Chapter XXIV

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto.

Heads melted up out of the branches around them. Each pale face was strapped into an identical a breathing apparatus and wore his hair in a dark, tufty shock. Naruto growled, unconsciously backing toward his teammates and Kabuto. Sakura was the first to speak.

"Why are there so many?" She asked.

"Clones?" Sasuke suggested.

"If they are, this shouldn't take long," Naruto said. Before anyone could remark on this statement, Naruto launched himself forward, slamming a fist into the nearest of the black-clad shinobi. He smirked as his fist sank right through the body, which gave only the faintest of resistances to his fist. It was like punching through melted rubber, Naruto thought. He turned to reassure his team, but the confident words died on his tongue. The black, sticky body he had supposedly incapacitated was reforming, the arm he had savagely ripped away from the body seamlessly rejoining the whole. The clone- or whatever it was- rolled its reattached shoulder as if working out the kinks, then curled its fingers into a fist, staring at the movement in apparent wonderment. Then it drew back its fist and punched Naruto across the face.

Naruto landed on his back but was on his feet again in an instant as the black-clad bodies closed around him. What are they? Damnit, I wish Shujin could help me out! One of the enemies standing apart from the small mob now surrounding Naruto drew out a large, modified kunai and threw it with practiced ease. Straight at Sasuke.

Sasuke stood immobilized as the projectile streaked toward him. He didn't even seem to hear his teammates' shouts.

When Oscar saw that Sasuke wasn't even tensing his muscles to dodge, he drew out a shuriken took a moment to aim, and threw it. It hit the kunai mid-flight and knocked it off course, spinning toward Kabuto and slashing across the palm he raised when the he saw he was going to be too late to dodge.

Sakura ran to Sasuke, who didn't so much as look at her. He seemed entirely frozen, and when Sakura glanced anxiously at his neck, she noticed a ring of black, sinister-looking flame-marks around the seal there. Tentatively, she touched the seal. It was hot, once again. Her touch seemed to stimulate the dark-haired boy, who knocked her hand out of the way and moved so he could see Naruto through the crowd of bodies around him.

Naruto slashed at the enemy shinobi. Are they illusions? They're not dispelling like shadow clones, but that kunai that cut Kabuto was solid. How is this possible? He tore through another two of the enemies, in time to see Sasuke move. The Uchiha had his Sharingan active, but he looked pale and unwell all the same. Naruto slashed at the enemies around him, wishing his other teammates would take the initiative and come and help him.

Sasuke frowned at Naruto's attacks, at the bodies reforming the moment Naruto turned his back on them to give one of their fellows as good as they had gotten. He activated his Sharingan and studied the enemies more closely. "Don't bother, Naruto," he said finally. They're illusions. A genjutsu. The caster must be nearby, lobbing real weapons to confuse us and make us think these things are solid." Sasuke raised his voice. "Still trying to tire us out?" then, louder and with a touch of anger, "Show yourself!"

"But why would we want to do that? Lucky for us, this little distraction is working so well. You're all tired and worn out, and on top of that, you have no idea where we are. What decent shinobi would give up that advantage?" The voice was cold and mocking and full of amusement. It drifted through the clearing, not allowing even Naruto, with his keen hearing, to get a fix on the spot where it originated.

"One who isn't a coward," Sasuke snarled. He raised a hand and rubbed the seal at his neck, as though it pained him.

Sasuke's reply was a hail of weapons, seemingly coming from all sides. All of them dodged, not knowing which ones were real. "Do you really think cowards would take on an Uchiha where he could see us? No. That's fool's work," the voice hissed.

Being mindful of his gashed and bloody palm, Kabuto adjusted his glasses, his expression seemingly more mild than the situation warranted. "They must be long-range fighters, to be going to such great lengths to avoid short-range encounters," he remarked.

"Or maybe Sasuke just scared them away with his Sharingan," Sakura suggested. Or they could be wary of that seal on Sasuke's neck.

"That could be it. Even I sometimes get scared when I see Sasuke's face," Oscar snickered. Naruto snorted and Sakura gritted her teeth against the jibe. Sasuke did not rise to the bait.

"Whatever the reason, I'm sick of these guys," Naruto said, his laughter sliding down an octave into a growl. "Why does everyone keep forgetting that Sasuke's not the only one on this team?"

"Because he's so pretty?" Oscar suggested.

Sakura wasn't prepared for that, and her laughter slipped out before she could think about it. She clapped a hand over her mouth, horrified, as Sasuke sent her a baleful look. "Traitor," he muttered. Kabuto raised a sardonic eyebrow.

