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Teamwork 3 chapter 5 -- end of chapter
And another bit! >:O
The previous chapter was posted maybe four hours ago, so if you haven't read it yet, go or you'll be all "wtf happened!" It's here.
Anyway this is fresh off the presses, I've spent all afternoon and evening typing like the wind, so it's a sure bet that there are weird passages, tons of repetitions, not enough description and the like. If anything doesn't work for you please tell me. But in the end I'm rather satisfied. Bwahahahahahahaha. >:3
Sasuke was still washing. Naruto crept closer. "Hm. Seems like a taxing jutsu. I'll teach you the hand seals, but you might want to wait until after the test to practice. Naruto, I'll kick you in the face."
--Aw shit! The surprise lost, his only advantage left was speed; Naruto lurched out of the water, going for a tackle. Sasuke would have, no doubt, whirled out of the way flawlessly, but the footing was treacherous, with all those loose mossy rocks; Naruto caught him in mid-turn. They landed with a loud splash, Sasuke on his hip and elbow, Naruto over him, limbs tangled together as they flailed to come out on top; the noise didn't cover Sakura's giggles.
Naruto got water up his nose and sneezed; hearing Sasuke cough, he decided to be generous and not dunk him again. The Uchiha glared somberly at him; the front of his hair was glued down over his face in a gelled curtain, and the back a forest of spikes that pointed in about every direction known to man and then some. Naruto snickered.
"You two are so childish," Sakura commented primly from the riverbank.
Her tone must have been too serious, or otherwise transparent, because then she was the one Sasuke was glaring sulkily at. "Just wait a minute and you'll see how childish I really am."
Sakura blinked, startled; Naruto didn't remember Sasuke play-threatening her before either, and he rather enjoyed her conflicting looks of alarm and amusement. But right now he was the one playing with Sasuke, so when the black-haired teen moved to get up, Naruto threw his arms around his neck from behind and pulled him back down.
"I've got him! Run, Sakura-chan!" he called as Sasuke fell back across his lap with another loud splash.
Sasuke squirmed, and his legs thrashed for purchase, but once again the moss denied him. Naruto laughed in his neck, feeling wet black hair against his face.
Sakura was very much not running, Naruto noticed, managing to spare a glance between two attempts to pin down Sasuke's arms. Frozen on her knees in the process of rising, she stared at the two of them with her lips parted. She still had deer blood up her arms like wet red gloves, and a couple of flecks on her cheek. Naruto groaned and bit Sasuke's neck.
"--Naruto."
Naruto bit him again, over the dead mark of the curse seal. Sasuke's breath hitched, and his struggles slowed down, more of a token protest than a serious attempt to counterattack. Naruto growled softly, worrying the skin with his fangs. As pretty as it was, sometimes he hated that mark. The only marks Sasuke should carry were Naruto's.
His hands slid over Sasuke's wet skin, palms flat over his chest, fingers stretched, claws barely brushing; on the bank, Sakura started biting her lower lip, transfixed. She looked -- a little jealous, perhaps, but aroused. Naruto kissed the reddened skin around the dark tattoo, nosed through damp locks of hair. "She likes watching, huh," he murmured.
Sasuke tensed in his arms and let out a soft groan. "Now is not the time."
"For what?" Naruto's hands ran over Sasuke's chest, his shoulders, palming his nipples almost on accident. "I'm just helping wash you."
Sasuke growled -- groaned? hard to tell -- and pulled away from him. "Not now, I said. I'm not having sex with anyone during the test and that's final." He frowned at Naruto over his shoulder. "I'm serious."
He looked like it, too. Naruto gave a short sigh and glanced over at Sakura. Blushing, she hurriedly climbed to her feet.
"Ah -- yes, he's right, and we don't even have perimeter alarms set anyway --"
"I set them up," Sasuke commented laconically as he stepped away. "But it's still not a reason."
... Augh! Unfair. And now Sakura was busying herself with the deer and the fire pit, taking good care not to look their way. Naruto huffed, glaring at his back from his seat in the stream. Sasuke picked up a handful of sand and started scrubbing his hair like he couldn't care less. Damn him, no matter that he was right. Especially since he was right!
Naruto sighed and got up, wobbling a little on the wet rocks. His pants were drenched, sticking to his skin. What a downer.
"Hey... How about I wash your back and you wash mine?" Sasuke looked suspicious, but Naruto sighed. "No, I won't feel you up, promise." He just wanted to touch skin right now; it was too brutal a crash otherwise, from the tingling high of anticipation to this distance.
"... Fine. But if your hands wander..." Sasuke didn't complete his sentence; it was clear enough.
