Chapter 15

It had been a month since the preliminary stage of the chunin exams had ended and the finals were about to begin. In the distance, Naruto could hear the excitement and cheers emanating from the stadium as the exams were already underway.

Naruto's mind went back to both the day of the preliminaries, as well as the day where he had faced the dilemma of whether or not to enter his kids in the exam. To be quite honest, he was glad that none of his students actually made it to the finals, however guilty those thoughts made him feel. Each of his students were able to get invaluable experience and learn lessons that would aid them in the future.

Kiba had learned not to underestimate opponents as well as the dangers of overestimating himself. Hinata had learned that sometimes she had to be proactive in order to succeed. And Shino had learned that when faced with two bad choices, you had to compare the gains with the losses and pick the choice best for yourself and the village.

He knew that Shino would take that lesson to heart and learn from it, and he hoped that Hinata's performance was enough to give her a confidence boost to last through her next fight. He just had to make sure Kiba wouldn't revert back to the same behavior over time.

Another loud cheer interrupted this thoughts and brought him back to the present. Naruto resumed his walk to the next stop within his current posting.

"All clear, Sir!" An older chunin announced as Naruto entered the small room.

Naruto nodded at the older man, taking a brief look around before resuming his walk.

Internally, he couldn't believe there were people who actually wanted to do this kind of thing every day. He resolved himself to make sure he got out of this posting as soon as the chunin exams were over.

Flashback – 1 month ago

"Sakumo, come in."

"Hokage-sama." Naruto greeted the elderly man as he once again walked into the large office.

"I'm sorry that your students didn't make it to the finals."

"They did well. Truthfully, I wasn't sure if any of them were really ready, but didn't want to deny them the chance to take them when they had home field advantage." Naruto tried to explain.

The Hokage nodded, remembering his own troubled team and what they were like when they were mere genin.

"Well, as you know, village security has been heightened due to the number of foreign visitors we have both in the village and the number of high ranking visitors that will be coming for the exam finals."

Naruto nodded, knowing all of what the Hokage was saying.

"Because your students did not make it to the finals, I'd like to transfer you to village security for the duration of the chunin exams."

Naruto briefly stilled at this news. It wasn't uncommon for ninja to be asked to serve in village security. In fact, during emergency situations, it was expected that all Konoha ninja work with village security to resolve the problem.

"Where would you like me to be?" Naruto asked.

"I'd like to station you as the jonin in charge of the eastern wall. Normally two tokubetsu jonin are stationed there with a few handfuls of chunin, but..." The Hokage trailed off, looking distinctly uncomfortable for a moment.

"Is something wrong?" Naruto asked, having almost never seen the Hokage with this look on his face.

The Hokage looked at Naruto with eyes full of indecision and hesitation. He continued this look, pondering the last few days.

"Something happened during the second phase of the exams." The Hokage began cryptically.

Naruto focused his eyes on the Hokage, waiting patiently, but alertly, for the Hokage to continue.

The Hokage kept his silence for a few more moments before reaching a decision. "Orochimaru made an appearance in the forest of death."

"Is Akatsuki here?" Naruto asked, suddenly on alert. Internally, Naruto was pondering how he would fair against one of the sannin.

The Hokage immediately shook his head. "No, in fact my informant believes that Orochimaru has left the Akatsuki permanently. No, Orochimaru was interested in Sasuke Uchiha. He marked the boy with a cursed seal and tried to recruit him with promises of power for defeating his brother. When the examiner of the second exam caught up with him, he told her that if we stopped the exams, he would destroy Konoha."

Naruto pondered the reasons of that last statement. Orochimaru was interested in the chunin exams and wanted them to continue. Like all jonin, he was well familiar with the most dangerous criminals of Konoha and knew that nothing good could come of this.

"So you're assigning all available personnel to village security?"

The Hokage nodded his head. "Anbu will handle the internal village security. Keep your focus on external threats."

Naruto thought about what the Hokage was telling him before eventually nodding in acceptance.

End Flashback

Naruto made his way to the last turret of his section of the village wall, checking to make sure there were no problems before making his way back to the central node of his section. Despite what the Hokage had told him, he was experienced enough not to panic or freak out at the possibilities of something unexpected happening. Indeed, the only thing that caused him any distress at all was what to do with his students.

Obviously, the wall was no place for them, especially if something went wrong. So he needed to find something for his students to do, to keep them out of... and away from trouble.

In the end, he searched through the long term D-rank missions before finding one that was right for his students. He found one that he thought would both keep them away from trouble, but also provide them with an important task in case of emergency.

Flashback – Yesterday

"How is the academy going?" Naruto asked to students, each of them displaying different emotional states.

"Pftt... It's going stupid. I thought I would never come back here." Kiba declared loudly.

The other two students responded with more positive feedback, but still looked less than thrilled at their current assignment.

