sky. "Cero." A blast of purple, as he'd mixed his chakra and youki for the attack, slammed into the moon, though, when it neared, the attack stopped in its tracks.

Naruto witnessed the moon beneath the water's surface disappear and the one above him gain the full red hue. The rings and tomoe darkened to a deep black and "pupil" seemed to focus on the attack. Then, suddenly, a crack appeared in the moon, as if it was glass. More and more and more began to spread across the surface as if it was a glass pane under extreme stress, failing to withstand an unbelievable amount of pressure. With narrowed eyes, Naruto pushed more into his attack. It was the straw that broke the camel's back.

The entire sky seemed to shatter once the moon fell, as if it was all covered in a layer of glass. Yagura seemed to stiffen before relaxing greatly, and Naruto felt a deep tremor from beneath him, in the depths which even his vision could pierce. In his hands, the shackles that bound Yagura to what Naruto assumed was the representation of the masked man's control over him disintegrated comepletely, becoming nothing more than a memory.

The sky now became a deep blue, and stars covered it like a normal night sky. The water cleared up somewhat, and Naruto felt it become... watery again, as if it would allow him to fall in once more if he let go of his chakra.

That's what Yagura did, though. As Naruto had cut off his ability to use chakra, he began to drown in his own mind. Dashing over to grab the Kage's hand, he pulled Yagura out of the lake that was his own mind. Yagura spent a moment coughing before getting up and looking to Naruto, who'd solidified a platform of chakra under them.

He kept staring at Naruto for a bit, his body language showing slowly diminishing fear and a large amount of thankfulness, though he looked like he could break at any moment. After a moment's silence, he spoke in a voice that Naruto found... off. "Thank you... Naruto-san, yes?" Even his voice sounded fragile, though that wasn't what Naruto found so odd.

Nodding despite his suspicions, he responded. "That's me, Yagura-san. Do you know what's been happening?" It was a bit sudden, but Yagura fell to his knees, tears streaming down his face.

No words could describe the feeling coming off Yagura. The best words were despair, helplessness, rage, and fear. All at once. But even these didn't manage to capture the feelings that Yagura was giving off. The human language didn't have the ability to express what Yagura was feeling. Instead, he just sat there, crying like the child he resembled.

Naruto dropped to one knee in front of Yagura, having a bit of experience comforting the distraught at this point, but still feeling a bit uncomfortable. Placing a hand on his shoulder, Naruto tried to be reassuring. "It wasn't your fault, Yagura. You know that." Sadly, his words only seemed to make it worse.

Eventually, Naruto gave up on speaking to him and just hugged the diminutive Kage. "Just let it out. Nothing more can be done." That was apparently the cue for Yagura to do just that, the sobbing seemed to triple as Naruto held him.

Yagura clutched to Naruto like a lifeline, which he was, in a way. His small arms wrapped around Naruto and he just let himself be human for a moment, a luxury jinchuriki rarely got, and on that Naruto was happy to give, letting the small Kage ruin his shirt, which was thankfully mental, because he was unsure if he had the control to make another at that moment. Oddly, Naruto felt something against his chest, but brushed it off for later. Right now, getting Yagura to calm down was his priority.

Eventually, Yagura passed out, which was odd, as it was his mind already. Naruto just laid him onto the water, the platform of chakra he'd made being big enough for it. Naruto, too, just sat down there, waiting for Yagura to come to, which he figured wouldn't take long, as his mind had nowhere else to go. Oddly, he could see some of the walls move every now and then, putting themselves back together slowly but steadily.

When he felt a light movement from under him, Naruto's eyes shot open. "Isobu-san?" he called out to the seemingly empty space that stretched on in the expanse of Yagura's mind.

The movement stopped completely, leaving everything eerily silent after he'd already acknowledged the extra presence. "I am not your enemy, Isobu-san. I just wish to speak." Still, he got no response. "Don't make this so hard, Isobu-san. I'm trying to help you right now, but you have to talk to me."

Suddenly, in front of him, the water seemed to bend as a figure below it rose. By the time the water fell fully, he was easily able to tell that it was Isobu, though she seemed restricted in some way, as if she couldn't get any further out of the water. Shaking the thought off, Naruto nodded to the bijuu. "Isobu-san."

"Wh-who are you?" To Naruto's surprise, her voice was soft and scared, like a child who's learned not to trust strangers the hard way. Even the demonic over-tone to her voice couldn't mask this feeling.

Sitting down, he looked up at her lone eye and responded. "Uzumaki Naruto. And I'm here with an offer for you." He noticed that her eye spoke of nothing but distrust, so he decided to give her a reason to trust him, if only a bit more. "I'm the jinchuriki of both Kurama and Kogo." He smirked, seeing her single eye widen a bit. "Oh, and yes, I believe they are separated right now."

He just decided to get it all out right now, as he didn't want any of the doubts which were no doubt swirling in Isobu's mind to surface. "As I said, I'm here to help you, Isobu-san." His face got really serious at that point, making Isobu get a bit scared. "I don't wanna scare you, but there's an organization looking to capture all the bijuu, and since I know they have a rinnegan wielder, they probably plan on recreating the source of your power." He saw Isobu's eye widen further. "Yes, that. I don't think they know what they're doing, but they are strong enough that they could definitely do it."

Isobu's eyes showed her worry, but she didn't say a thing. Naruto just kept going, seeing as she wasn't gonna comment. "I don't think the man that controlled you was among their numbers, but he's a threat of his own. He managed to control Kurama, or Kogo, or whatever, when they were whole, while still managing to give his own assault to my village, Konohagakure. He fought the Yondaime, one of the strongest ninja since Madara and Hashirama- yes that Madara and that Hashirama- at the same time he was controlling them." Seeing Isobu's worry turn to helplessness, Naruto hurried onward.

"But," he quickly added, making her look at him questioningly, "I have a plan. I am going to try and get to all of you first and... how should I say this..." He looked down, trying to word this properly. Neither Kogo nor Kurama were any help to him at that point, equally unsure of how to word what he wanted without coming off as greedy.

In the end, he just decided to be blunt. Looking up at the suspiciously staring Isobu, he sighed. "Don't jump to any conclusions when you here this alright?" She nodded cautiously, her head, that was bigger than him, going up and down for the barest of moments as she trained her single eye on him as closely as possible. "I need some of your youki." Seeing her only narrow her eyes at him, he had a good deal of hope going forward. "I just plan on using my abilities to cultivate it into an artificial bijuu, specifically, an artificial you. It'll be weaker, just so I can weaken what they gain and slow them down."

Seeing her distrusting and disbelieving eyes, he sighed and decided to explain. "I am the second closest thing to your father on this planet right now. The rinnegan wielder among them is the closest, for obvious reasons, but I can create something from nothing with my chakra in the same way he can. I can create a living body, only lacking a soul, to host the power, and a seal to either filter natural energy into it or use my own energy to feed it to that point. This is only a fail-safe, to be honest, but, if that man joins this group, I won't be able to stop them from taking all of you." He clenched his fist at that point, hating to admit being too weak for something, outright lacking the strength to succeed.