Naruto gave him a wounded, irritated look. "Told you I wouldn't. Where's the sand?" He moved closer to Sasuke, looking between the rocks for the patch of sand he was using.
His skin still prickled with the hunt, and the mock-fight, and the desire. He raised his hands, rested them on Sasuke's back, feeling muscles under the skin, and hairline-fine scars and a couple of tiny pinpricks. Sasuke healed well. Naruto wanted to scar him. He just closed his eyes briefly, breathed in and out, and started rubbing, fingers digging into tense muscles, palms rubbing sand to scour the skin.
"Why'd you keep your pants?" he asked; he didn't really care apart from the fact that it blocked his view, but if he didn't find something to talk about he might end up doing something stupid and have to deal with Sasuke's contempt.
It didn't matter how much he wanted sex, this was just no time and place, the end. He knew that, he really did, but his body was still buzzing.
"... Like I wanted to be naked and weaponless if someone attacked the camp."
"Could have strapped the kunai sheath on anyway," Naruto suggested, and then groaned a little at the thought of a band of dark cloth wrapped around a bare thigh. Damn it.
"I don't fight naked."
"Heh, yeah, freeballin' isn't really..." Argh, argh, argh. What was wrong with him, was Kyuubi making him all horny again? He'd thought that would stop once he started getting booty regularly.
Naruto looked away from the bared nape and the wet dark strands, casting around for a safer topic. Sakura was done spitting the deer; she stood in the tall grass, hands knotted together over her chest, watching them with a kind of naked hunger in her eyes that was less sexual desire than need to belong, though it probably was both.
He was opening his mouth to suggest she help, but then a red-orange flash in the corner of his eye made him twitch around -- and there it was, in the middle of their encampment, a lanky old beast with Naruto's own prey in its jaw -- a thigh-high fox, the miniature deer's hooves trailing on the ground -- and three tails, a dirty three-tails was stealing Naruto's prey!
He'd hunted that deer for his mates! It was their dinner! Outraged, Naruto snarled and threw himself out of the stream. The fox jumped for the bushes, eyes wide and ears flattened back in obvious panic. Yeah, let it panic! Hot on its tracks, he yelled an outraged challenge, words melding together and losing all meaning. A three-tails! Barely three! How could it even dare --
None of them had noticed where the stream ran to, a couple hundred meters down. The hollow twisted sharply to the left, cutting all view, and deepened into a startlingly green canyon. Under the dense tangle of plants, a couple of crumbled, caved-in manmade structures that must have been fortified hideouts some fifty years ago kept watch on the canyon.
When he ran between them in hot pursuit of the fox, Naruto hadn't really been expecting a wolf his height at the shoulder to burst out of the crumbled building and leap at him from behind.
The fangs missed him, but the beast's shoulder checked him, sending him rolling down the sharp slope. He clawed at the earth to slow his momentum; a rock caught him in the hip and he gritted his teeth.
Then something whistled through the air and he backflipped just in time to dodge a descending sharp length. A claw?
The wolf wore an oversized village headband as a collar.
"Ambush!" he screamed, to warn his teammates, but they'd already burst over the edge of the canyon after him; he caught a glimpse of movement, many furred bodies rushing at the two of them, and then he couldn't worry about them anymore. The air whistled again, and what was -- sword! Black, painted sword, leaving a burning trail across his chest.
Naruto snarled and clawed low, but he could only give himself enough space to retreat downhill, and then he was attacked again.
Girl, long black hair, dressed in dark and tan, and moving fast -- maybe even as fast as Sasuke. She blurred from sight, but he couldn't worry much because then the wolf jumped him again, maw gaping wide enough to swallow him in one bite. He had to get himself out of there, but there was no time to even shape one seal. He dodged the sword once, rolled under the wolf's chest to put its mass between them, but it instantly whirled around as its mistress vaulted over its back, plunged sword first at him, leaving him no way out.
A flurry of kunai tore through the air. The girl knocked a couple out of the air, but her wolf yelped in pain, jumping aside; Naruto dived through the opening and retreated hurriedly.
"Naruto!" Sakura yelled.
He looked for her where the kunai had come from; she'd moved on already, but her pink hair caught his eye not too far from there as she took cover behind a rock. The trees were pitiful; trunks no wider than his thigh and all twisted and stunted, shallow roots changing the ground into a series of snares, and climbing on the trees themselves would get them nowhere; they were too small to put anyone out of reach. The slope was awkward to boot, full of slippery dead leaves.
"Kage Bunshin no Jutsu!"