Due to needing extra manpower for village security, the Hokage had pulled about a third of the chunin currently serving in the academy. Most of the chunin that were temporarily reassigned were the assistant instructors or substitute teachers, so genin could be used as replacements, for a while anyway.

Kiba had been assigned to his old teacher Iruka, who had been given a new class of first years. This was done so that Kiba could have the easiest students to deal with and so that their old instructor could keep an eye on his most rambunctious student. Shino had been assigned to the second years and Hinata had been assigned to the third years.

"Well, it's only a few more days. After that we can go on a C-rank mission and get back to training." Naruto replied, himself eager to spend some time doing some thing constructive.

In the distance, the academy warning bell sounded, alerting students it was time to get to class.

"Time to get back to work." Naruto said in a faux cheerful manner.

His students grumbled, but made their way to put up with another day of teaching academy students.

"Shino, stay behind for a moment." Naruto called out.

All three students turned, but with an encouraging nod, two left while the third walked back.

Once the other genin were outside of hearing range, Naruto began a conversation he hoped that Shino was mature enough to hear.

"Shino, if anything happens in the next few days I want you to watch over the team and stay with the academy students."

Shino paused at what he had said and looked to be deep in thought.

"Is something expected..." Shino began to ask before he was cut off.

"Don't ask questions that I can't answer. Just know that I stationed you here for a reason. The academy is a strategic target and the students are the future ninja of Konoha. If something happens, their safety is a top priority. Make sure your teammates are safe that they continue to look after the students. Don't let Kiba run off half cocked to look for danger. Do you understand what I'm telling you?" Naruto grabbed his students shoulder as he said that last sentence and waited for an answer.

Naruto could tell that Shino was more than a little rattled by what he had just said, and the fact that he could tell that Shino was rattled said a lot.

"Yes... I... I will make sure that all of us stay together and guard the students." Shino replied eventually.

Naruto nodded before patting his student on the shoulder and pushing him to get to class.

End Flashback

Naruto forced himself once again to keep his mind focused on the present. In the distance, he could hear yet another cheer or cry from the stadium, but here it was all quiet.

"SIR! LOOK OUT!" Several voices from alongside the wall suddenly brought his attention to an area a few thousand feet away.

Out of nowhere, literally, a giant three headed snake had just appeared in a white cloud of smoke. The snake wasted no time in heading straight for a section in the wall a hundred feet away from Naruto.

For just a moment, Naruto froze, thinking that this was just his imagination running wild for a second. The shouts of his fellow Konoha ninja beginning to panic forced him back to the present. Naruto ran through a quick inventory of what he could do to stop the snake.

Naruto forced his attention away from the snake to check the surroundings and found to no surprise that dozens of men were emerging from the forest behind the snake. They were keeping their distance, most likely waiting for the giant summon to create an opening in the wall... which would happen in less than a minute.

'A full invasion. The worst case scenario it is.' Naruto allowed himself to think, despite the obviousness of that thought. 'I hoped that I would never have to do this, but I have no choice.'

With that last thought, Naruto began to channel his chakra in a very familiar way to him. He let it encompass his entire body, focusing on manipulating it to grow hotter and contain it within inches of his skin.

"Back away from me!" Naruto shouted to his subordinates, warning them off.

-15-

Sei Okada, a chunin stationed at the center node of the eastern wall, watched agape as the biggest animal he had ever seen headed straight for him. Sei had been a chunin for four years and a ninja for eight years. He had earned regular promotion for his mission record and his steady growth, but knew that he would probably never be jonin. He had settled for village security because it was less dangerous, steady work. Realistically, he knew that this was a possibility in his line of work, but never thought it would truly happen.

As the serpent drew closer and closer, he wracked his brain trying to think of something... anything he could do, but kept coming in blank. Sooner than he thought possible, the snake was almost right in front of him, leading him to turn and retreat.

As he turned, he paused when he saw a glow coming from the turret adjacent to his. The glow, which he had not noticed, due to obvious reasons, was getting brighter and brighter. When it seemed that it could not get any brighter, the light sudden moved and headed straight for the snake.

In what could only be described as a blur, the light had suddenly seemed to appear on the other side of the snake.

A moment passed, in which time, the snake still moved toward the wall, due to the sheer momentum it was traveling with. Only... when the body of the snake hit the wall, it did so without the necks and heads. At the same time, a mighty crash was heard as the heads had fallen to the ground.

Sei Okada took a second look at the light, that was now standing on the body of the snake in front of the wall. 'Wait... standing?' Sei thought as he gave shape to the light.

The light was in reality a man who seemed to be exuding light, no, wait... not light... Fire!

-15-

Naruto kept himself in a state of absolute concentration. The fire surrounding his body was strong enough to sever the snakes heads from their bodies, and strong enough to do the same to himself if he wasn't careful.

