Chapter 4

Price of Power

-Chapter begin-

The last hope for a peaceful resolution fell through pretty quickly, which was a pity given that all the preparations for the summit had gone mostly without any proplems. It had been that they could have talked in some trade routes, or maybe even some agreed zones of influence or something but the Samurai were already riled up so that wasn't going to happen. It didn't help that the ninja were also getting fed up with everything as well, and that had only gotten worse after that botched assassination attempt.

That was the thing that had Sarutobi nervous. Lightning had claimed no knowledge of the attempt, and either they were lying, they were factionalized than they were letting on, or worse they were telling the truth.

If the assassination attempt hadn't been caught in time by one of the Inuzuka catching wind of the explosives it would have been messy. The unfortunate thing was that it was very likely that the leadership of Kumo had probably not had anything to do with it which meant another party's involvement. As it was had the bomb gone off there would have been a good chance of taking at least one, maybe both the daimyos out, and mabye even one or both of the kages out as well.

The real question was who. If Mist hadn't been in such bad shape Sarutobi might have suspected them as the outside actor, but that wasn't likely, not in the condition the land of water was in at present. It was more likely that this might have been an action by the fifth of the Great Hidden Villages. The land of earth's own Iwagakure no Sato. While it was true there was no love lost between Konoha, and Iwa, indeed there existed great enmity between the two villages. As true as that may have been Iwa had no interest to harm Konoha if it would just allow Kumo to ascend to take their place. Kumo who was significantly more militant than Konoha, and who had already openly committed things that lead to war.

All of this had become an even further problem after the attack two days ago. It had become clear there was yet another actor, or at least that there had been a fourth. Sarutobi rubbed the phantom pains in his shoulder. Tsunande had already patched him up as best he could. The abrupt attack on the Uchiha had been completely unexpected. It hadn't made any sense at all, and that had made it all the more devestating.

That it had been one of their own that had conducted it had further caught them by surprise. In a way that they'd been able to positively identify the one eyed Uchiha was even worse news. Sarutobi had had little choice but to immediately classify the information, otherwise well it would have been bad for morale.

"Kumo will attack now," Orochimaru was say, there was a long burned gash running from the side of his face along his shoulder down his side from the fight. The injury was just one minor one compared to the dearth of damage done during the fight.

It didn't matter how powerful that one Uchiha had been. It might have possible for the Uchiha to repel the attack if they hadn't been caught by surprise, certainly young Itachi had managed to at least hold his ground for a little while. In the end though the long Uchiha had found himself facing two of the sannin, and Sarutobi alongside other ninja, and then Kakashi had joined the fray.

That'd been the end of it pretty much. Even if Kakashi hadn't shown up Orochimaru and Jiraya alone would have been probably enough to tip the tide of battle. So that had been that cleaning up afterwards though, that had been the problem.

Jiraya nodded, "I've got to agree, to good of an opportunity. The Uchiha are still pulling bodies out of the rubble," and it'd been pretty much two damn days of work, "We're not even sure if Fugaku is going to make it," and he had Tsunande working on him, so that really wasn't a good sign. At least Itachi had been able to save his mother, and younger brother from the fighting with little more than scratches to both.

"I've been told," Sarutobi remarked looking through the paperwork that was occupying his desk. If anything though there was some good to come out of this, but he wasn't going to bring it up, not now. "what can we do specifically to prepare,"

Orochimaru glared at Danzo, "The Uchiha need an outlet, the Hyuga also want the chance to take out some frustration on Cloud. It might be time to let them," He commented, it wasn't likely going to be popular with the old man, but there weren't a whole lot of options. "Kumo's going to attack, but to do so means coming south, so we need to ambush them." That was a lot of ground to cover so finding a team of cloud ninja was going to be difficult.

"Tch, well I can definitely keep my ear to the ground," Jiraya grunted, "but there is some chatter about a cloud forward base already being established."
The snake sannin glanced at the toad, "Then we find it and destroy it, and then let the Hyuga and Uchiha finish off the survivors."
"Out of the question," Sarutobi interjected, for the moment it was better for one of them to remain in the village, in the wake of the attack on the Uchiha it was paramount to reinforce the village's defenses. It would take time for the Uchiha to prepare, and this kind of offensive couldn't be mounted without solid intel. "we will find another way but for the moment I need at least one of you to remain in the village."

The toad sage looked gobsmacked for a minute, "Look sensei I understand, but Tsunande is here we can totally go out launch the attack, hit that base and-,"

"What if we reinforce one of us with other Jonin," Orochimaru added.