"I plan on trying to end Akatsuki, the organization that wants you all, but I doubt I can do it, at least not right now." The words stung him worse than he felt they should've. He didn't notice that Yagura had gotten up by this point and was listening intently.

"They have two others who already wield the same eyes as Madara, the ones that allowed him to control you guys, a man with enough chakra to rival some of you alone along with a sword that sucks up chakra and youki alike, three people who have different ways of being seemingly immortal, a person who can pretty much turn into paper and phase through attacks, a bomber who can take out a jinchuriki before they get a chance to call upon their partners, and, to pour salt on my wounds, a person who wields the rinnegan, the same eyes as your father, proficiently. And that's without the masked man joining up for any reason."

Looking up at her, he scowled but kept his even tone. "You see why I need a contingency plan? If they move before I feel I'm strong enough to take on the rinnegan wielder and the paper one at the same time, since they seem to be partners, I can't stop their plans, only delay it for a while.

He shook his head, seemingly deflating in on himself for a moment. "If they were both to come at me right now, I'm sure I'd lose, even with Kogo and Kurama's help. I'd cause heavy damage, of course, but I doubt I'd be able to hold out if he MASTERED ANYTHING along the lines of the Chibaku Tensei(Heavenly Body Bursting from the Earth)."

Sighing, he began a path of self-loathing, despite his strength being worlds beyond most others. "As it stands, I can only do the Banbutsu Sozo(Creation of All Things), but I sure as hell can't emulate a true rinnegan technique to its fullest yet. I'm far too slow at creating life to match the Chikushodo(animal path), I don't fit well with the Shurado(Asura Path), I need to immobilize and, preferably, mentally break someone before reading their mind, so I'm inferior to the Ningendo(Human Path), in BOTH aspects, I can only match the interrogative abilities of the Jigokudo(Nakara Path), and I haven't even begun to master anything remotely near the Gakido(Preta Path)."

He stopped his little tirade, lost in his own world at that moment. "The only thing I can do is match the Tendo(Deva Path) and the Gedo(Outer Path), to some degree." He seemed to realize that he went off on his own and reigned himself in. "Apologies, but I think you get it. No bijuu is safe against him, so I'm the closest thing to matching this guy on earth, bar none. And I still have to worry about the masked man, so I have to ask that you comply, in the event of things getting out of hand, which they are liable to, in the event that they start moving too early." The silence that followed was deafening.

For the first time in a while, Isobu spoke. "If I say no?" She didn't really mean much by it, but she wanted to know what else he had.

Naruto narrowed his eyes up at her before getting up. "Just because I am too weak to do this doesn't mean I'm proportionately stupid." Just like that, he was back to being the normal Naruto, his thoughts left to bubble under the surface.

"I already extracted a bit of your power, Isobu. I know some of your... siblings can be rather difficult, so I'm leaving nothing to chance." Drying his pants with a thought, he took a moment before looking her dead in the eye. "I am NOT letting all my hard work, working toward my dream, go to waste because one of you decided they were above lending me their power for a backup plan. Sorry, but I'm more or less just asking for you blessing here. If you say no... well, the fate of this world outweighs your displeasure. Please understand, Isobu-san."

Isobu stared down at him with wide eyes before nodding, understanding completely. "S-sorry, N-Naruto-san. I..." She trailed off, avoiding eye contact with him at that point. Suddenly, she started shrinking, her body glowing a sea-green.

When she was done, in her place stood a woman, no, a teenager who looked to be, at most, 14. She was rather short, only coming up to Naruto's shoulder, wore slippers that didn't really add much to it. She had on a triathlon swimsuit that covered most of her body, only leaving her legs from the knee down, head, and all of her arms out in the open. He green hair flowed down and covered her correspondingly missing right eye, leaving her left out in the open. Sadly, Naruto noticed the shackles on her limbs that flowed down into the murky deep below them, making him from. 'So that's why she was struggling.'

Naruto didn't comment on them, though, as Isobu bowed to him hastily, still avoiding eye contact. "Gomenasai, N-Naruto-san. I didn't m-mean to offend y-you."

Naruto waved her off. "It's fine. Just know that I won't let anyone's pride doom what I am choosing to protect. If you get a chance before I do, pass that onto your siblings." Naruto then turned to Yagura, who he'd noticed a little while after he'd come out of his own little world. "So, are you better now, Yagura-san... and why did I sense a Nise Gaiken around you outside? How do even know that technique?" He figured he could at least answer that much with ease, as he seemed much better, the mostly repaired walls around them reflecting that.

Yagura seemed surprised by the sudden address, as he fumbled for words for a moment. "I, uh, no, I..." Taking a deep breath, Yagura, composed himself, going into what he'd dubbed as Kage mode. "Yes, Naruto-san. I am quite alright now. As for the technique you speak of... " He hesitated, looking past Naruto to Isobu.

Nodding, Isobu looked at Naruto with calculating eyes, but keeping her opinion to herself. Sighing, Yagura just looked at Naruto with a bit of conflict in his eyes. "Answer me this first, Uzumaki-san." Naruto nodded. "What do you plan on doing to me, now that you've beaten me?"

Naruto raised a brow at that. "You can do what you want. Kiri probably has some beef with you, though, so I could offer you a place to stay that's relatively safe. Your choice." Seeing Yagura's eye widen at his answer, Naruto had to ask, "What'd you think I was gonna do? Kill you?" Naruto just shook his head. "I knew you were being controlled from the moment we fought. Now I just have another score to settle with that masked man, whenever the time is best, but I have nothing against you, Yagura-san. Now it's your turn. Demon technique, explanation, now." His demand came a little more forcefully than last time, because this could change things for the better if what he thought was true was true.

Sighing, Yagura began to explain. "I... I'm actually..." He looked really insecure about something as he spoke, making Naruto all the more curious yet lenient all at once.

Placing a hand on the smaller Kage-level shinobi's shoulder, Naruto shook his head. "It's fine. Keep your secrets; I have a good amount of my own." He went to take his hand of Yagura's shoulder as he continued. "For now, let's-"

He stopped abruptly when Yagura grabbed his retreating hand. "No, I'll tell you." His voice was steady, but the insecurity was still there. Looking up into his eyes, Yagura gathered himself and dropped a reality bomb on Naruto. "I'm a girl."

Naruto blinked once, twice, then a third time, each time repeating that line to himself. Finally the words clicked for him. "Wait, what?"

His words only seemed to spur Yagura on. "My father was the son of the previous jinchuriki and my mother was the third strongest ANBU member in Kiri, second only to Hozuki Mangetsu and Hoshigaki Kisame when they were on the force. I had a target on my back, a big one, so my tou-san got his tou-san to convince Isobu-chan to help me by making me appear as male for most of my life, once she was placed within me. We've grown rather close over my life-time."