This was the advanced level of this skill he had shown the Sandaime and Hana. It had started as just being able to use one hand, but over time he was able to use his entire body. After he succeeded in that, he focused on heating the fire even more.

That was the great thing about fire, the hotter it was, the more dangerous it was. There is almost no limit to how hot fire can get. Every time he found a limit of how hot he could get his fire, it was just another obstacle to overcome and surpass. The end result, was this.

The fire had been enough to sever the snakes heads with almost no resistance and stop the snake before it could do much damage to the wall.

However now he was facing the moral dilemma he had been dreading.

The large army before him.

Naruto knew that he had no choice. There were hundreds of ninjas already in the clearing, ready to invade, pillage, and burn Konoha to the ground. A closer look at a few of them revealed most of them to be Oto ninja, with Suna ninja appearing near the back. As enemy ninja were still pouring out of the forest, Naruto knew that he would have to stop them.

Taking the few seconds he had left, he cleared his mind from all distractions, doubts, and fears. For this, he would need absolute control.

With that state of mind, he leaped into the grassy field in front of the wall, seconds before a full platoon of Oto ninja charged toward him.

Naruto merely raised his hand and focused.

-15-

Ibiki Morino, tokubetsu jonin and head of the torture and interrogation department ran with his subordinates to the eastern wall. As the torture and interrogation department would likely have little to do until after a conflict had ended, the Hokage had assigned him and his department to serve as a reserve force for whoever needed it during the exams. Word had spread very quickly about the giant 3-headed snake summon headed toward the eastern wall, so that was where he was leading his men now. What he could do to stop such a monster was another matter entirely.

Ibiki and the five squads of ninja backing him up made it to the inner side of the eastern wall and bounded up the stairs, which they were quite surprised to find intact. As they were rushing up, Ibiki wondered how they had beaten the snake summon here and whether the information they received was falsified.

When he finally emerged from the stairway, he prepared himself for the absolute worst. What he saw however, surprised the heck out of him. To his immediate right was the dead body of a snake summon. Standing alongside the wall were the chunin who were assigned to guard the perimeter. The odd thing was that each of them was in a state somewhere between shock and wonder.

Ibiki turned his head to assess the battleground when he saw the hundreds of foreign ninja on the outside. Ibiki quickly ducked down to make sure his body was covered by the protections of the wall, but immediately poked his head back out to the battlefield.

That is were he saw it. What every one of his colleagues were staring at. A single ninja was fighting the Oto and Suna ninja.

Ibiki had never seen anything like it in his entire life. One man was fighting an entire army of ninja alone. As he watched, a pair of Oto ninja both fired off a pair of water jutsus at the single ninja. The ninja seemed to dance around the water attacks and merely raised his hand against the two ninja. In his hand, a light started to appear before seemingly shooting out in a burst of intense flames. The two Oto ninja were completely incinerated, along with a handful of others behind them being horribly burned.

The cries of the horribly burned but still alive men behind them demoralized the attackers, but each of the Oto ninja knew what would happen to them if they retreated. Orochimaru controlled his men with fear and promises of power. Those who disobeyed or failed him would often end up on an operating table being experimented on, without an anesthetic.

The Oto ninja tried to rally and use their superior numbers to overwhelm the single man, but with the ability to send horribly destructive blasts of fire from his hands without the need for seals, he seemed to be unstoppable.

When a ninja from his squad bumped against him, Ibiki was jolted out of his current thinking. As he looked around, he could see that he had fallen into the same state as those around him. Summoning his courage and authority, he moved to try and snap his allies out of their state.

"Snap out of it! Don't get complacent just because their busy with him right now! Use throwing weapons and long range ninjutsu to keep them away from the wall."

The men and women who both accompanied him and were already stationed here blinked and flinched at the sudden distraction from their trances. Each of them were a bit slow to process what he had said, but remembered they were ninja on the front line of a war.

Slowly but surely, the chunin along the wall began to use either ninjutsu or throwing weapons at the ninja who were too close to the wall. The Konoha ninja were cautious not to throw any near their single ally, but with the hundreds of ninja still out there, there was no shortage of opportune targets.

As the men and women had resumed their jobs, Ibiki moved over to the closest tokubetsu jonin to find out who that man fighting was. "Report." He asked brusquely.

"I..." The tokubetsu jonin started before shaking his head and starting over. "The 3-headed snake summon appeared just a few minutes ago and started charging at the wall. Right as it was about to crash through, our commander charged at it and beheaded it with a sort of intense fire jutsu that seemed to surround his entire body!"

"Where is he now?" Ibiki asked, but suspecting he knew the answer based on the 'intense fire jutsu' explanation.

"That's him." The tokubetsu jonin pointed at the single ninja who was currently still battling the foreign ninja.

Ibiki once again gazed at the powerful ninja, trying to recognize him, but being unable to because of the distance. "Who is he?"

"Jonin Sakumo Hayashi." The man replied instantly.