He sent his clones all over the place, slipping unnoticed amongst them. Where were the other enemies? He couldn't see Sasuke. A clone burst behind him, then two, torn to shreds by wolf fangs.
There -- dark-skinned boy, Iruka-in-the-sun-all-summer shade contrasting sharply with his pale teal-green hair. He was staring in Sakura's general direction, hands clasped in a seal. Naruto pounced.
The world went weird in mid-leap, full of psychedelic colors, and he was losing his balance and his sense of directions, and shit, shit -- "Kai!" The forest snapped back into place, only to start crawling with a rush of mice. Amongst the mice ran cats and dogs and -- there! The three-tailed fox. Ignoring the carpet of squirming mice, he threw a kunai its way. The fox dodged behind a rock crawling with huge black rats, and the mice were climbing Naruto's pant legs inside and out, and then something tackled him to the ground.
"Kai!" yelled Sakura, sitting on top of him.
The mice were gone; he wasn't surprised. They hadn't smelled like anything anyway. He was two steps away from a nasty drop. At the other side of the canyon, the three-tails watched them. Naruto snarled, fangs bared. He was going to teach that mangy rat...!
"-- Where's Sasuke?" he remembered to ask, blinking to clear his sight. A few motes of light still danced in the corner of his vision.
Sakura moved off him, and they rolled to crouch back to back. "With the last one. Big guy, quarterstaff. You?"
A few of his clones rushed past, storming the rock behind which the green-haired guy was hiding. Wolf-girl was nowhere in sight. "Girl with a katana. Big wolf. Hella fast. This guy does genjutsu then?"
"He summons too," Sakura commented somberly. "With the wolf... Maybe they all do."
"Shit, shit, they do," Naruto said in a rush. "He's that guy with the cat Kyuubi wanted to eat!"
Sakura muttered something unhappy between her clenched teeth and cracked her knuckles. "The girl is fast, Sasuke would do better. The big guy with the staff, brute force, for you. ...I'll manage the genjutsu type. Just find Sasuke and trade."
"I'm not leaving you," he protested. "Don't count on it."
But then there was a masculine voice, and muffled words calling out a technique, and it tugged inside him. He fell to a knee in the grass; for a second the sun seemed to wink out.
"Naruto?!" Sakura attempted to snap the genjutsu, but nothing really happened.
Naruto shook his head and climbed back on his feet. "S'okay, I'm fine -- shit!" Something was making short work of his remaining clones, two, three, seven -- and all gone. "They're coming. Kage Bunshin no Jutsu!"
Some of the clones surrounded Sakura so she could counter the genjutsu without being attacked; Naruto and the rest rushed up the slope.
Foxes ran down to meet them. Two three-tails, one much younger than the first thief, one dark-furred five-tails even, standing at the green-haired boy's side with blue foxfire dancing around its head, and a dozen normal foxes, knee-high little bolides fast as cats and full of pointed teeth. They attached themselves to his clones' wrists, their legs, weighing them down; then the girl with the sword moved in, slashing through the clones with grim efficiency. Naruto moved to meet her, but she chose the other way, mowing down the crowd to get to Sakura.
Angry now, Naruto let loose a burst of chakra that sizzled fur, made most of the one-tail yelp and cower. Suddenly he had space to move -- but the wolf moved too, hackles raised, the white of its eyes showing in fear.
Now it was afraid for its mistress, and scared dogs were the most dangerous ones. Naruto snarled at it, trying to make it back off, but it refused to step away from the path to its mistress. And Sakura --
Heart in his throat, Naruto watched her tumble off the edge and disappear in the canyon.
He took a step forward; the wolf tried to eat his head. He punched it in the muzzle, sending its head snapping back, backhanded it again and raced past as it swayed dizzily. The black-haired girl had stopped at the edge and was peering down, checking for Sakura's body, and he was going to kill her.
Then the ground shook, and the ledge broke off the slope and slipped down, bringing the swordswoman with it. Naruto hoped she'd get crushed to death, though he doubted that would happen. He found the closest stable rock and leaned over -- "Sakura-chan!?"
He found her dangling by a rappelling wire from the side of the cliff, still swinging from the impact, hair and skin gray with dust. "I'm fine! Careful about green guy!"
Naruto cast a wary look at the small trees and bushes, but he could see nothing. The smaller foxes had fled; the bigger ones were probably in hiding. The wolf growled at him but wouldn't move closer, still swaying dizzily on its huge paws. That was good, because at the moment Naruto wanted very much to bite its throat out, and he didn't care that he was way too small to manage to get through its thick fur. The wolf seemed to believe he could. At the moment, so did Naruto.