Naruto had no clue how to react to that. While it certainly did confirm what he was hoping for, he got WAY more than what he bargained for. Instead, he just kept moving, finding the thought rational yet a bit shaking. 'Not like it really matters that much.' Shaking his head, he just looked Yagura in the eye. "Well, that's unexpected, but I can't fault you for it, really." Shrugging, he extracted his hand from his... her grip. "I only asked," he explained gesturing towards Isobu, "to see if you had a good relationship with Isobu-san here."

He took a moment to pass his hand over his face, taking a moment to compose himself. Looking at the two, he asked something that had been bugging him for a while. "Uh, why don't you just... get rid of Isobu-san's shackles, Yagura...-san." He quickly added the honorific, as he wasn't too close with Yagura, and they weren't enemies or anything of the sort, as such deserving the normal level of respect in his mind.

She looked at him in confusion, wondering just what he meant. This made Naruto look at Isobu with surprise. "What, you've never told her about what she can do!?" Isobu averted her eyes and retained her silence, much to Naruto's annoyance.

Sighing, Naruto cast his gaze back to Yagura. "You're god in here, Yagura-san. You can do anything, like change how the seal manifests. You can try after I've left, though, because I'm not done with you two." They both looked at him questioningly, prompting him to continue.

"You two don't talk much, huh?" Shaking his head, he just continued, not waiting for a response. "Now, I don't know how much you trust one another, but I have a seal that makes you both much stronger, at the cost of constantly needing to work on your control." Making his shirt disappear, he pointed at his toned stomach, where his seal resided. He ignored the blush of Isobu, though he was somewhat pleased when Yagura kept stone-faced as usual.

"This seal drains Kogo and Kurama's, the Kyuubi...s', power into my system constantly, empowering me and putting stress on them, making them grow. I'm only thirteen, but my body has grown at an accelerated rate to adapt to it better. You, on the other hand, can already do a full-body transformation, so you are accustomed to Isobu's youki, Yagura, so this can go rather easily. I can create a suppression seal so you don't become a beacon of chakra to any sensor, so don't worry about that."

When they nodded moments later, Naruto sighed in relief. When he spoke again, his voice was a bit bitter. "There is a war of sorts coming, and, even if you don't wanna fight in it, you had better get as strong as you can." Sighing once more, this time he decided they should do the process now. "I asked my question earlier mainly because I wanted to know if you'd jump at the chance of breaking out of Yagura-san, Isobu-san. I'm undoing your seal, but try and stay inside this one, okay?" She nodded, making Naruto relax a bit as he faded out of Yagura's mindscape.

Once he was gone, they looked at each other. Yagura was the first one to speak, as per usual, since Isobu didn't like to talk much. "Do you trust him, Isobu-chan?" She just nodded, opting to remain silent, as per usual. At her response, Yagura laughed, something that would've given Naruto a heart-attack if he'd heard it.

Real World

Opening his eyes, Naruto went to place his hand over Yagura's core, though he froze an inch above her navel. He spoke to seemingly nothing, though his ever constant partners heard it. "This feels soooo much more awkward now that I know Yagura's a girl." Sighing, he pushed his feelings on the matter aside and did his job.

Forcing his chakra into her system, Naruto forcefully shattered the seal that kept Isobu inside Yagura, not that hard, as it was a simple seal, by his standards. Then, putting his hand into a tora seal, he spoke aloud. "Hakke no Fuin Shikki(Eight Trigrams Sealing Style), hajime(begin)!" It took a moment before a poof of smoke obscured him from view, though it wasn't like anyone was actually looking.

Once it cleared, Yagura was on top of an altar that floated in midair, and Naruto still held the tora hand-sign and floated right next to it. Releasing the sign and taking out a plate that people tended to serve sake on, he slit a wrist and filled it, letting his body heal the way it normally would once it was filled.

Holding it with a steady hand, Naruto dabbed his finger into the small well of blood before quickly writing on Yagura's abdomen. It took him a good few minutes, as his version of it was a bit more intricate, including a recharge feature for the bijuu, automatically drawing in natural energy instead of making them focus on restoring their own power.

By the time it was all over, Naruto had made many inscriptions all the way out into the air around them in eight directions. They were all connected by lines of it that went around in a circle. There were a few of these circles in the overall design, though Naruto didn't take the time to marvel at them, knowing that the people in Kiri wear likely getting anxious. 'I have to hurry the fuck up.'

Putting his hand over his own bloody inscriptions, he channeled a good portion of his chakra into it. "Uzumaki Fuinjutsu: Hakke no Fuin Shikki: FUIN(Uzumaki Sealing Technique: Eight Trigrams Sealing Style: SEAL)!" With that call, the lines of blood markings began to condense, all of them flowing into the center under his palm.

It took a little while, which just went to show how much work Naruto put into it, but eventually, all of it flowed into the circular area under his palm. Once it was all there, it began spinning, becoming a spiral pattern similar to the one Naruto had, but this one was a bit different. It had four prongs off the side, each of them splitting into two at a point. Between the split at the end of each, there was a small fire symbol that appeared as Naruto watched to make sure it worked.

Nodding, he dispelled the altar, catching Yagura in his arms before setting down on the water, and reentered Yagura's mind.

Yagura's Mindscape

Appearing, he wasn't surprised to find Isobu swimming around happily in her bijuu form, Yagura laying on her back. It was a slightly unnerving sight for Naruto, who'd viewed Yagura as an enemy for so long, but he shrugged that off. "Oi!" Yagura slipped off Isobu's back in surprise, making Naruto sweat-drop. 'I almost died to this?'

Shaking his head, he just waited for them to pull themselves together. Once they were both in front of him again, he spoke once more. "Now that that's done, I'll tell you this: with this seal, you can let Isobu-san out for a while with no negative effects to either of you. Since you can handle her power to the point of a full transformation, Yagura-san, you can let her out completely, with the seal being your only link. I will warn you to not push it beyond a week or so, but do as you wish beyond that."

They both looked at him, wide-eyed for a moment. After a shared look, they both bowed to him, though Yagura spoke for the extremely quiet Isobu. "Thank you, Naruto-san."

Naruto waved them off. "Don't bow so easily to me. I'd understand if I was reviving you dead mom or something, but I've done nothing THAT big... though I probably could..." He was lost in his own world for a moment before shaking his head. "Whatever. Also, just Naruto is fine, because -san makes me feel old." The two nodded, extremely happy.

"Now," Naruto continued, his neutral face back in full force, "I'll leave the key to the seal with you wherever you choose to stay. Onto what you'll do now that this is over. My offer to give you a place still stands."

Yagura looked at Isobu, and they seemed to have an entire conversation with the look, despite it only lasting moments. Yagura turned to a Naruto once they were done. "I trust you. Where is it?"