With that, Ibiki's eyes widened drastically. Now that he knew who he was looking at, he looked at the man more critically, trying to spot the face mask of 'Hayashi'.

During his observation he also tried to focus his chakra sensing abilities. He was no sensor, but he couldn't feel any of the Kyuubi's malicious chakra. The last time he had sensed it, he had been on a boat further away and injured, but even then, he had been clearly able to feel that horrible chakra. Now, he wasn't getting anything. Was Naruto able to mask the Kyuubi's chakra now, or was he perhaps not even using it?

-15-

As Naruto sent yet another fire blast from his palm, he felt the fire beginning to get away from him. Outside of training, he had not used this much fire before and it was beginning to him. He wondered how long he would have to keep this up.

So far, he had kept to killing the Oto ninja. They seemed to constitute the rank and file of the invading army and were at a low chunin in terms of power and skill. In the brief times where he allowed himself to split his attention away from the fighting, he noticed that the Suna ninja were hanging back while the Oto ninja kept charging forward with almost reckless abandon. It could be that they were waiting for him to exhaust himself, or studying him for a weakness.

That was somewhat fortunate as far as he was concerned, while he had killed a few Suna ninja during the beginning of his attack, they were at a much higher level than the Oto ninja. If they got more involved, he might be in serious trouble. As it was, during the brief glances he had at what he judged to be the Suna leadership, they seemed reluctant to attack him or charge at the not-destroyed wall. Naruto had decided that he should keep his focus on the Oto ninja, hoping that if he killed enough of them, the Suna leadership might decide to withdraw.

With that in mind, he turned his attention back to the recovering Oto ninja and the fresh ones charging him in an almost suicidal way.

-15-

Shino stood quietly in the front corner of the classroom. The last few weeks had tried his patience considerably, not that he had let anyone see that. He had forgotten how boring the earlier years in the academy were. So far, his tasks were to keep an eye on the students during the theoretical lessons and make sure they stayed awake, mentor them one on one when they were learning something physical like hand-seals or taijutsu, and supervise them during the physical exercises.

He had gotten the toughest assignment of the three in his opinion. Kiba got the first years, who were so excited with the ability to attend the academy that they behaved well, and Hinata had gotten the third years, who spent most of their year learning to activate their chakra and learn their first jutsu. Hinata had been assigned to that task because of her byakugan's ability to see chakra from inside a persons body. His students on the other hand, had mostly book learning and exercise, which made them restless and belligerent, respectively.

"Shino-kun." The classes sensei interrupted his thinking, called to him.

"Yes, Sensei?" Shino replied diligently.

The sensei looked at the watch on his wrist before replying. "It's almost time for us to hit the obstacle course, but I forgot my stopwatch in my office. Could you retrieve it for me and meet us there?"

"Of course, Mizuki-sensei." Shino replied, leaving the room to head for the teachers offices.

As he left, he never noticed the malicious smile on his former assistant teachers face as Mizuki turned his head to face his 'students'.

-15-

"Taicho?" The man to the left of him questioned.

"You heard me, sound the retreat."

"But taicho, we could overwhelm him if we planned it out and..."

The commander of the Suna forces damn near backhanded the young jonin that was questioning his orders. "The summon was stopped before it breached the wall and not a single Konoha ninja has died! Reinforcements have already arrived and they are taking the Oto ninja down from a superior position. I'm not sending anyone into that deathtrap without an edge, so I'll say it again... Sound! The! Retreat!"

The more experienced ninja around him nodded before dividing to spread the word to return to their forward camp.

The younger jonin was still gaping at what he had been told.

"You want to go charge at that monster or that wall, be my guest, but the rest of us are getting out of here before they run out of Oto ninja to kill!"

With that, the commander and the remainder of the present forces turned and began fleeing into the forest.

The young jonin gave one last glance at the battlefield where yet another squad of Oto ninja were just blasted by another wave of fire before gulping and moving to follow the commander.

-15-

The Suna ninja deciding to retreat was the turning point of the entire battle. Once the Oto ninja realized that half of their army had left before engaging the enemy and half of their own forces had perished against a single unbeatable enemy, they started to forget about the threat of Orochimaru and focus on the present.

For each of the Oto ninja that realized the fact that if they stayed they would be slaughtered, another realized this fact as they saw the original turn to retreat back to their base camp. Eventually, only a handful of Oto ninja remained, who realized all too late that they were screwed as they died against the combined force of Naruto's fire blasts and the Konoha ninja on the wall.

After the last of the Oto ninja had been killed, Naruto finally allowed himself to relax a bit and contemplate his actions. He had been involved in battles where the death count was incomparably high, but they were mostly against larger bandit forces. This was the first time that he had fought at full power using the skills he developed to elevate himself to an S-class level.