Jiraya nodded, "Yeah give me Kakashi, and let me bring that Itachi kid, his funky Sharingan would be real useful, them and a couple other ninja we could make up." The sandaime considered yes if they gave Kakashi and Itachi enough time to recover and sent them with support it could be very useful.

-scene break-

The blonde's eyes cracked open. It took him a minute to get out of bed. Orochimaru had left him a bunch of notes and stuff to read about some of his findings about Kekai Genkai, and stuff. It would be the first time Naruto had studied some about the subject, but it really was a wide topic. Centuries of evolution had caused potentially useful genes to be locked away, or that was what Orochimaru had said.

Orochimaru for example had grown fangs, and poison glands after fiddling with his genetic code, as well as others modifications, that were slightly more creepy to any one with normal sensibilities, the down side was he didn't like the cold.

It was interesting stuff, but at the same time, not what he wanted to be reading at five thirty in the morning straight after getting out of bed. Orochimaru was still in the village of course but he was busy helping the ANBU with village security. That thing with the Uchiha was pretty bad, and had hit a whole lot of people. The academy had lost a number of students who had had the unfortunate luck to get caught in the crossfire.

From his sleeves appeared a few kunai, people knew better than to enter his appartment univited for doing so was to invite being turned into a corpse. Especially these days with the ANBU crawling over the place like wasps over a nest. Still it didn't hurt to be prepared especially given what had had happened a couple days ago.

The young grey haired ninja entered smiling cheerfully. "Hello Naruto-kun." He announced pleasantly padding into the small appartment that was Naruto's. Kabuto had way to much energy for someone who had just pulled another all nighter at the hospital, but then again it was Kabuto.

If it wasn't for the medic nin's enhanced regeneration he would have been sure that all that caffeine that Kabuto drank would have killed him. Kabuto was still merrily humming to himself, "So Orochimaru's busy looking at Yamato, and his mokuton abilities, the village council thinks it would be great to have Mokuton as a bloodline." There was apparently a 'Hyoton' or Ice style bloodline, or had been in water country once upon a time, and Konoha was very interested in bloodlines after all. "of course Tsunande is pretty adamant about telling them to back off, so he's pretty much doing it behind her back." He remarked helping himself to Naruto's fridge. "But enough about that we'll be practicing the chakra scalpel again today when you get out," He was going to grab a bite to eat and crash until Naruto got done with the academy for the day. As it was most of Naruto's other teachers were gone off on missions or other wise busy, which meant he had a whole week to drill his style of taijutsu into Naruto without Kakashi's meddling to get in the way. It was going to be great.

Naruto nodded. It was ninjutsu so he was definitely keen on it, and supposedly it would help with learning that wind jutsu that Kakashi had 'accidentally' left out before he'd left to head up north on that mission with Jiraya. Right accidentally sure that was the story they were going with. The sandaime didn't need to know... just yet.

The blonde looked out his window. Konohagakure was surrounded by a large wall and around that were forests, well to be frank there were plenty of woods inside the walls as well. The so called middle districts of the village, was as it might imply in the area between the rich, and traditional innermost districts within which were the expensive houses, and clan estates, as well as the other buildings belonging to service the upper class, while the lower district mainly comprised the regions around the walls within which the terrain varied form slums to fairly decent normal middle income housing. The middle districts contained the majority of the commerical shopping regions, as well as more middle class buildings, plus a few concealed buildings.

Overall the middle district pretty much was the shopping district and as the day was just getting started it was beginning to get busy. Konoha's planning had been fairly well organized, but even so it looked weird just because of the mishmash in styles. Still Naruto knew he needed to head out ot the academy soon or he'd be late... again. Life went on.

"So what are you studying?"

Naruto perked up, it was one of the ANBU, and looked at the calendar, there were times when he forgot what day it was. "uh its what," Oh damn, "yeah freaking taijutsu this morning geez," That damn weapons, hand to hand and endurance course thing they wanted them to do. When he'd first heard about it, it had sounded cool, and then they tried it the first time and it had sucked. He really didn't want to do it. The instructor's put so many freaking rules on the fighting it was like freaking being in an opera. They'd spazzed out when he'd made clones of his throwing knives on the weapons portion, and it'd been such a pain in the ass.

He had spent two whole days practicing that technique, and they weren't even going to let him use it on the weapons portion of the course. It was stupid. Of course it was supposed to make it fair for academy students who didn't have access to such techniques, as well as teach those who did not to depend overly on them. In other words it was about restraint, which was something that Naruto didn't particularly do well. Seriously being able to triple the number of knives you threw with solid weapons was awesome, it made dodging so much harder.

He should know Kabuto did it with pebbles, and getting hit freaking hurt.