Naruto was a bit surprised that she trusted him, but, then again, he was the one that helped her once her mind was thoroughly violated by the masked man. 'I guess that makes some sense.' Clearing his mind of those thoughts, he just complied with her questioning. "I'm likely the strongest Uzumaki alive who has any interest in the past, so I took it upon myself to get the reconstruction of the place underway a while back, once I took a trip there. That's where I'd house you, for now: Uzushiogakure(Village Hidden in the Whirlpools). It needs a Kage-level ninja there, in the event anything goes FUBAR, and your the best option right now, especially since the population is growing."

Taking a moment, he summed things up. "Basically, I'm asking you to be the first Uzukage of the rebuilt Uzushio in return for the natural protection the village offers. Do you accept?" He addressed the question to both Isobu and Yagura, as he viewed the two as a package deal.

Isobu was on board, as she hadn't been able to go beyond Kiri, besides the occasion when her jinchuriki was sent to destroy an enemy force, in a long time. Yagura, on the other hand, was actually a bit confused, despite being thankful. "Shouldn't you be the Uzukage, or some other Uzumaki?"

Naruto scoffed. "Should all of the Hokage been Senju?" Shaking his head, though he thought he proved his point, Naruto continued. "Besides, I'm technically a genin of Konoha right now, so... yeah."

Isobu hadn't ever really cared for the ninja rankings that much, so the line didn't really strike her as anything of note, but Yagura nearly passed out. "YOUR ONLY A GENIN!?" She took a moment to compose herself, going back to her normal state of staring with calculating eyes that seemed to not even see you, but your potential. "I find that hard to believe, but I will take your word for it, Naruto-sa-... Naruto."

Naruto nodded, a small smirk on his face. "The rank makes people underestimate me once they find out, but it really doesn't matter to me. I plan on leaving Konoha at some point in the future, once a few things come to pass. Now, I assume we're done here?" They both nodded. "Alright. I'll be bringing you to Kiri, just so we can let them know that you'll be leaving, though don't tell them where you're going. Then I can get you there and show you how things work." He sighed. "So much to do, only so much time." He faded from Yagura's mind before she could say anything helpful.

Real World

Naruto was in the process of setting her down when she came to. "Hey," he greeted as he pulled the tags off her body, allowing her chakra to flow. Looking at her for a moment, he couldn't help but comment, "I always pegged you as a bit feminine, but this is a bit far." Yagura chuckled, and, as he heard this one, Naruto nearly died. Again. "You can laugh!?"

She let her laughter die down, a slightly sad look coming across her face. "Yeah... haven't had the chance for a long time, though."

Sighing at the mood shift, Naruto switched topics skillfully. "So, are you gonna release the Nise Gaiken?"

She looked sheepish next, making Naruto ALMOST gawk at her. 'I didn't think Yagura had emotions, but I feel like I can just throw everything I think I know about THIS ONE out the goddamned window!' Solidifying his almost lost composure, Naruto asked his question. "What?"

Scratching her cheek and looking away, she answered. "I... don't know how..." There was a full 10 seconds of silence following her admission before the resounding sound of Naruto's palm impacting with his face was heard for miles around(not really). In his head, his partners lost their shit, more at his reaction than her response.

Regaining his composure, as he actually lost it this time, took a calming breath. "Okay, let me handle this. I'll talk to Isobu-san about putting techniques on you that you have no idea about later." Grumbling for a few seconds after, he focused on his youki, still feeling something weird about his natural energy balance, and focused on shattering the demon illusion around her. As Isobu wasn't actively trying to maintain it, hearing their conversation through the seal, it took mere moments.

Once it was gone, there were subtle shift in Yagura's appearance, except one. The previously short hair lengthened slightly, a few inches at most. It grew to cover his right eye, similar to Isobu in her human form, though nothing beyond that was different about it. Her face changed, becoming a little bit more feminine, though it retained the stitches on the left cheek.

Her hips became slightly more noticeable, though not by much. It was only noticed because Naruto was looking for differences, really. Her fingers became a little more slender, though they were pretty much the same, as was the same for just about everywhere else. The most notable change had to be the chest, which had a pair of breast come into existence, though they weren't all THAT noticeable. All the changes popped out to Naruto, though, as his chakra, which was ever saturating the air, highlighted all the changes to him.

After a moment more of observation, Naruto nodded. "Cute, but we have other things to deal with." Not wanting to appear with a Yagura that was nauseous in the middle of Kiri, Naruto just took off at low-Kage speeds toward the village, which Yagura could keep up with even in her still healing state. She still hadn't noticed that Naruto had taken her staff, though.

They returned, jumping through the rather sizable holes they'd left in the walls of Kiri to get in instead of using the gates. Their appearance was rather sudden, making everyone jump, either yelping or reaching for weapons on impulse. The reactions just made Yagura shrink in on herself slightly, seeing her people so scared of anything that came at them, even if it wasn't her fault.

Instead of addressing them, the first thing Naruto did was snap his fingers, fixing the wall with ease. Then he looked around the crowd. "Did you collect all the dead who's bodies survived?" They nodded. "Good." After being pointed towards them, though he already found them moments before, he made a large amount of clones made entirely of natural energy, though he drew this directly from nature, as his stores were oddly low, which moved to the location. They were all still Nagare, though, as his body was the pathway for the natural energy to form the technique.

All eyes were on them as they encircled the corpses. It took but a few seconds, in which Naruto made his way over there. Nodding at them, he bid them to begin the process. They all sat with their legs crossed, placing their sheathed swords in their laps.

As one, they began to glow green, and the glow just kept getting stronger. Once the aura's hit a certain point, they connected to one another at the top before forming into a circle. The circle was completely black, the kind of black that seemed to suck in light around it.

Naruto took a deep breath, which drew attention to him. 'Chakra is the great connector. By connecting across the barriers of life and death, one can drag a soul across in either direction, regardless of its state.' With those thoughts in mind, Naruto released enough chakra to become visible, though that wasn't all that much by his standard, and sent it through the void.

He felt the normal resistance he always felt when he tried to revive a person, which was multiplied greatly over the amount of souls he was dragging out. It took a long while, but, eventually, he managed to drag the souls he sought out. For some he had to search greatly, as he'd, well, Mujihi had destroyed their bodies completely, so he had no chakra signature to work off of.

To Naruto, there was a multitude of ethereal people getting pulled out of the void, though it was only a group of green lights to everyone else. Gasping for breath once the void closed, Naruto put his hands on his knees. "I've never... done... so many before...," he managed to get out through his panting.

Standing straight, he looked at the souls, many of which looked scared. "Don't worry. Once I return you to your bodies, you will remember none of what you no doubt just experienced. Unless you were lucky, in which case you enjoyed it. Sadly, I'm returning you to this world as well." Putting his hands together as if he was praying, Naruto focused on what he was doing, as he hadn't done anything on such a massive scale in his life. "Onmyoton: Banbutsu Sozo(Yin-Yang-release: Creation of All Things)."