Naruto, not paying attention to any of this, brought his hands together in a seal. "Well, be that as it may, I am just as capable a ninja as he is, and I'm going to prove it! Kage Bunshin no Jutsu!" Shadow clones appeared, swamping the clearing, filling the gaps between the opponents. The clones leapt forward, tearing through the apparitions with ease. It almost seemed as though Naruto had won, until new forms began to melt upward from the earth. Angrily, Naruto's clones set upon this new challenge, but wave after wave of illusions kept on coming, augmented by weapons, illusory and solid, slowly driving back Naruto's clones. In the end, Naruto sank to one knee, apparently exhausted, watching grimly as the illusions once again reformed. Things were looking bad.

It was a moment before Naruto realized that the illusions that were forming were different than all the other ones had been. These three wore clumsily stitched white clothes, and where all of the black-clad illusions had been identical, these three were definitely unique.

"Are those the real ones?" Sakura asked.

"So it would seem," Kabuto confirmed.

Naruto shot them a look, before hauling himself to his feet again and facing the enemies.

One of the Rain genin, identified as such by their hitai-ate adorned with identical sets of vertical lines, was standing between and slightly ahead of his teammates. He chuckled, the sound muffled by his breathing mask. "Lucky for us that even after you realized we were using a genjutsu, none of you thought to actually dispel it."

Naruto stiffened, mouth shaping a soundless curse before he whirled around to give Sakura and annoyed look. "Sakura!"

"What?" she asked, looking confused.

"You're supposed to be the smart one on our team! I mean, it's no good expecting duck-butt over there to expend any mental energy on any topic other than himself, and anything that comes out of Oscar's mouth we just end up tuning out anyway, and I'm the flipping deadlast, for the Log's sake, but you're supposed to be on top of these things! Why didn't you try to dispel the genjutsu or tell the rest of us to try when Sasuke first told us that's what they were instead of letting me run myself into the ground?"

Sakura's bewilderment quickly turned to resentful indignation as she growled in the back of her throat and made to take a step forward. Kabuto cut in before the pink-haired girl could start in on her chakra-depleted teammate. "I notice you didn't mention why I shouldn't have thought to dispel the genjutsu," he put in mildly.

"Yeah, well, I don't really know you. Log knows what was going through your head at the time," Naruto said. His voice was calm, though there was a bit of an edge that Kabuto couldn't fail to register.

The three Rain nin, so recently basking in their triumph, listened idly to the Leaf nin's chatter while they pitched strategy ideas to each other. However, they went cold at the sound of the voice coming from behind them. "Hm. Is that so?" The voice was an exact replica of that of the silver-haired boy before them, the one who had just been speaking. The Rain nin whirled around as one to see five figures behind them, identical to the set they had just been facing. Kabuto was looking at Naruto, his arms crossed. He spared a finger to push up the bridge of his glasses in order to stare better.

Naruto raised his hands to shoulder-height, palms out. "Hey, those were my clones talking! They can be real jerks and they say stupid stuff sometimes!" Not to mention they can have real trouble keeping their collective mouths shut. I didn't want Kabuto to know I was suspicious of him! Better he thinks that I still trust him.

Oscar raised his eyebrows. "Far be it of you to ever say stupid stuff," he deadpanned. Sasuke snorted, though Naruto didn't miss the grimace at the end of the strained-sounding laughter, or the way Sasuke's hand twitched as if he wanted to lay a hand on the seal on his neck.

Meanwhile, the confused Rain nin glanced back to see the first set of ninjas enveloped in little puffs of smoke to reveal a line of grinning Narutos. Henged shadow clones, every one of them. When had they made the switch?

"How do you genjutsu users like it? We swapped places while I was spamming shadow clones," Naruto smirked. He made a dispel handsign and there were several puffs of smoke. To his dismay, as the Rain genin turned to face the real team, Naruto's knees buckled and deposited him on the ground. "Er, I think something's starting to go wrong in our flawless plan," he confessed, looking to his teammates.

Sasuke rolled his eyes. "You're just low on chakra, dobe."

"Oh. Huh. Is this how you always feel after we're done sparring? Wow, it really does suck to be you."

"And yet, which of us is currently able to stand?"

"Hey, I wouldn't be talking about that just now if I were you, duck-butt. You aren't exactly stable yourself at the moment."

"Makes no difference. All of you just sit tight while I deal with these guys."