Keeping an eye on the area, he found the wire and pulled Sakura up. When he helped her over the edge, he saw her hand bleed in fat drops on the ground. She must have injured herself when she punched the cliff; her fingers were stiff and already swelling. "Sakura-chan?"
"She'll come back. I saw her jump to the other side. The canyon's not that big."
Naruto growled in frustration. The summons he could deal with, but the genjutsu he couldn't; and Sakura could deal with the genjutsu, but the summons or the swordswoman would kill her. For that matter... Hn. The slices on his chest and shoulders were already closing, but they weren't exactly shallow, and they stung. "I'll get rid of her sword, then I can beat her." He wasn't sure how, but that was the only way. He hadn't seen another sword on her; kunai were easier to deal with, he would have more reach than she did.
Someone crested the top of the hill then, and for a moment Naruto's stomach constricted painfully; the newcomer was huge, seven feet tall and powerfully built, and wielded a thick metal-tipped staff. The worst thing was still that he wasn't Sasuke. But a second later, Sasuke followed, and Naruto relaxed a little. Bastard was doing fine, pressing the big guy back step by step.
The green-haired guy swore, racing to his friend's aid. Naruto took off after him, but he was downhill. He tried to throw a kunai to slow him down, but the five-tailed fox dogging his heels stared down at Naruto with strange silver eyes -- and then white fire raced through the woods like arrows, and then Naruto was burning.
It hurt, and yet it didn't. Fox illusion, the kind he could die from, if only he believed it enough. How dare they -- such a blatant insult. He called a clone to him, curled chakra into their hands. Wind, he thought, and changed it like Kakashi-sensei had started teaching him, except perhaps too much, and too fast, and not quite stable enough.
The Rasengan exploded up the slope, uprooting and shredding trees, making dust, cut-up grass and leaves fly. His arm was covered in a multitude of little razor-cuts curled around the limb, but they healed over before he could fully feel them, skin sizzling with orange chakra. The five-tails was slumped up on the ground in a puddle of blood. Naruto raced past its still body without checking how alive it still was. Its master mattered more. Naruto wasn't going to let him get to Sasuke.
At the top of the hill, the big guy had thrown a powder at Sasuke's face, but Sasuke breathed a gust of fire on it and kept advancing, faster now. The teal-haired guy yelled, "Kuchiyose!", voice almost panicked. (Something called Naruto, tugged at him again, but it wasn't Sakura or Sasuke's voice so he didn't listen.) Foxes jumped at Sasuke, trying to trip him up. How many of those could he call?!
Naruto lashed out -- no jutsu, nothing but raw chakra. The top of the slope exploded under the enemies and Sasuke's feet, making them stumble and skid down in a shower of loose earth. And there, close enough now. The asshole looked none the worse for wear, as he measured Naruto up and then glanced behind him.
"Sakura?"
"I'm fine," she replied grimly, a couple of steps behind Naruto. He hadn't even been aware she was on his heels.
He grinned, watching the two outnumbered enemies, caught between the three of them. Now, now they were going to win.
The tall one looked faintly worried; the teal-haired one mostly looked coldly angry.
"Genjutsu won't work on mine," the tall one informed his companion quietly. They were so close, though, it was hard not to hear. Naruto snorted. Sometimes Sasuke's built-in abilities got on his nerves, but in cases like these he didn't find the Sharingan's omnipotence too bad. "Which one?"
The teal-haired one narrowed his eyes and stared straight into Naruto's. "Blond one. Zenko, NOW!"
She burst from the ground in a geyser of leaves, sword slashing at Sasuke's back. He saw her movement of course, whirled around to block her sword with a kunai. He'd manage, at least for a while.
Naruto pulled out one of his own kunai and rushed the two male enemies. The big guy had proven to be slow, and it was the fox guy Naruto was angry at. He dodged a swing of the quarterstaff, still tracking the green-haired guy, who shaped the same summoning seals again. Goddamnit he'd eat the next fox who dared to pop up.
And then there was a big hand touching his bare shoulder, and to him things ground to a halt.
"Sleep," the tall teenager said softly.
The world whirled around Naruto, around and around, twirled and danced up until it jarred to a sudden stop. Oh. So dizzy.
He'd lost the kunai somewhere and barely noticed. And that was wrong, he knew, but his fingers seemed so far away.
The sky was so immense, purple and pink and beautiful, colors blurring together into dusk, and his eyelids weighed tons.
(The call came again, and again, and again.)
/If you insist,/ Kyuubi purred; and the last thing Naruto felt before the creeping darkness swallowed him was his own lips stretching into a wide, predatory smile.