He began to draw the souls back to the physical forms that matched their signatures, a difficult matter when he had to rebuild a multitude of bodies, recreating many of them from scratch. 'Yo, guys. Could I get a bit of help here?' They were silent. 'Oh, come on! Don't be like that.' Still silence. Sighing mentally, Naruto bargained with the currently stingy foxes in his head. 'I'll let you both out for a week the next chance I get, and give you the treatment, Kogo, and include you too, Kurama.' Still silence. 'With Medusa.'

Suddenly, they both responded. 'Deal!' They both sounded giddy at that moment, which Naruto would've laughed at, if he wasn't straining himself greatly. Pulling youki from the seal wasn't the easiest thing, so the cooperation of the one who owned the power made things much easier.

It was a good thing, too, as Naruto was running on fumes after everything, combined with the stuff going on with his natural energy. His reserves weren't refilling too fast, so he didn't have his normal, seemingly infinite amounts. His shot to hell control made the efficiency of what he was doing drop like a rock, only making things worse.

When he was done, Naruto dropped to his knees, completely spent after that. All the people rushed the recently revived people, not even noticing the state that Naruto was in. 'I can't stop yet. I still have so much to do today.' Looking up, he saw that it was only around 1:30, if even.

Sighing, he dragged himself to his feet. Yagura placed a hand on his shoulder, looking a bit worried. "You okay?"

Naruto panting, shook his head. "Nope." Shrugging off her surprised hand, he stretched his hand out, surprising her even further as it sunk into nothingness and came back with a sealing tag. Slapping it onto his neck, Naruto hissed as he felt a large amount of chakra and youki flow into him, emptying the seal. "Now, I'm fine." Sadly, it barely filled him up to half capacity, but it was enough. 'Note to self: up regen tag capacity.'

With that, he began walking towards the bodies of Mei and Chojuro, which a Nagare clone/nature clone was still taking care of. The clone bowed as he approached. "Naruto-sama." Naruto nodded before gesturing to the two. "They are stable, Naruto-sama. As I don't know how much their chakra coils can handle at once, they may still be sore in their midsection." At that, Yagura looked rather guilty. Again.

Naruto, on the other hand, nodded. "Good job, Nagare. You've done your part well. Go ahead and rest."

Nagare nodded and bowed once more. "By your will, Naruto-sama." With that, he dispersed into a large amount of Natural energy, though it was only large by Naruto's previous standards. Now, it only made up 25% of the energy in his body. Sighing, Naruto took a seat and let his body rest for a moment, specifically allowing the natural energy inside him to even out on its own. Dispersing the clones he'd made earlier and choosing to absorb the natural energy to speed up the process, Naruto settled on the ground near the two unconscious rebels.

He looked up at Yagura, who looked a bit awkward and unsure of what to do. Rolling his eyes, he patted the ground next to him. She quickly sat down, though she said nothing, not having much chance to converse with anyone for the past few years, stuck in her own mind and all.

Naruto, on the other hand, had no such inhibitions. He'd learned how to be social a while back, and had, at the very least, the two demon foxes in his head to talk with whenever the urge arose. "So, do you really want to go to Uzushio? 'Cause there are other options, you know."

Thankful for him having a topic, she just asked, "Like what?"

"Oh, you could stay here, you know." It was just a suggestion, but not a well received one, based on her face. "Oh come on. Once you explain that you were being controlled, they'd accept you... I think."

Yagura shook her head. "They didn't like me before I became Mizukage, and they were only scared of me after. Even if they don't blame me, it still wouldn't be the best choice, if I have the chance of leaving."

Shrugging, Naruto replied. "Suit yourself..." Then he thought for a moment. "It's actually much better that you go there, now that I think about it. You're a danger to Kiri right now, sadly. Besides, nobody thinks that way in Uzushio, since they're mostly people I've rescued. They have nothing against jinchuriki. I mean, they're still PEOPLE, so they can still dislike you, but it'd just be because they, well, don't like you... yes, I know that was redundant as hell. Don't judge me." Despite her best efforts, a small giggle escaped Yagura's lips, which made Naruto's eyebrows shoot up. 'Keep forgetting Yagura's a girl. THAT will take some getting used to.'

It was at that moment that Medusa wrapped her arms around him. "So mean, Naruto-sama. Going after another girl when you have me here, ready and waiting." Despite Yagura's surprised stare, Medusa proceeded to snake her arms into his vest and unbutton his shirt. "Even after you promised me a reward, too."

Naruto sighed heavily, but let her have her fun for a bit as he spoke. "Sadly, I'll have to make you wait a bit longer, Medusa-chan. Gotta deal with some other business first."

She pouted behind him, gut didn't try and argue it. Instead, she tried to bargain with him. "How about just a quickie, then? Just one?"

"A quickie for you," Naruto responded, pulling her hands out his shirt, "takes about two hours. I won't take two hours to fi-" Naruto, who'd been recharging the whole time on natural energy, grabbed his eyes and screamed. The itching that he'd felt before had come back a split second before the entirety of the pain hit him with the force of a freight train. He hadn't noticed that he'd managed to reach a complete balance with natural energy inside him, the flow staying constant at that point.

It was far too sudden for him to be able to hold the scream back, and, looking back on it, he wasn't sure if he could've, even if given a warning. It felt like someone had taken his eyes and dunked them in acid while somehow making him feel all of it with increased sensitivity.

Everyone was alerted by the scream, turning their attention to where they thought they might encounter another threat. Instead, they found their savior writhing on the ground, clutching his eyes while a girl who looked suspiciously like Yagura and the one the rebels could identify as Medusa hovered over him, worried.

As they all rushed to crowd him, civilian and shinobi alike, his screams went up in intensity. Yagura looked up at Medusa, worry in her eyes. "What's wrong with him!?"

Medusa was the only person who could feel his balance, but she was just as confused as everyone else, but for different reasons. 'Becoming one with nature isn't supposed to be painful at all! What the fuck is happening!?' She could only look on helplessly as Naruto screamed in pain. Unknown to her, both Kurama and Kogo were having the exact same thoughts and felt the exact same about what they could do.

Eventually, after a full minute of screaming, Naruto's voice cut off abruptly, though his panting still resounding through the resulting silence. Bringing his hands from his eyes, he couldn't help but gasp at what he saw.

To him, everything was dulled in color, but glowed with differing colors, ones that he knew didn't belong on certain things. All the mist in the air, which was natural for Kiri, had a light green tint. Every person around him had a blue one, except Yagura and Medusa. Medusa had a red one that went beyond the bounds of her body, turning green as it interacted with the green mist that saturated the air, while Yagura had a switch to deep red as it neared her core.

It was then that Naruto realized something. His eyes had been closed the whole time. He was just experiencing an extremely detailed level of his previous sensing of his surroundings, even more so than usual. He een got color, which is something he'd never had before, only black and white outlines with chakra readings. It was extremely detailed before, but now it was like he had his eyes open and was looking through glasses or something.

With that in mind, he slowly opened his eyes. This time, the crowd gasped along with him, or at least those who could see his eyes did. They had a completely green sclera and a black slit in the middle. On the sides of his eyes, there were black markings that came down in a curve, coming down over his whisker marks. Mostly obscured by his hair, on his forehead, there was also a marking of a third eye, only depicted by the black, ink-like substance that made it up.