"What happened to teamwork?" Oscar muttered as Sasuke extricated himself from the bushes he had been standing in. "Seriously, Sakura, Kabuto and I haven't gotten to kick anyone's ass in this fight. Why do the grandstanders always get the pleasure of kicking people around?"

"If it's all the same to you, I'm perfectly happy to sit this one out," Sakura murmured drily. "If you'll recall, it wasn't that long ago that I had the crap beat out of me and my shoulder dislocated and then had to stay up half the night on guard duty. And then right after that we were attacked again, and now-"

"Yeah, yeah, too long; didn't listen. I lived through it too, you know," Oscar said, miming a rather ostentatious yawn. He was just in time to dart forward and grab Sasuke's arm as the other boy's knees buckled. However, Sasuke brushed away Oscar's hands as soon as he could stand.

"I don't need your help," he growled.

"On the contrary, you do need our help. That seal on your neck is starting to put out little flame designs again, and, though I enjoy a good fire as much as the next guy who happens to wear green spandex, I'd rather not see it in the form of your funeral pyre. I can tell the longer that seal's not kept in check, the more it's impairing your free movement. It's hurting you. So let us help." Oscar spoke slowly and firmly, though he did not try to support the other boy again.

Sasuke gave Oscar a surprised look, and then sighed. "It doesn't really matter at this point."

"What are you ta-"

"Dobe's already got it covered, of course." Sasuke shook his head. "Damn, and I was really hoping to work off a little steam on those guys."

Oscar turned to see Naruto, almost as tired and exhausted as Sasuke, fumbling to tie knots in the rope he had wrapped around the unconscious forms of the Rain nin. Kabuto crouched beside Naruto, a hand apparently cradling his face.

When the silver-haired boy glanced around at the rest of team seven, they noticed the blood oozing from between his fingers and the manic gleam in his eye. When he spoke, his voice seemed subtly different, less restrained than before. "Should we kill them?" he asked. "If we tie them up, they'll probably just die at someone or something else's hands anyway. It would be better if we just kill them. Can I do it?"

"Whoa there, Kabuto-san," Sakura said, stepping forward to help Naruto tie his knots. The blonde boy was making frustrated growling noises by that time. "We only need one psyc-"

"Hey! What have I told you?"

"Fine. Sociopath- on this team. I think it would be best if you just took a deep breath, let someone clean up your wounds, and didn't kill anyone for a while. What do you think?"

Kabuto stared at her uncomprehendingly for a moment, before slowly lowering his hand from his face and, even more slowly, standing up. He made a gesture as if to adjust his glasses, frowning in perplexity when he discovered only one half of the frames in his hand. He put the ruined lens in his pocket and instead smoothed back the bangs of his long hair. He took a long, measured breath, careful not to stretch the slash across his face. "I apologize," he said finally. It came out more-or-less sounding like his normal tone of voice. "And there's no need to attend to my wounds. I'm fine. We should get moving again soon, anyway."

"It's alright," Oscar said. "And we'll get going in a bit. But first- "He jerked a thumb at the unconscious enemies. "What happened with them, anyway? I kind of missed it."

Naruto giggled a little. "Yup. You are definitely not in your right mind right now," Oscar told the blonde boy decisively. The dark boy looked pleadingly up at the canopy of leaves high above. "The Log has a cruel sense of humor if It has decided that I should be the only sane one here while we travel to the tower," he decreed solemnly.

Sakura rolled her eyes. "For the record, I'm still sane. And before you say anything about that, I'll tell you what happened.

"Makes no difference. All of you just sit tight while I deal with these guys."

Naruto turned away from Sasuke so that the dark-haired boy couldn't lip-read his next words with the Sharingan. "Not gonna happen. I've already won." Naruto leapt forward, unimpeded by his distracted teammates. His grin turned feral when the looks under his enemies' breathing masks turned surprised. All of them made moves to form hand seals, ones vaguely similar to a Bunshin, Naruto noticed. However, they never got a chance to finish their attack. Instead, each found himself seized from behind, a pair of arms looping up through theirs and pinning them in place.

Naruto smirked. "When you saw the dispel seal and smoke, you thought I dispelled my clones. But I had just shown you that I could henge them. So I had them turn into pebbles until you turned your attention away from them. The smoke and seals were purely for your benefit. I don't really need my old handicaps anymore."