Next.
The previous chapter was posted maybe four hours ago, so if you haven't read it yet, go or you'll be all "wtf happened!" It's here.
Anyway this is fresh off the presses, I've spent all afternoon and evening typing like the wind, so it's a sure bet that there are weird passages, tons of repetitions, not enough description and the like. If anything doesn't work for you please tell me. But in the end I'm rather satisfied. Bwahahahahahahaha. >:3
Sasuke was still washing. Naruto crept closer. "Hm. Seems like a taxing jutsu. I'll teach you the hand seals, but you might want to wait until after the test to practice. Naruto, I'll kick you in the face."
--Aw shit! The surprise lost, his only advantage left was speed; Naruto lurched out of the water, going for a tackle. Sasuke would have, no doubt, whirled out of the way flawlessly, but the footing was treacherous, with all those loose mossy rocks; Naruto caught him in mid-turn. They landed with a loud splash, Sasuke on his hip and elbow, Naruto over him, limbs tangled together as they flailed to come out on top; the noise didn't cover Sakura's giggles.
Naruto got water up his nose and sneezed; hearing Sasuke cough, he decided to be generous and not dunk him again. The Uchiha glared somberly at him; the front of his hair was glued down over his face in a gelled curtain, and the back a forest of spikes that pointed in about every direction known to man and then some. Naruto snickered.
"You two are so childish," Sakura commented primly from the riverbank.
Her tone must have been too serious, or otherwise transparent, because then she was the one Sasuke was glaring sulkily at. "Just wait a minute and you'll see how childish I really am."
Sakura blinked, startled; Naruto didn't remember Sasuke play-threatening her before either, and he rather enjoyed her conflicting looks of alarm and amusement. But right now he was the one playing with Sasuke, so when the black-haired teen moved to get up, Naruto threw his arms around his neck from behind and pulled him back down.
"I've got him! Run, Sakura-chan!" he called as Sasuke fell back across his lap with another loud splash.
Sasuke squirmed, and his legs thrashed for purchase, but once again the moss denied him. Naruto laughed in his neck, feeling wet black hair against his face.
Sakura was very much not running, Naruto noticed, managing to spare a glance between two attempts to pin down Sasuke's arms. Frozen on her knees in the process of rising, she stared at the two of them with her lips parted. She still had deer blood up her arms like wet red gloves, and a couple of flecks on her cheek. Naruto groaned and bit Sasuke's neck.
"--Naruto."
Naruto bit him again, over the dead mark of the curse seal. Sasuke's breath hitched, and his struggles slowed down, more of a token protest than a serious attempt to counterattack. Naruto growled softly, worrying the skin with his fangs. As pretty as it was, sometimes he hated that mark. The only marks Sasuke should carry were Naruto's.
His hands slid over Sasuke's wet skin, palms flat over his chest, fingers stretched, claws barely brushing; on the bank, Sakura started biting her lower lip, transfixed. She looked -- a little jealous, perhaps, but aroused. Naruto kissed the reddened skin around the dark tattoo, nosed through damp locks of hair. "She likes watching, huh," he murmured.
Sasuke tensed in his arms and let out a soft groan. "Now is not the time."
"For what?" Naruto's hands ran over Sasuke's chest, his shoulders, palming his nipples almost on accident. "I'm just helping wash you."
Sasuke growled -- groaned? hard to tell -- and pulled away from him. "Not now, I said. I'm not having sex with anyone during the test and that's final." He frowned at Naruto over his shoulder. "I'm serious."
He looked like it, too. Naruto gave a short sigh and glanced over at Sakura. Blushing, she hurriedly climbed to her feet.
"Ah -- yes, he's right, and we don't even have perimeter alarms set anyway --"
"I set them up," Sasuke commented laconically as he stepped away. "But it's still not a reason."
... Augh! Unfair. And now Sakura was busying herself with the deer and the fire pit, taking good care not to look their way. Naruto huffed, glaring at his back from his seat in the stream. Sasuke picked up a handful of sand and started scrubbing his hair like he couldn't care less. Damn him, no matter that he was right. Especially since he was right!
Naruto sighed and got up, wobbling a little on the wet rocks. His pants were drenched, sticking to his skin. What a downer.
"Hey... How about I wash your back and you wash mine?" Sasuke looked suspicious, but Naruto sighed. "No, I won't feel you up, promise." He just wanted to touch skin right now; it was too brutal a crash otherwise, from the tingling high of anticipation to this distance.
"... Fine. But if your hands wander..." Sasuke didn't complete his sentence; it was clear enough.