As he turned his eyes across the battlefield, he looked at the destruction that he had wrought. In the distance, he could hear the moans of the men that were too severely burned to retreat, but not enough to die or pass out. For the first time since he was a genin, he felt the brief urge to throw up at the consequences of his actions, before forcing that feeling down.

Naruto turned his attention back to his post and saw that reinforcements had already arrived, not that he was surprised by that. In fact, it looked like Ibiki was the leader of the reinforcements, so that was his next stop.

With a overpowered shunshin, he managed to make it up to the top of the wall. His appearance had surprised the other men there, but none had tried to act against him. As Naruto gazed across the faces of both the men he had commanded over the last month and those that had come to reinforce him, he saw a new expression on their faces that he had never experienced before... reverence.

"Ibiki, I assume these are your subordinates?" Naruto asked Ibiki, having received a nod in return. "Collect the injured that can be transported to interrogation and finish off those who can't."

Ibiki stared at him for only a second before nodding and organizing his subordinates to spread out and carry out Naruto's orders.

With that done, Naruto moved to one of the turrets to find a place he could sit down for a moment.

Before he got more than a few feet however, a distant thudding caught his and everyone's attention.

Naruto, pausing at the sound of the noise as it sounded as if it was slowly getting louder and louder. Soon enough, he could even feel a vibration that seemed to accompany the sounds. Instead of entering the turret to find a place to sit down, Naruto leaped up to the roof in order to see if he could spot where the noises were coming from.

From the slightly better position, he was easily able to tell which direction the sounds were coming from. He pulled out a sealing scroll from his pack and unwrapped it to the correct position, channeled his chakra and caught a pair of binoculars as they fell out. Using the new tool, he scanned the area to the east and saw two things. The first was that the men manning the western section of the wall were moving around like crazy. The second was that there seemed to be a brown blob coming straight for them.

On his left, he felt Ibiki land next to him and without a word handed him his binoculars.

"What is that thing?" Ibiki asked him as he looked through the magnifying lens.

Naruto sighed. "Probably another summon."

With that said, Naruto looked around to reexamine his post. Things were mostly secure here and there were no sign of any more invaders. Squads of Ibiki's men were ferrying injured Oto ninja to the gates and off duty Konoha ninja were showing up to see if anyone needed help here.

"Take over here, will you? I'm going to the other side to see if they need help dealing with that summon." Naruto asked, turning to Ibiki.

Ibiki also took a look around, but eventually nodded, agreeing with Naruto plan. "Good luck."

With that, Naruto sped off to the western wall, hoping he wouldn't have to fight another army on the other side of Konoha.

-15-

Shino was combing through the academy teachers desk for the missing stopwatch, but couldn't seem to locate it. Eventually giving up as a lost cause, Shino went to check the supply room to see if he could locate a spare. Upon finding it locked, he decided to just ask Mizuki-sensei where the stopwatch was and double time it back.

Upon reaching the end of the hallway to turn and head outside to the obstacle course, Shino paused briefly in confusion. According to their schedule, Mizuki should have already led the academy students outside, but based on the bugs he had left on the more troublesome students, they were still in the classroom.

Regardless, Shino turned and headed back to the classroom. Normally he didn't put his bugs on the students, for fear they would be discovered and swapped, but due to his sensei's warning, he decided to be a bit more cautious today.

As he quickly walked back, he looked in at some of the classrooms along the way. To his surprise, he found all of them to be empty. He knew that academy students frequently had exercises and taijutsu practice outside, but he should have at least seen one of them full.

A piercing scream interrupted his thoughts as he quickly traced it back to his classroom. Being only a short distance away, he arrived at the door only to find it locked. He peered into the window only to find a sight that shocked him to his core.

Inside was his sensei currently in the middle of stabbing one of the second year students. Mizuki was using a kunai to puncture her stomach and was displaying a deranged, sadistic look on his face.

Shino instantly lost almost all of his composure as he heard the screams of the children he had spent the last month with increase. Shino immediately backed away from the door to wonder how he was going to save the children from a scenario he had never foreseen. Like all the doors in Konoha's ninja institutions, they opened out instead of in. Normally civilians did the opposite to avoid hitting people walking in the hallway with a fast opening door, but ninja designed the academy so doors would be harder to force open in an emergency. Unfortunately, they were the worst thing in this scenario.

-15-

Naruto was only just past the half way point when he heard the loud crash of the western wall being broken by the second summon. He increased his speed slightly to get there before any more lives could be lost.

A minute later, he ran around the last building between himself and the outer wall. As soon as his vision was no longer obscured, he saw the creature that was attacking Konoha more clearly.

It was like no summoned animal he had ever seen before. It looked like a huge raccoon, only it appeared to be made of light earth or sand. The creature also seemed to be behaving a bit... simple. It seemed to be less focused on the line of Konoha shinobi trying to subdue it with various ninjutsu and more focused on causing mayhem and collateral damage.