Naruto's smirk slipped somewhat as two of the three struggling Rain nin managed to work themselves free. The first one kicked his legs up over his own and the clone's head, causing the clone to stumble and nearly drop the boy. The second one went limb, falling to the ground in a crouch before knocking the clone holding him off of its feet. The boys straightened up, ignoring their teammate, whose struggles were not paying off so well. Without so much as a glance to communicate with each other, the two boys leapt on Naruto. They were confused when, less than a moment later, each found himself lying on the ground on his back, cradling his aching head.

They heard a whoop of laughter and sat up in time to see Naruto knock out their still restrained teammate. Naruto grinned at them. "Kawirimi," he said, pointing to the log that had replaced him, and that consequently both boys had hit their foreheads on when the dived forward.

One of the downed Rain nin snarled and, faster than Naruto could follow, Kawirimi'd. The next thing Naruto knew, the boy was directly before him, a kunai flashing down toward Naruto's throat. Naruto knew he was too weak to dodge it, but he was unsure how much damage his healing factor could deal with, what with his channel to Shujin cut off. Naruto leaned back out of the path of the knife, falling into a sitting position on the ground when he was once again confused by a flurry of movement before him. When the action slowed, Naruto saw Kabuto standing over him, supporting the enemy ninja by the front of his shirt. The Rain boy's head was lolling to one side, a trickle of blood running down his temple. Kabuto let the boy slump to the ground with apparent disgust. When he turned to Naruto, the exhausted boy noticed the deep gash across Kabuto's face.

Kabuto threw a coil of rope to Naruto. "You'd better tie them up," he growled.

"I so can't believe we missed that fight," Oscar groused.

"Are you still on about that? That was hours ago!" Sakura said. She glanced around and Oscar followed her gaze. Walking behind them was Kabuto, with Naruto and Sasuke bringing up the rear. Both were too proud to accept help from their teammates, but too weak to travel shinobi-style, far above the ground through the branches of the trees. It was early evening already, but the tower was nowhere in sight. Oscar suspected that they were slightly off course, it being difficult to gauge without a visual on their destination.

Dark shadows were beginning to gather under the outstretched branches of the canopy high above, seeping down to steal precious visibility from the lowest levels of the forest floor. Everyone knew they would have to sleep in a short time; Naruto and Sasuke would probably collapse soon, though neither made any allusion to the fact, choosing instead to press on in silence.

When they finally set up camp and watches and rations were shared out, heavier on the former, unfortunately, Naruto and Sasuke settled down to sleep. Naruto slept fitfully, but lay still and silent every time he woke, so the others would not know. He could hear Sasuke a few feet away, shifting and muttering, sounding disturbed. Once or twice, Naruto awoke to the sound of Sasuke shooting bolt upright. Naruto would peek under his eyelashes and see his teammate's silhouette outlined against the surrounding twilight. Sasuke would raise one hand tentatively to the side of his neck, before wincing and lying down again. Naruto pretended not to see.

At some point during the night, he found himself wondering how Hinata's team was doing. Had they encountered as much trouble as team seven, or were they, in fact, already at the tower, perhaps with two scrolls in hand…?

The next time Naruto awoke, pale, early morning sunlight was filtering down through the leaves, casting crazy black patterns over everything. When he sat up and looked over, he could barely see the marks on Sasuke's neck due to the patchwork of shadows. But it was still there, still malignant.

Naruto approached Oscar, who had drawn the final watch of the night and was idly twisting a kunai between his fingers, sitting hunched with his back to a tree. "Where's Kabuto?" The blonde boy asked.

In answer, Oscar pointed up to the branches above. "Orienting us," he said brusquely.

Naruto looked up, but was unable to spot their silver-hair cohort. He turned his attention back to Oscar, who was hauling himself to his feet. "You trust him not to run off?" he asked quietly.

"To be honest, no, but I wouldn't care that much if he did," Oscar yawned. "Anyway, I wasn't going to climb up there and look, and I was going to wait another half hour to wake you guys. Guess if you're up, though, we should break camp. It can't be too far to the tower, now."

Just then, Naruto spotted Kabuto, calmly striding down the trunk of the nearest tree.

The five shinobi paused, poised in the branches of a tree at the edge of a truly massive clearing. From the center rose a tower, perfectly round and boasting a height to rival the Hokage Tower.

"Thank the Log," Sakura sighed, casting Sasuke a worried glance.

"About time," Oscar and Naruto said.

Kabuto just smiled. "Now that we're here, I ought to rejoin my team," he said.

"Yes, of course," Sasuke said. He watched Kabuto as the boy made his way to the ground, eyes narrowed. Soon, the older boy was obscured by the dense layers of leaves in the way.