Naruto gave him a wounded, irritated look. "Told you I wouldn't. Where's the sand?" He moved closer to Sasuke, looking between the rocks for the patch of sand he was using.
His skin still prickled with the hunt, and the mock-fight, and the desire. He raised his hands, rested them on Sasuke's back, feeling muscles under the skin, and hairline-fine scars and a couple of tiny pinpricks. Sasuke healed well. Naruto wanted to scar him. He just closed his eyes briefly, breathed in and out, and started rubbing, fingers digging into tense muscles, palms rubbing sand to scour the skin.
"Why'd you keep your pants?" he asked; he didn't really care apart from the fact that it blocked his view, but if he didn't find something to talk about he might end up doing something stupid and have to deal with Sasuke's contempt.
It didn't matter how much he wanted sex, this was just no time and place, the end. He knew that, he really did, but his body was still buzzing.
"... Like I wanted to be naked and weaponless if someone attacked the camp."
"Could have strapped the kunai sheath on anyway," Naruto suggested, and then groaned a little at the thought of a band of dark cloth wrapped around a bare thigh. Damn it.
"I don't fight naked."
"Heh, yeah, freeballin' isn't really..." Argh, argh, argh. What was wrong with him, was Kyuubi making him all horny again? He'd thought that would stop once he started getting booty regularly.
Naruto looked away from the bared nape and the wet dark strands, casting around for a safer topic. Sakura was done spitting the deer; she stood in the tall grass, hands knotted together over her chest, watching them with a kind of naked hunger in her eyes that was less sexual desire than need to belong, though it probably was both.
He was opening his mouth to suggest she help, but then a red-orange flash in the corner of his eye made him twitch around -- and there it was, in the middle of their encampment, a lanky old beast with Naruto's own prey in its jaw -- a thigh-high fox, the miniature deer's hooves trailing on the ground -- and three tails, a dirty three-tails was stealing Naruto's prey!
He'd hunted that deer for his mates! It was their dinner! Outraged, Naruto snarled and threw himself out of the stream. The fox jumped for the bushes, eyes wide and ears flattened back in obvious panic. Yeah, let it panic! Hot on its tracks, he yelled an outraged challenge, words melding together and losing all meaning. A three-tails! Barely three! How could it even dare --
None of them had noticed where the stream ran to, a couple hundred meters down. The hollow twisted sharply to the left, cutting all view, and deepened into a startlingly green canyon. Under the dense tangle of plants, a couple of crumbled, caved-in manmade structures that must have been fortified hideouts some fifty years ago kept watch on the canyon.
When he ran between them in hot pursuit of the fox, Naruto hadn't really been expecting a wolf his height at the shoulder to burst out of the crumbled building and leap at him from behind.
The fangs missed him, but the beast's shoulder checked him, sending him rolling down the sharp slope. He clawed at the earth to slow his momentum; a rock caught him in the hip and he gritted his teeth.
Then something whistled through the air and he backflipped just in time to dodge a descending sharp length. A claw?
The wolf wore an oversized village headband as a collar.
"Ambush!" he screamed, to warn his teammates, but they'd already burst over the edge of the canyon after him; he caught a glimpse of movement, many furred bodies rushing at the two of them, and then he couldn't worry about them anymore. The air whistled again, and what was -- sword! Black, painted sword, leaving a burning trail across his chest.
Naruto snarled and clawed low, but he could only give himself enough space to retreat downhill, and then he was attacked again.
Girl, long black hair, dressed in dark and tan, and moving fast -- maybe even as fast as Sasuke. She blurred from sight, but he couldn't worry much because then the wolf jumped him again, maw gaping wide enough to swallow him in one bite. He had to get himself out of there, but there was no time to even shape one seal. He dodged the sword once, rolled under the wolf's chest to put its mass between them, but it instantly whirled around as its mistress vaulted over its back, plunged sword first at him, leaving him no way out.
A flurry of kunai tore through the air. The girl knocked a couple out of the air, but her wolf yelped in pain, jumping aside; Naruto dived through the opening and retreated hurriedly.
"Naruto!" Sakura yelled.
He looked for her where the kunai had come from; she'd moved on already, but her pink hair caught his eye not too far from there as she took cover behind a rock. The trees were pitiful; trunks no wider than his thigh and all twisted and stunted, shallow roots changing the ground into a series of snares, and climbing on the trees themselves would get them nowhere; they were too small to put anyone out of reach. The slope was awkward to boot, full of slippery dead leaves.
"Kage Bunshin no Jutsu!"