As Naruto prepared to charge himself with fire nature chakra once more, he hoped he had the resolve to end this fast. Unlike the snakes, which had thinner necks than one might expect, the raccoon looked like it was built for raw power.

He felt the flames once again rise out of his tenketsu and surround his body in a stifling warmth. He focused on channeling even more than he had with the snake, hoping that he could finish this before there was too much damage to Konoha.

In the distance, he could see that the Konoha ninja had begun to damage the raccoon with the last barrage of water jutsus, not that it did much. It did however turn the raccoon's attention toward the attackers. Without pause, Naruto disappeared in a familiar blur and began targeting the paw of the attacking monster.

-15-

Shino tested his foot against the outside wall, to make sure he was sending the appropriate amount of chakra to keep himself attached. He tried his best to ignore the screams coming from the adjacent classroom and focused on getting himself inside.

Shino had not been able to break down the reinforced door so he had settled for going into the classroom next door and breaking the window. He was now readying himself to breach his classroom and stop Mizuki from killing the students.

He carefully inched his way across the outside of the building in order to poke his head into the window.

Inside, he saw the bodies of at least six children and the ones that were still alive were scattered across the room, trying desperately to find a way to escape the carnage.

Shino forced himself to remain calm and not jump in half cocked. He noted with relief that parts of the windows were already broken, due to the struggle, so he would not have to break them in order to get his allies inside. He internally issued the orders as his Kikaichu began filtering in through the holes in the windows before hiding inside. He knew that every second he wasted was another potential life lost, but if he engaged the chunin and lost, all of the students would die.

Shino allowed his bugs one minute to get in and get into position before he knew he couldn't keep waiting. He swung himself back to the original window of the adjacent classroom. He would need to build up enough speed to break through the glass without getting injured in the process. Nothing would be worse than only making it halfway through the windows only to let gravity impale him on a glass shard still attached to the bottom of the window.

With determination in his eyes, he made his move. Gathering speed, he performed a cartwheel on the vertical wall, sticking his hands to the wall with his chakra. He then used his legs to power himself through the window at the apex of the cartwheel turn.

-15-

"Kunio, you always were such a troublemaker." Mizuki stated as he grabbed hold of the genin wannabe, who was pitifully trying to hide under his desk. He fingered his bloody kunai with his free hand, watching with glee as the boy pissed himself with fright.

So far, everything was going according to plan. The invasion should be well under way right now and the other classes should be meeting with his allies as they made a break for the Hokage mountain interior. He had seen his genin assistant trying to get through the door after he sent him away, but the door held and he didn't have any way inside. He hadn't heard anything in a while, so his backup must have arrived and taken him out. 'I suppose I should stop playing around and finish these brats.' Mizuki thought, in no hurry to end his fun.

Crash!

Mizuki immediately dropped the boy and turned his body to the window, where it seemed that his former student had just forced his way into the room.

"Shino-kun, how nice of you to drop by."

Despite his cavalier attitude, Mizuki was more than a bit thrown off by his appearance. 'Where the hell is my backup? They should have easily breached the eastern wall with that summon and been here by now.' He thought furiously.

As soon as Mizuki had that thought, he dismissed it as Shino made his move. The boy pulled out kunai from his pouches and assumed an offensive stance.

"Really, going to try to take me on? Come on Shino, you know your going to die in the attempt, right. Just you and me here."

The boy across from him responded. "You, me, and the future ninja of Konoha."

Mizuki snorted at that. "These weaklings, don't make me laugh. If you're counting on them to back you up, your going to die sooner than I thought." With that said, Mizuki had enough talking and moved forward to take out the single ninja standing between him and finishing his assignment.

-15-

Naruto focused his powers as he made his way through the front leg of the large creature. Unlike the snake summon he had dealt with previously, this raccoon was not made of blood and flesh, it was made of solid sand. It took a lot of chakra and concentration, but eventually he was able to make his way through the limb and escape before the beast could consider retribution.

"What the... which one of you ants did that?!"

Naruto turned to see that the voice had indeed come from the monster he had just maimed. The large beast was scanning the area around him, trying to locate a disturbance. Considering that he was covered in a layer of fire chakra and literally glowing, Naruto didn't seem to think the monster in front of him was high in the intelligence department.

The sand limb that Naruto had cut off had hit the ground and was dissipating into regular sand. Naruto glanced at the torn limb, now a pile of sand, and tried to figure out what exactly he was dealing with. 'A summon isn't made out of sand... what is that thing?'

The large creature then emitted a large pulse of chakra. The earth began to shake as the ground became soft. The creature then put it's body down to the ground and when it pulled it away, a new limb was attached to the creature.

"Crap." Naruto said to himself. 'So, it can regenerate it's lost limbs by drawing them from the sand in the ground. Wait!' Naruto stopped himself for a minute when he felt the chakra produced by the creature once more. 'I know that feeling... it's almost like...'