The four teammates entered the tower together, Sakura clutching the Heaven Scroll and Naruto grimly hanging onto the Earth scroll. There was no one there. They did not even see Kabuto and his team, let alone any other teams. The room was large, encompassing the entire first level of the tower, and had balconies on either side, overshadowing the spot where the members of team seven stood. There were no decorations, save for a single poster on the wall facing the door. Sakura peered up at it, a frown on her face.

Where is everyone? The upper levels? Naruto thought.

"What's it say?" Sasuke asked, directing his question to Sakura.

"'Without heaven,'" she muttered, almost to herself. "Something's missing, a word or phrase."

"Maybe that's what's in the scrolls," Naruto suggested, shrugging.

"It may be important," Sakura trailed off.

"Then let's open them," Oscar said. Slowly, Sakura and Naruto, fumbled with the edges of the bound scrolls, before unrolling them side-by-side.

"Together, these kanji spell 'person'," Sasuke said, obviously confused.

"Then what-?" But Oscar was cut off when the kanji began to bulge and smoke. Naruto and Sakura instinctually dropped the scrolls, stepping back. A column of smoke rose from the two scrolls. A summoning?

A dark form appeared in the midst of the smoke. "Is that who I think it is?" Oscar asked.

The man stepped forward and smiled down at them. "Hey guys," Iruka said.

"No, it's not the Raikage," Oscar sighed in disappointment. Everyone ignored him.

"Iruka, what are you doing here? Where is everyone else?" Naruto questioned.

"What, I don't even get a 'Hey, how are you'?" Iruka asked.

"Hey, Iruka, how are you? What are you doing here? Where the hell is everyone else and why have you not brought ramen?"

"How do you know I didn't bring ramen?"

"I can't smell any on you, Iruka-sensei. What about my other questions?"

Iruka sighed, pleased to see his students once more, though he cast Sasuke a worried glance. The Uchiha was pale and looked slightly unsteady. "Everyone is upstairs, waiting for me to finish giving you the usual speech."

"And what's that?" Sakura asked.

"You four pass the second test." Iruka allowed himself a smile at the weary grins on Oscar and Sakura's faces and at Naruto's whoops of joy. Even Sasuke looked marginally happier at the news. "And I have to say, I'm proud of you guys. It's only the fourth day. Usually teams only make it here on day five, if at all."

"Are you going to tell us what the writing on the wall means?" Sasuke asked.

"Yeah. In it, 'Heaven' refers to a shinobi's mind and 'Earth' refers to his-"

"Or her!"

"-or her body. It's supposed to say, 'If heaven you do not find in yourself, seek both wisdom and knowledge and be prepared. If Earth you lack, run in the fields, seek your advantages and make them bend to you. When a perfect balance of heaven and earth is obtained, the most dangerous mission poses no obstacle. Allow these rules to guide your extremes, shinobi-san.' That is the motto of a Chunin. You guys are almost there, with just one more test ahead. I believe you can pass. I have no doubt that you will exceed me, and I could not be more proud." Iruka allowed his former students one more smile, before it faded from his face, leaving him calm and serious. "However, you must be careful. There may be only one test left, but it is one in which the danger is often highest. Do your best and push yourselves, but if it comes to that, I'd rather you choose life and the choice of future promotion over your pride."

"So much for faith," Oscar muttered, scraping the sole of his sandal across the floor, not meeting Iruka's eyes.

"You don't have to worry, Iruka-sensei," Naruto said. "We're shinobi. We can handle it." Naruto smiled. And in many ways, we may have already surpassed you.

"I'll hold you to that." Iruka imitated Naruto's smile.

A/N: Whoa, maybe my latest update ever compared to the length of the chapter. (**) Just a heads up, production will be pretty slow for the next few months, due to mounds of homework to rival the paperwork Sarutobi has to deal with on a daily basis.

Also, anyone going to NYComicCon this weekend, keep an eye out for me! (I'll be Ezio accompanied by Harley Quinn on Saturday and Duke Devlin accompanied by Harley, Daphne, and the Doctor [11] on Sunday)

So without further ado, the chapter summary (Yay! throws confetti, chokes on it, then gets a broom to sweep it up)

1) Fight with the Ame nin aannndd~ my first ever flashback in this story!
2) Kabuto reveals a little instability (or is that insanity?)
3) Iruka totally meant to bring ramen, he just forgot to grab it before he was summoned.
4) The fights will begin next chapter!

As always, I will be updating Perfection next! That's all for tonight, folks! Pax!