He sent his clones all over the place, slipping unnoticed amongst them. Where were the other enemies? He couldn't see Sasuke. A clone burst behind him, then two, torn to shreds by wolf fangs.
There -- dark-skinned boy, Iruka-in-the-sun-all-summer shade contrasting sharply with his pale teal-green hair. He was staring in Sakura's general direction, hands clasped in a seal. Naruto pounced.
The world went weird in mid-leap, full of psychedelic colors, and he was losing his balance and his sense of directions, and shit, shit -- "Kai!" The forest snapped back into place, only to start crawling with a rush of mice. Amongst the mice ran cats and dogs and -- there! The three-tailed fox. Ignoring the carpet of squirming mice, he threw a kunai its way. The fox dodged behind a rock crawling with huge black rats, and the mice were climbing Naruto's pant legs inside and out, and then something tackled him to the ground.
"Kai!" yelled Sakura, sitting on top of him.
The mice were gone; he wasn't surprised. They hadn't smelled like anything anyway. He was two steps away from a nasty drop. At the other side of the canyon, the three-tails watched them. Naruto snarled, fangs bared. He was going to teach that mangy rat...!
"-- Where's Sasuke?" he remembered to ask, blinking to clear his sight. A few motes of light still danced in the corner of his vision.
Sakura moved off him, and they rolled to crouch back to back. "With the last one. Big guy, quarterstaff. You?"
A few of his clones rushed past, storming the rock behind which the green-haired guy was hiding. Wolf-girl was nowhere in sight. "Girl with a katana. Big wolf. Hella fast. This guy does genjutsu then?"
"He summons too," Sakura commented somberly. "With the wolf... Maybe they all do."
"Shit, shit, they do," Naruto said in a rush. "He's that guy with the cat Kyuubi wanted to eat!"
Sakura muttered something unhappy between her clenched teeth and cracked her knuckles. "The girl is fast, Sasuke would do better. The big guy with the staff, brute force, for you. ...I'll manage the genjutsu type. Just find Sasuke and trade."
"I'm not leaving you," he protested. "Don't count on it."
But then there was a masculine voice, and muffled words calling out a technique, and it tugged inside him. He fell to a knee in the grass; for a second the sun seemed to wink out.
"Naruto?!" Sakura attempted to snap the genjutsu, but nothing really happened.
Naruto shook his head and climbed back on his feet. "S'okay, I'm fine -- shit!" Something was making short work of his remaining clones, two, three, seven -- and all gone. "They're coming. Kage Bunshin no Jutsu!"
Some of the clones surrounded Sakura so she could counter the genjutsu without being attacked; Naruto and the rest rushed up the slope.
Foxes ran down to meet them. Two three-tails, one much younger than the first thief, one dark-furred five-tails even, standing at the green-haired boy's side with blue foxfire dancing around its head, and a dozen normal foxes, knee-high little bolides fast as cats and full of pointed teeth. They attached themselves to his clones' wrists, their legs, weighing them down; then the girl with the sword moved in, slashing through the clones with grim efficiency. Naruto moved to meet her, but she chose the other way, mowing down the crowd to get to Sakura.
Angry now, Naruto let loose a burst of chakra that sizzled fur, made most of the one-tail yelp and cower. Suddenly he had space to move -- but the wolf moved too, hackles raised, the white of its eyes showing in fear.
Now it was afraid for its mistress, and scared dogs were the most dangerous ones. Naruto snarled at it, trying to make it back off, but it refused to step away from the path to its mistress. And Sakura --
Heart in his throat, Naruto watched her tumble off the edge and disappear in the canyon.
He took a step forward; the wolf tried to eat his head. He punched it in the muzzle, sending its head snapping back, backhanded it again and raced past as it swayed dizzily. The black-haired girl had stopped at the edge and was peering down, checking for Sakura's body, and he was going to kill her.
Then the ground shook, and the ledge broke off the slope and slipped down, bringing the swordswoman with it. Naruto hoped she'd get crushed to death, though he doubted that would happen. He found the closest stable rock and leaned over -- "Sakura-chan!?"
He found her dangling by a rappelling wire from the side of the cliff, still swinging from the impact, hair and skin gray with dust. "I'm fine! Careful about green guy!"
Naruto cast a wary look at the small trees and bushes, but he could see nothing. The smaller foxes had fled; the bigger ones were probably in hiding. The wolf growled at him but wouldn't move closer, still swaying dizzily on its huge paws. That was good, because at the moment Naruto wanted very much to bite its throat out, and he didn't care that he was way too small to manage to get through its thick fur. The wolf seemed to believe he could. At the moment, so did Naruto.