Naruto took a second look at the creature. More specifically, he looked behind it to see if he could spot multiple tails. 'Only one. Does that mean it's not what I'm thinking, or is it just that this bijuu or jinchuuriki only has one tail.'

The creature had made back to it's original position and started to resume it's smashing ways, seeming to ignore whoever or whatever it was that attacked it in favor of having a childlike good time destroying the surrounding area. At a less serious time, it might look and seem similar to a young child having fun destroying a toy block building that another child had built previously.

"Smash, smash!"

Naruto circled around the beast, continuously thinking of a way to defeat the monster before it destroyed Konoha. 'If it is a bijuu or jinchuuriki, then maybe it's doing something similar to my seventh tail. I just hope there's a person somewhere in there, otherwise I have no idea what I'm going to do.

As he was thinking, he pulled out a sealing scroll that he had carried since the beginning of his shinobi career and opened it to the first position. He had never had to draw upon this seal when not training and now it was his only hope. Well, he was just glad it wouldn't be for him. The seal flashed briefly and popped out a slip of paper a few inches wide and a little less than a foot long. It was one of the demon suppression seals that the Hokage had provided for him when he first began training his Kyuubi powers.

Naruto had always carried it at the forefront of his sealing scroll so that in an emergency he could get to it as quickly as possible. Now, he was going to try and use it to restrain the bijuu-like monster in front of him. He suspected that it was unlikely to work effectively if he just stuck it on the sand covered creature, so he knew that he would have to look for weak point or find the jinchuuriki. Unfortunately, the monster had built itself like a tank and seemed to be able to reform limbs that had been cut off, so finding the jinchuuriki seemed to be the only strategy.

Naruto analyzed the monster with a critical eye. It was unlikely that the jinchuuriki would be near in the legs or tail, so that ruled them out. If he had to guess, the guy would likely near the head. He just hoped that he or she was not under many layers of sand. The monster didn't seem too intelligent, so if that was the case, they would have likely suffocated by now, so the jinchuuriki was likely somewhere near the head with their own head exposed at least somewhat.

Naruto allowed himself to sigh once more before he began what he knew could be the start of a horrible plan. He just hoped that the monster ignored him while he was climbing on his back as much as he seemed to be ignoring him now.

With that, Naruto began allocated more chakra to his legs and began moving closer to the right back leg of the bijuu. He prayed to whatever deity was watching that he could be as silent and unnoticeable as possible.

-15-

Shino moved as cautiously as he could. He had achieved his goal of stopping his teacher from killing the students, but knew that if he failed to kill or incapacitate him, he would resume. If Mizuki tried to hurt any of the students now, it would expose him to a critical strike from Shino. The more time he bought for reinforcements to arrive, the more time everyone would live.

Mizuki on the other hand was thinking along the same lines. Only he had expected his reinforcements to be here by now and every minute that passed without their presence only worried him further. If something went wrong, Konoha forces could be here at any minute. He needed to kill Shino so he could finish off the students quickly and get out of here.

With little indication, Mizuki surged forward, looking to take his former student out quickly. His bloody kunai was still in his hand was already moving to spear the genin.

Shino dodged to the right, avoiding the scattered desks that littered the room. With a roll, he created even more distance, before looking back to see Mizuki's next move.

Mizuki had not disappointed. With practiced ease, he pulled the massive shuriken off his back and prepared to throw it at his student. With a smirk, Mizuki slightly altered his throw before releasing the massive shuriken.

Shino saw both the weapon and the smirk, while preparing to dodge once again. However, he stopped for a fraction of a second when he heard a whimper from behind him. 'Damn.' He thought. If he dodged, the students that had taken shelter behind him would be hit and certainly killed by the shuriken. He needed to block the strike.

With practiced effort, Shino flew through a series of hand-seals.

The students in the room all gasped as their only hope of surviving the day was struck by the shuriken. However, a white cloud of smoke immediately revealed what should have been Shino's body was actually a log of wood.

"Kawarimi, not bad Shino. But unfortunately, I know exactly where you are." Mizuki gloated. This was his classroom. There was only a few places where Shino could have appeared on the other end of his jutsu and he knew exactly where in the small space he would likely appear.

As expected, Shino had appeared near the doorway to try and unlock the door and take the fight away from the children. Mizuki threw the kunai he was holding to try and catch the boy unaware. The kunai grazed the jacket of the boy slightly as Shino dodged, but more importantly, by then Mizuki had already closed the distance and pulled another weapon out of his pouch.

Now that he was within taijutsu range of the boy, he moved to take his fight more physical. With his better developed body, he should be able to overpower the boy and then move on to finishing the kids.

With a grunt of effort, he grabbed the boy's wrist while he was off balance from the previous dodge and moved to start pummeling and gutting the boy with this dominant hand.