Naruto himself gasped at the change to his vision. Instead of the colors getting more defined, they disappeared completely, leaving his world black and white, with the exception of seeing a green tint in nature, a blue tint on people, and a red tint for anything demonic.

The most dramatic change, however, where the strings that connected everything to both the sky and the earth. It was weird to Naruto, as he saw one coming from literally everyone except Medusa. "The actual fuck...," he mumbled, scanning the crowd to confirm his suspicions. "Everyone... what the fuck?"

'Uh, do you guys have any fucking clue what this is?' he asked his partners, seriously hoping that they knew what the fuck was going on. He'd made a mirror in his hands, finding it rather easy compared to earlier, when his control was shot to hell. He had no clue of the coloring of his eyes, but he could tell the general differences and was a bit worried, despite finding them rather cool.

Thankfully, they were wells of knowledge and knew exactly what was happening, though Naruto hadn't the slightest clue how. Kogo was the one to answer first. 'This, my dear Naru-chan, is proof of true sage-hood. When Kurama and I balance ourselves with Nature perfectly, we see the exact same way.'

Kurama took over the explanation. 'Every jinchuriki is given a gift, or a few, from their partner, willingly or not. You knew about the increased connection to nature, right? Well, this is the culmination of that. Senjutsu is the craft of the gods, and natural energy is basically their chakra. There is no way to seal it off, for it is what this world is made of. You have an inside connection to this well of power that you are only just beginning to grasp. If you thought it was strong before, oh just wait. Right now, your control over t has skyrocketed, and you'll see the other differences in time. I'll explain those lines another time. To be honest, I didn't expect you to get the eyes at all, though. That's why it was so painful.'

Naruto gaped, much to the confusion of everyone. Getting up quickly, he raised his hand to the sky, seeing if his control over nature had actually reached such heights. His hand crackled with electricity as he jumped onto a tower that was high enough that he could see over the wall. Dropping his hand in a silent Kirin, he watched with glee as lightning struck the remains of the island he'd formed the bijuudama on.

Looking at his hands with a smirk, he clenched them and un-clenched them before punching the air. He saw distortions that were tinted green to his sight around his fist, nature aiding his strikes without him even needing to call on its aide. It just did it.

Now came the part he hadn't thought of. 'Uh. guys? As much as I love this boost, can I turn it off?'

Kogo was the one to answer. 'Oh, that's easy. Just manually disrupt the balance of natural energy. Now that you've achieved this, it'll be what your bod tries to achieve, so you'll have to make an effort to turn it off now, so be ready to get used to that.'

Nodding, Naruto forced a little bit of natural energy out of his system, making his vision go back to normal. When he closed his eyes, and even when he opened them, he still sensed things in greater detail than previously, but that was a welcome change. Now, as he looked in the mirror, he saw much smaller markings, black spikes jutting from the bottom of his eyes. His eyes themselves were mostly back to their deep blue state, the sclera being white again, him actually having an iris, etc. Now, though, he could pick out the occasional fleck of green in his iris, and he noticed that his pupil was slit. The third eye marking was still there, but there wasn't much he could do about it.

Sighing at the changes, Naruto got rid of the mirror with a thought and looked back down to the crowd, who was looking at him in awe. 'Oh yeah, I kinda just casually tamed raw lightning. My bad.' Shaking his head, he jumped back down, making his way back to Yagura. "I'm fine, people."

Everyone parted around him as he went, despite most of them being taller than he was, making it a rather amusing sight. Stopping next to Yagura, he nudged her before gesturing to the people of Kiri. With their attention drawn to her, many of them began to connect the dots, some faster than other, though none could really come to a conclusion they found logical,

Yagura on the other hand, seemed to remember her situation, being as caught up in the recent events as she was. Once she remembered what had been happening and why she was there, her face fell ever so slightly before she schooled it into a calm facade, as was the norm for her.

Seeing the pretty much signature look of their Kage, the murmurs that had begun to roll through the crowd made way to shocked silence. Yagura just powered through this. "Kirigakure..." She stopped and bowed deeply. "As inadequate as this may be, I must offer my deepest apologies for the strife I've forced you through. I will ask none of you not to hate me, for it is not my right. All I can do is give you my most sincere apology and resign as peacefully as possible, giving the mantle of mizukage to one who is more worthy."

Naruto decided to step in once he saw that there was some form of discord among the people. "Yagura here is downplaying what happened. A masked man of unknown origin was controlling her for years. She's been trapped in her own mind, watching everything happen for the whole time, regretting her helplessness. The actually being a girl thing was just to protect her from things that you know would've happened to her, knowing who her parents are."

Once he was done, people looked on with a bit of understanding in their eyes, though some began to question whether or not she should've been mizukage if she could be taken control of so easily. Naruto, once more, quelled the rising concerns and accusations. "This man is the same one that took control of the Kyuubi and caused the rampage in Konoha. I'd be far more surprised if Yagura COULD resist his control."

For what Naruto hoped was the final time, the people quieted down. Deciding he didn't want to give conspiracy theories or doubts the time to be born and spread among the crowd, he just went ahead. "She'll be leaving this village, by the way. It's for the best." He paused and waited for the outrage of the crowd to set in, build, then burst forth.

A few seconds later, Naruto's expectations were met in full. Raising his hand for silence, which made them shut up rather quickly as they remembered that hand had summoned lightning not log before, Naruto explained in order to placate the crowd. "I shouldn't have to justify this to you people, but I will. If he were to return, the exact same thing could happen, or he could cause the Sanbi to be released and go on a rampage, no doubt crippling your village, if not destroying it.

"To make matters worse, there is an organization hunting the bijuu made of S-Ranked ninja, the kind who could actually stand a chance against a bijuu. At the very least, their leader is, from what I can tell, stronger than me." At his final sentence, the crowd understood the gravity of it all. If their leader came to Kiri to capture Yagura, they'd stand no chance. They didn't even know how strong the others were, either. For all they know, their leader could've recruited someone stronger than himself.

Naruto was glad they understood what he was saying. "Yes, it's both for your safety and hers that she leaves. If they know where she is, they can come get her at any time. As such, I'm removing her from the equation. Don't worry; I'll think of something for the compensation of the lost military strength. For now, I just ask you trust me."

Surprisingly, almost all of them did, though there were inevitably a few who thought this was all a trick and wanted to kill him. Naruto didn't really care all that much, but he was surprised at how easy it was to get them to listen to him. 'Well,' Kurama commented snidely, 'establishing dominance, then showing mercy, then proceeding to kick the tar out of their leader, spare her, and reveal that she was being controlled the whole time, before offering sanctuary to her, due to the risks it put on them, and reviving all the casualties that occurred in your establishment of dominance tends to make people like you, if only just a bit.' Naruto had no comeback for that.