-scene break-

Naruto tossed his bag. The Akamichi kid had just finished course, and Mizuki-sensei was patching him up. Chouji had managed to get smacked in the face by one of the branches, but it was just a minor bunch of scratches. Still Mizuki was good at dealing with injuries and such for someone who wasn't a medic nin.

Mizuki had tried to get into the program, but he didn't have the references so he'd settled for a teaching job. He planned on reaplying in a few years after some more practice on his limitted techniques. Now that Tsunande was back in Konoha his interest in getting had doubled.

"You're up Naruto," Iruka called, "and please don't deforest the training area again," He added, Naruto was hardly the first person to do that. Every couple of semesters it happened. Ussually it was an Uchiha deciding to use one of their Katon jutsus to clear the way, but there were others

Man no fun at all, he thought rolling a flat throwing knife in between his fingers he surveyed the area from his perch in the branches of the tree as he got ready to start the course. He just had to get through this relay portion, navigate around the traps, and get to the end. Hitting the targets was easy to, even if it would have been so much more fun to hit them with ninjutsu.

Still noot a problem. He went through it... well it certainly helped he could run up trees with just chakra... Kabuto's lessons in chakra control really were useful. Not that he was going to tell Kabuto that, that was the last thing Kabuto needed to here first thing after waking up from a nap.

Naruto hit the last target chiming the bell, sure he'd dwaddled a bit on that last part of the course, but it didn't matter. This thing was boring, and there really wasn't a point to going all out, at least the taijutsu portion would be somewhat more fun. After the incident with Kumo at the end of last semester a lot of the clan kids had started getting extra tutoring. It had mainly been a feel good measure, but some of them were actually pretty good, and taken it serious. The only downside was jyuken fucking hurt, which was why Naruto did his absolute best to stay away from the Hyuga kids in class. Sure he could reopen his tenketsu when they hit them, the kid's at least Naruto hadn't actually tried with an adult Hyuga, it didn't make it any less unpleasant though.

Sasuke, because he was a fucking Uchiha... or something made the run at his absolute fastest possible speed. Still he had to admit the kid was accurate with shuriken and kunai to be sure. He didn't see the point of rushing like that but whatever it Sasuke wanted to blow through the course that was his business.

The attached Taijutsu building was a lot more modern. It had gotten about two years ago as part of the academy expansion, it was really modern. It had really good air conditioning, and lots of mats, and padding on the walls. Of course it was also intended only for hand to hand... which meant no weapons. Naruto understood... most the kids who came from civilian families... sucked at actual weapons use in his class. Sure some of them could accurate throw kunai, and shuriken but geez Orochimaru had outright started laughing when he'd been watching it'd been embarressing.

Umino Iruka, and his buddy Mizuki grabbed the rest of the stuff, mainly the bags with lunches for the students in them, and ushered everyone in. The new building was great it'd been really good that the Sandaime had approved it. "I would like to remind everyone that there is to be no ninjutsu or weapon usage in here." Mizuki announced, "Please reframe from that."

"Mizuki is right this is a really nice building we've got, and we don't want it getting torn up because of people not following the rules." Iruka agreed, setting the insulated bag of lunches he was carrying down. "now I know a lot of you are looking forward to this but remember this is just a sparring session, and you don't need to be unneccesarily rough, and remember no punches or kicks to the face. Body blows only." He called.

There were a number of groans from the collected students.

The other chunin dug out the roster, "All right I'm going to start pairing you all up, and uh just don't start until you're ready okay? I know some of you are tired from the last part of the course, so just take this time to catch your breath."

"Man I'm totally ready to go, let me at whoever I've got to fight!" The Inuzuka declared loudly, "I can totally wipe the floor with them," Strictly speaking he might have been boasting, but Kiba had spent the whole break drilling on taijutsu, and he was one of the better taijutsu users in the class.

Sasuke, and some of the others, Naruto amongst them, didn't take well to having their skills called into question. Yes, Kiba might have been skilled, was, but most of them had practiced tirelessly on the disciplines of being shinobi.

Iruka sighed, man they were going to have to watch them, this rivalry between the students was going to get out of hand again. It was going to be almost as bad as when Sasuke had demonstrated that fireball jutsu to the class. He couldn't blame the kid though it was certainly something to show off after break. Being able to make a fireball that was definitely something to be proud of at his age.

-scene break-

Jiraya looked around. He certainly would have preferred having Orochimaru with him on this, but sensei had a point having one of them in the village was necessary if Cloud did try something. He'd just have to make do with a bunch of elite jonin, it wouldn't be a big deal. Still he wasn't sure whether it was such a good idea having brought Kakashi and Itachi along, but on the other hand two additional elite ANBU was better than not having them come along.