Only, when his fist made contact with the boy, he seemed to explode again in white smoke.

'Kawarimi! But how did he do that while I had a firm grip on his arm?" Mizuki thought furiously, scanning the rest of his classroom for signs of Shino appearing.

Unfortunately for Mizuki, it was not a kawarimi, but a bug clone reverting to it's natural state.

The bugs that Shino had sent in previous to his entry had hidden themselves in the sub-ceiling of the room and prepared to take Shino's place with their unique bunshin/henge jutsu. When the real Shino had performed his kawarimi to dodge the shuriken, the bugs had appeared to take his place while the real Shino henged into a terrified looking academy student.

Now that the bugs were no longer in their clone form and inches away from their enemy, they were free to attack and suck as much chakra as they could.

No one was more surprised than Mizuki as he went from searching for his elusive former student to being covered in bugs that were biting and sucking his chakra dry. Nothing in his ninja training prepared him for this as he panicked and began just trying to swat the bugs away. Ordinarily he would have searched for a water source to jump into or looked to an ally for help, but he was all alone in the middle of a building with nothing to help him. Very soon, he collapsed of extreme chakra exhaustion.

Shino reverted from his academy boy disguise and approached his former teacher slowly and cautiously. It would not do for him to appear to win, only to lose if his enemy still had a card to play. But luckily for him, his teacher was completely out cold and he had won the day.

-15-

Shikaku arrived at the site of the western wall breach with his two teammates: Inoichi and Choza. The Hokage had placed the village on high alert today due to the recent sighting of Orochimaru and the chaos that a chunin final exam brought. So far, there had been a big commotion at the chunin exam arena where multiple enemies were spotted, but contained by the village jonin and a reported summon and army at the eastern wall that had been stopped and defeated earlier than expected.

When a report came of a powerful summon that had breached the western wall and was wrecking havoc on the surrounding area, Shikaku directed his team to the area to assist with taking the summon down.

"That's no summon, it's a bijuu!" Choza Akimichi cried.

"No, if it were a bijuu it would have more of a sinister chakra presence." Shikaku corrected. "Right now, it's most likely a jinchuuriki in bijuu form."

"How do we stop it?" Inoichi asked trying to keep his calm, but slightly panicking due to the grave threat to his home.

Shikaku remained silent at that question, but was interrupted from answering due to a figure that appeared on the back of the bijuu.

"Who is that?" Choza asked the others, who seemed just as clueless as him at the distant figure.

"I don't know, but..." Inoichi started when he was interrupted by the bijuu he began to take notice of the person on his back himself.

"Smash! Smash! I'm gonna destroy... Hey! What are you doing? Don't touch him! No!"

The bijuu suddenly started to panic as it desperately tried to claw away at the ninja who was doing something on the top of his head.

"NOOO! I was having fuunnnnn!"

The bijuu started to lose it's mass as the sand making up the creatures body began to drop to the earth below. Within a minute, the giant had been reduced to nothing but a pile of sand lying in the middle of a destroyed section of Konoha.

Out of the giant sand pile, the figure lifted a second person onto his shoulder and jumped off the collapsing mountain of sand.

"Let's go see." Shikaku led the way to the figure, along with quite a bit of the ninja forces that were in the area.

As they got closer, they could see that the figure was actually a Konoha jonin wearing the standard jonin flak jacket, cargo pants, and a face mask.

Shikaku himself was one of the only men to recognize this jonin it seemed, as most of the ninja that surrounded him were stunned at the feat he had just performed.

"Sakumo." Shikaku said in a voice barely above a whisper. It was enough however to break the attention the crowd was giving the jonin, if only for a second.

Sakumo Hayashi merely nodded to the jonin commander before inspecting the area around him. Eventually he found what he was looking for.

"Anbu!" He stated loudly, looking to his right where an Anbu team was lurking in the wreckage of a nearby building.

The Anbu team, not wanting to upset the man who had just saved them, presented themselves to him.

"Take this boy to a secure cell. Make sure to keep the sealing tag on him or else he will just transform again." Sakumo ordered the team while handing the boy who had caused all this over to one of the team members.

The Anbu team, while not technically supposed to take orders from a random jonin were quick to take the boy and disappear in order to follow his orders.

IMPORTANT: If you want a better frame for reference for Naruto's fire powers, watch the first episode of Witch Craft Works. If you google 'witch craft works episode 1' and click on the first link 'gogoanime', you can download or watch the first episode for free.

AN:

As you can tell from the above statement, I based Naruto's fire powers off of Kagari from Witch Craft Works.

I hope you enjoyed this chapter. I enjoyed writing it, especially compared to the previous two chapters. I am writing a lot more now that I am back to a more Naruto-centric story-line.

One question I had when writing this chapter was: Do summons disappear when they die?

Do their bodies return to the summoning realm, or does Konoha get to eat snake meat for the next few months?