Instead, he just shrugged. "Alright, then I shall return and we can discuss what to do after I return." A groan from Medusa him sigh and create around 10 clones. "Entertain yourself with these until I return, Medusa-chan." Her squeal made him rub his temples in annoyance. 'She's as good at causing stress as she is at relieving it.'

Shaking his head in her direction, as the clones had taken her somewhere secluded, he looked out that shinobi who were looking at him, rather amused. "Ignoring her, just clean up as best you can. Zabuza, you're in charge until Mei wakes up."

Zabuza blinked in surprise. "What about Chojuro?"

"What ABOUT Chojuro?" was Naruto's response, making Zabuza nod in acceptance. Looking to Yagura, he asked, "You ready?" She nodded, a very thankful look in her eye as she looked at him. "Good, because this train has zero brakes." Grabbing her shoulder before she could say a thing about it, he transported them to Uzushio, a simple matter for the amount of chakra he had at that moment, as his restored balance had made his chakra fill up pretty quickly.

If anyone blinked, they missed it. One moment they were there, the other they were just... gone, a few ripples in the air of the space they'd left, which smoothed themselves out a few moments afterwards. Zabuza wasn't in the mood for anymore, as he called it, Naruto bullshit, so he just shrugged it off, filing the technique under "Fuck it- Naruto". Instead, he just shouted at the crowd. "Okay, so fi-"

It was at that moment that Mei was waking up. He took a moment to stare at her, open-mouthed, though you couldn't really tell under the bandages, before dropping his head in disappointment. "Oh, come on! I just got put in charge." Sighing, he gave out his first, and last, orders then went to debrief Mei on what had happened after she had become a shishkebab.

Uzushiogakure

Naruto appeared in an office that had a few copies of him doing things. One was filling out paperwork, another was writing a message to someone, another was reading a manga, and yet another was speaking with a brown-haired girl with some rectangular markings on her face. "Oi!"

His voice seemed to shock everyone, and the person next to him seemed to shock them more. "Yeah, yeah," Naruto began, walking towards the desk, "keep your shock for later. I'm short on time, so I gotta make this one quick. Yagura- yes that Yagura -will be the new Kage. She- and no I didn't change her gender; she was always a she, only hiding that fact -needs to be brought up to speed on things." They all nodded, though Naruto took his time to think about something before pointing to the brown haired girl.

"Rin-san(A/N: Yes, that Rin. Explanation later), you're her assistant until further notice. Show her the ropes of being the leader here. I'll come and formally introduce her to the people in a few days, alright?" He saw that Rin was a bit shocked but happy that she was getting a promotion, so he figured she was fine.

He walked behind the desk, going through the bottom drawer for a little bit. "Gotcha, bitch!" Turning to Yagura, he handed her a scroll. "This has the instructions on opening the seal as you please, but I really have to ask you to be careful. Oh, and please explain to them what's happened." He gestured to the still caught off-guard clones and Rin. Thinking twice about it, he made a clone. "You fill in the other details, alright?" The clone nodded. "Good. Now, I need to get back and deal with collateral damage in the Naruto way, aka create it from nothing and fix it with a thought, and I need you," he said, pointing at a clone, "to get working on bigger suppression seals, alright? Got a pretty big jump recently. You'll understand why in a few minutes. We all clear? Good. Have fun."

With that, he left, leaving a shocked Yagura, Rin, and multiple clones who felt really out of the loop. Rin looked to Yagura, curiosity pretty much oozing from her. "So... weren't you the Mizukage?" Yagura nodded, having the feeling that her day was about to feel like an eternity.

Kirigakure

Naruto reappeared, scaring the shit out of a few people who he found working on a building. "Lemme get that." Snapping his fingers, the building was finished once more, making the people gawk at him. "Redid the kitchen, too. That wallpaper was REALLY bad. Just sayin'" With that, he made a few clones to help out the reconstruction, aka finish it in a few minutes, as he'd kept the collateral damage rather low already.

Moving to Mei, who was being caught up by Zabuza, Naruto just waited for him to finish. Once they did, Naruto was rather quick to comment. "You know, I didn't think you were that slow, Zabuza. I can leave, come back, fix your buildings, and then come to you and you still aren't done." He shook his head playfully. "Sad." He had to duck under a swing of the Kubukiri after that.

Chuckling, he looked at Mei, who'd been gawking at him in unrestrained awe once he arrived. "You'll catch flies like that, Mei." She blushed and snapped her wide open mouth shut, but kept staring. He brushed it off, though. "Now, with the war over, you can finally find that husband you've been looking for. Maybe ask No-brow-sensei out on a date." This time, Naruto batted the swing from the Kubukiri and the glob of lava away with a thought, chuckling.

"Sadly, that'll have to wait for a bit. You still have to choose a new Kage, and I have trade agreements to hash out with whoever's chosen and Konoha, among other things." He felt one of his clones get dispelled, and very pleasurable memories hit him. Sighing, he added onto his previous statement. "Such as dealing with that succubus of mine."

Zabuza blinked before chuckling. "Have fun with that, Gaki." Mei looked a bit jealous but let him go. Once he was gone, Zabuza glanced at Mei. "Sooo... wouldn't it be funny if we shoved his ass in the bingo book for that one?"

Mei smiled widely. "Fun? He attacked Kirigakure, fought and kidnapped the Mizukage, and killed multiple shinobi. Those are crimes worthy of note." Zabuza shivered as he looked at her, remembering why he didn't go after Mei like Naruto suggested.

Kirigakure Rebel Base - Infirmary

Naruto reappeared down there, expecting to find Ameyuri dancing around with her swords, but only got a load of silence and a note with a chibi drawing of her eating him in the bottom corner. Picking it up, he read it aloud to himself. "Gone training in normal spot. Come by when your done. Ameyuri. PS: Nom." Shaking his head, he felt around for her chakra, which only took a few seconds, and transported himself to her location.

Kirigakure Rebel Base - Training Grounds

Appearing behind her, Naruto just said, "Hi!" but that was enough to make her jump out of her skin and attempt to behead him. Chuckling, he ducked under the swing. His laughter only increased when she took another swing at him when she saw who he was. In the back of his mind he noted that three more clones just died via Medusa, so he hoped the last six were enough to last just a little while longer.

Once she was done trying to kill him, he raised a brow at her. "I thought I told you to stay in bed?" She stuck her tongue out at him. Naruto rolled his eyes as she brought her swords up to him. "We can spar tomorrow. I can't kick the shit out of you in good conscience, knowing you just recovered."

Ameyuri seemed to take the slightest bit of offence to that. "Kick the shit out of me?" She licked her lips while grinning maliciously. "I'll make you eat those words."

Naruto sighed and flicked her in the forehead. "I don't have time for it right now, Go-tan. Tomorrow, we can fight to your heart's content, but, for now, you should go and speak with Zabuza and Chojuro about the Kiri no Shinobigatana Shichinin Shu. Yagura's been... taken care of, so now you have to start getting things together. Your village is weakened by that loss, so you have to be ready as soon as possible, in case another village tries to attack you right now. I'm only here to clear out anyone left in the base. You were just priority number one." Dully, he noted another three clones biting the dust. 'That's three left.'