He had really hoped this mess with Kumo could have just quietly died down, because as it was the rumors coming out of mist were looking pretty bad. Still one problem needed to be taken care of at a time. It took him a couple minutes to realize that someone had managed to slip a genjutsu on the only reason he had known it was because he had turned back around to find Itachi was a small black red eyed cat... well a small black cat with the sharingan.

The fact was none of Team Sarutobi, aka the Sannin, had been particularly big on illusionary genjutsu... or well really any kind of genjutsu. Sure they all had various little tricks, but none of them had really had it as their specialization. All of team sarutobi could be considered Ninjutsu specialists with a secondary focus in Taijutsu that was just the way it happened to, but even so there were very few people in the world that Jiraya knew who could manage to lay a genjutsu on him. The ones he knew about that were not from Konoha could be counted on his hands, with fingers left over. On the plus side even if this person couldn't be depended upon to help against Konoha it wasn't likely that they were in danger either. It was also pretty openly clear that Jiraya was getting an invitation to go talk, the question however would be finding them.

Itachi watch Jiraya wander off, even with his Sharingan active he hadn't found the source of this surreal genjutsu. He waved a paw... err hand at Kakashi. It seemed neither had the cyclops ninja either. Even Kakashi's dog's seemed to be affected seeing as one of them was trying to sniff at the illusionary cat forms of the ninja, even as a few attempted to dispell it.

The reality of the situation was concerning though, for a genjutsu to be so powerful indicated a profound mastery of the subject, and of course raw power. There was no attempt to hide the wonkiness of this illusion, but then that could simply be a diversion to prevent them from noticing some smaller more crucial detail. Whatever they were up against whoever they faced, the Sharingan was not undoing it, and that left few options indeed as to what could be responsible.

Kakashi was thinking it too, "Another sharingan?" He asked, it was easily the most logical answer or at least the quickest to come to. It still of course had problems to explain just how all of this could be going on. Yes the Uchiha were a large clan, and had this been forty years earlier it would have made sense to run into Uchiha scattered across the countryside, but the Shinobi wars had depopulated or forced all remaining Uchiha enclaves to consolidate within Konoha or face destruction from one force or another.

"It could be," Itachi coneded, it could, but no one really wanted it to be a sharingan. An Uchiha had wreaked havoc on Konoha not two weeks past, and he'd been by himself, and it had still taken the sannin and Hokage intervening to put Uchiha Obito down for good.

It had been that for Kakashi that had been hard.

No one asked what transpired when Jiraya returned. He came out of the woods almost an hour later smelling of incense, and tea leaves. Possibly he'd met up with the genjutsu caster at the local road side tavern, but Jiraya had told them to drop it. He'd been rather clear that there only focus should be making safely home to Konoha once the Cloud Ninjas in the area were dealt with.

Even when he was pressed on the issue Jiraya was not forthcoming on just who had caught them all in that ridiculous field of flowers. Still no attacks came from an insane sharignan user so that was at least a good sign, but everyone noticed Jiraya did send one of his toads back to Konoha post haste with a message; presumably for the Hokage.

The next day was rainy, but still clear and bright. The rain would still be enough to erode any trail left by whoever had surprised them though. "Pakkun doesn't know what to make of the scent," Kakashi was saying as they kept walking along the road. Sure taking the main road had its dangers but this risk was outweighed by other benefits.

"What does it mean?"

The one eyed ninja shrugged, "Can't say," It certainly wasn't nothing, even Jiraya had given up trying to convince them that it was, maybe they'd find something out, but at this point Kakashi wasn't holding his breath. "At this rate the Hokage is more likely going to be the one to know who or what we stumbled across."

More than a kilometer away a pair of red eyes watched, the tomoe in them were very much still. The Uchiha man stood on the side of the mountain and watched the Konoha himself had no hita-ate, or other indicator of village allegiance.

Not that that had stopped those young fools from Cloud's ANBU from attacking him. Of course even without a hita-ate he was too noticeably a ninja. Experienced ninja could were able to sense chakra. The effective radius of course was tiny when someone wasn't throwing off enough chakra to blow a mountain in half, but...

In short it couldn't have been helped. They hadn't been that stupid, so stupid to miss the fact he was a ninja. Talking them out of violence hadn't worked either, and after the first one fell... well then his comrades really hadn't been inclined to listen. Still two of the Konoha ninja had Sharingan, both with the Mangekyo he could sense it within them both... that was interesting.

-Chapter conclusion-