Keeping an eye on the area, he found the wire and pulled Sakura up. When he helped her over the edge, he saw her hand bleed in fat drops on the ground. She must have injured herself when she punched the cliff; her fingers were stiff and already swelling. "Sakura-chan?"
"She'll come back. I saw her jump to the other side. The canyon's not that big."
Naruto growled in frustration. The summons he could deal with, but the genjutsu he couldn't; and Sakura could deal with the genjutsu, but the summons or the swordswoman would kill her. For that matter... Hn. The slices on his chest and shoulders were already closing, but they weren't exactly shallow, and they stung. "I'll get rid of her sword, then I can beat her." He wasn't sure how, but that was the only way. He hadn't seen another sword on her; kunai were easier to deal with, he would have more reach than she did.
Someone crested the top of the hill then, and for a moment Naruto's stomach constricted painfully; the newcomer was huge, seven feet tall and powerfully built, and wielded a thick metal-tipped staff. The worst thing was still that he wasn't Sasuke. But a second later, Sasuke followed, and Naruto relaxed a little. Bastard was doing fine, pressing the big guy back step by step.
The green-haired guy swore, racing to his friend's aid. Naruto took off after him, but he was downhill. He tried to throw a kunai to slow him down, but the five-tailed fox dogging his heels stared down at Naruto with strange silver eyes -- and then white fire raced through the woods like arrows, and then Naruto was burning.
It hurt, and yet it didn't. Fox illusion, the kind he could die from, if only he believed it enough. How dare they -- such a blatant insult. He called a clone to him, curled chakra into their hands. Wind, he thought, and changed it like Kakashi-sensei had started teaching him, except perhaps too much, and too fast, and not quite stable enough.
The Rasengan exploded up the slope, uprooting and shredding trees, making dust, cut-up grass and leaves fly. His arm was covered in a multitude of little razor-cuts curled around the limb, but they healed over before he could fully feel them, skin sizzling with orange chakra. The five-tails was slumped up on the ground in a puddle of blood. Naruto raced past its still body without checking how alive it still was. Its master mattered more. Naruto wasn't going to let him get to Sasuke.
At the top of the hill, the big guy had thrown a powder at Sasuke's face, but Sasuke breathed a gust of fire on it and kept advancing, faster now. The teal-haired guy yelled, "Kuchiyose!", voice almost panicked. (Something called Naruto, tugged at him again, but it wasn't Sakura or Sasuke's voice so he didn't listen.) Foxes jumped at Sasuke, trying to trip him up. How many of those could he call?!
Naruto lashed out -- no jutsu, nothing but raw chakra. The top of the slope exploded under the enemies and Sasuke's feet, making them stumble and skid down in a shower of loose earth. And there, close enough now. The asshole looked none the worse for wear, as he measured Naruto up and then glanced behind him.
"Sakura?"
"I'm fine," she replied grimly, a couple of steps behind Naruto. He hadn't even been aware she was on his heels.
He grinned, watching the two outnumbered enemies, caught between the three of them. Now, now they were going to win.
The tall one looked faintly worried; the teal-haired one mostly looked coldly angry.
"Genjutsu won't work on mine," the tall one informed his companion quietly. They were so close, though, it was hard not to hear. Naruto snorted. Sometimes Sasuke's built-in abilities got on his nerves, but in cases like these he didn't find the Sharingan's omnipotence too bad. "Which one?"
The teal-haired one narrowed his eyes and stared straight into Naruto's. "Blond one. Zenko, NOW!"
She burst from the ground in a geyser of leaves, sword slashing at Sasuke's back. He saw her movement of course, whirled around to block her sword with a kunai. He'd manage, at least for a while.
Naruto pulled out one of his own kunai and rushed the two male enemies. The big guy had proven to be slow, and it was the fox guy Naruto was angry at. He dodged a swing of the quarterstaff, still tracking the green-haired guy, who shaped the same summoning seals again. Goddamnit he'd eat the next fox who dared to pop up.
And then there was a big hand touching his bare shoulder, and to him things ground to a halt.
"Sleep," the tall teenager said softly.
The world whirled around Naruto, around and around, twirled and danced up until it jarred to a sudden stop. Oh. So dizzy.
He'd lost the kunai somewhere and barely noticed. And that was wrong, he knew, but his fingers seemed so far away.
The sky was so immense, purple and pink and beautiful, colors blurring together into dusk, and his eyelids weighed tons.
(The call came again, and again, and again.)
/If you insist,/ Kyuubi purred; and the last thing Naruto felt before the creeping darkness swallowed him was his own lips stretching into a wide, predatory smile.
Next.
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