This time she grinned at him with less intent to stab and more playfulness. "Aw, so you do care."

Flipping her off, Naruto began to walk away. "Don't get ahead of yourself." With his new sensing abilities, Naruto could feel her pouting as he walked away, and he found that the single, sharp tooth poking out from her top lip looked rather cute. 'God damn it. Now isn't the time for this shit... then again, I have to go deal with Medusa now anyway. May as well let those thoughts get flowing.' Sighing, he just made a bunch of clones to scour the base for anyone left before searching for wherever his clones dragged Medusa off to, or the other way around. He really didn't know which.

Feeling two more dispel, he knew he had to hurry up and find her before she finished the last clone and went off searching for him, likely scouring Kiri in her birthday suit. When he found her, his eyes widened as he realized just where he was. "Oh no she didn't." Before Ameyuri could question him on what was wrong, he was gone, making her sigh and make her way out of the base as well.

Kirigakure Rebel Base - Mei's Office(This is about to get reeeeeaaaaal citrus-filled, but no lemon juuust yet)

Naruto appeared to find an almost insensate clone with Medusa between its legs, her head pressed up against his crotch, her arms keeping his legs where she wanted them, and a small puddle beneath her. In an instant, Naruto got a full, all angled view of the scene, due to his senses, and realized that there was a bulge in her throat and her much longer than average tongue was curling around his clones sack. Sensing the contraction of said sack, Naruto was glad that he'd gotten there when he did, as the clone shuddered, finished, then dispelled into chakra which flowed right into him.

Medusa sighed, sounding almost downright depressed at that moment. "They never last as long as Naruto-sama..." Naruto just cleared his throat, making her whirl around in surprise. Seeing him, Medusa's eyes widened before a glaze came over her. "Naruto-sama!" She lunged at him, wrapping her arms around his waist and sending him to the ground. He was dazed for mere moments, but when he regained his bearings, which took less than two seconds, he found that his pants and boxers were already gone.

Sighing at her enthusiasm, he let her do her thing. With a nod from him, she dug in, filling both the room and Naruto's mind with the proof that she was really good at what she did. Well, Naruto's mind WAS focused on that until he heard two voices clear their throats in his head. 'Yeah, yeah. You know she doesn't like stopping so I'll do it once she's done with this.' They grumbled but complied.

A few minutes later and Naruto was thanking every god he could think of for the fact that Medusa was half succubus. She'd pulled off for a moment, strands of saliva and semen connecting her lips to the object of her current desire.

Naruto, much to her displeasure, got up at that point, making her think they were done. "Oh, come on! That was only once, and just in my mouth!"

Smirking, Naruto dismissed his shirt as well, making her scowl turn into a smile in an instant. "Don't worry. I'm just getting you some playmates."

Even as he began putting his hand to the seal, she began guessing who it was randomly. "Oh, oh, is it that Yagura girl? Oh, or maybe Mei? She looked hot. Oh, don't tell me you're already at that point with your "Ringo-chan"? Or maybe you can call that white-eyed girl who reaaaally likes you here at your whim, maybe even the Uchiha at the same time. Wait, did you start with that milf, Tsunami or whatever her name was? Oh, oh, oh, I know who it is! Haku! It's Haku, right!?" She squealed for a moment. "Oh, please tell me it's all of the above!"

Naruto, who'd just ignored her after the first three guesses, twisted the spiral on his abdomen. Out of the deep black void that arose, both Kurama and Kogo's youki poured out, eventually forming into the two demon foxes in a human form... who were currently laughing their asses off. Kurama was just about rolling on the floor laughing. "S-still th-think you aren't m-making a h-harem, gaki!?" was the first and only sentence he managed to get out before Naruto kicked him in the chest.

"Shut the fuck up, Kurama." When he kept laughing, Naruto, a vein bulging on his forehead, just spoke with his hand on the seal. "I swear you won't get out for another two months."

He clammed up real quick, though Kogo wasn't too inclined to join him. Instead, she got behind him with the same transportation technique he used and snaked her arms around him. "Oh, don't be like that, Naru-chan. I'd love to mix and match with the other girls. You might even get Yugi-chan and Mata-chan to join. Maybe even all the others." Naruto groaned at the thought.

Medusa snapped out of her little daze at that moment, grabbing Naruto by the waist this time and pressing against his chest. "You know you'd love that, Naruto-sama, and so would I, buuuuuuut..." she pulled him in for a kiss, though it wasn't very chaste, as she let her rather long tongue go to work. When she was done, Naruto was rather dazed, and a LOT more receptive. "For now, think of just us. We can get the others later." Naruto nodded dumbly, making Kogo chuckle lightly.

Kurama wasn't going to get left out of this one, though. Reaching around, he slipped his hands between the Naruto and Medusa's chest and grabbed hers lightly. "Don't go forgetting about me now, Medusa." At that moment, Medusa could've died happy.

Or, at least she thought that was the case. She took it back when Naruto released all his seals for the second time that day, his oppressive chakra, youki, and natural energy mix bearing down on her in the best ways. 'Actually, I'd rather not die. This is the life I REALLY enjoy living.' She proceeded to immerse herself in the flow of things, finally getting her reward from Naruto. 'And then some.' was all she was able to add before the tunnel vision really set in and her mind got set on her goal for the past few hours. Well, a lot more than just some, but she couldn't be bothered to describe it to herself, as she much preferred to enjoy it.

A/N: Whoa. And that was just day ONE of Naruto's time away from Konoha. He still has another six days in Kiri, a few things to set up, etc. I purposefully made it that Naruto would feel rushed, as he actually has a lot of things to do.

Let's list some. He has to set up the yakuza in Kiri, he has to deal with the girls in Nami before he goes back to Konoha, he has to see to any trade arrangements going through between Konoha and Kiri, by request of Minato, he has to deal with Medusa, and he has to formally introduce Yagura to the people of Uzushio, which I'm not revealing all of quite yet, as it is gonna be a plot point. Just know that he's rebuilt it, for the most part, and has a good number of people living there, and has had them for the past few years, running the place with mainly clones, except for his occasional, unsanctioned visits, which he's had to keep short for that very reason.

This is only what he knows of, too. I have a few more things to pile onto him, just to make him suffer juuuuust a bit more than he thought he would. Oh, I feel so mean, but I love it. Anyway, I won't be posting the votes for the harem anymore, as I feel like it'll be over by the end of this arc. Once this arc is all well and done, I'll post the final tally, and MAYBE tell you the few I've chosen to add... if there aren't too many already. So, for now, farewell. Enjoy the rest of your time on the beautiful invention of the internet, doing whatever it is you do when you aren't reading this story. Other stories, 4chan, youtube, redtube(hehe), significant other, friends, or even *shiver* outside. Whatever you do, I hope you enjoy it. Tataa.