Chapter 7 – Civil War!

"Sakura, now!" Sasuke said, panicked.

Sakura threw her hands out, her genjutsu fully formed. It latched onto Naruto's chakra, slowing his consciousness and sapping his willpower. Naruto dropped unconscious. The chakra sputtered, and fell back into him, silent.

"Well." Sakura said, panting, "That went well."

Sakura made her way to the unconscious genin, caution in her step. She lay her hand on the back of Naruto's hand, and pulsed her chakra, disrupting the genjutsu she had placed on him. Sasuke had moved closer as well, sharingan still training on Naruto's chakra.

Naruto groaned, as he woke up slowly from the technique, "Damn, I thought I had it…"

"I take it as an extremely bad sign whenever I see megalomania," Sasuke said, the sarcasm evident in his voice, "you weren't quite yourself there, what happened? When we were fighting on the docks you weren't nearly this bad. Angry yes, but you seemed to be advancing to another stage too quickly."

"I'm not sure," Naruto said as he tried to gain his bearings, "The chakra just kept building and building, the longer I held it the more it messed with me."

The wind from Naruto's first attempt had blown the mist back, but it was quickly reclaiming ground. The forest was quiet now, the chakra having silenced most of the wildlife. It gave the clearing a gentle, almost eerie feel.

"What was different," Naruto said, more to himself than anything, "I was fine for half a minute or so, but longer I held it the worse it got…"

"That's it!" Sakura exclaimed, "You need to bleed the chakra off! On the beach, you were fighting the jounin, using chakra to fight faster and harder!"

"… You might be right," Naruto said, "but then how am I going to bleed off some chakra? I don't know any large scale techniques, and I certainly can't fight the Mizukage."

Sasuke spoke to Naruto as if he were a small child, "Isn't that the point? Just expel the chakra into the air around you. Be wasteful, you don't need to use a technique."

"Right right," Naruto laughed, "So, do you guys want to try again? The day is still young but the Kyuubi is getting older!"

"No, I think we're done for today…" Sakura said with a sigh, "I haven't gotten much of a chance to rest since the battle on the beach, even if you've been sleeping for most of it. We have a week to try and figure out a way for you to expel this chakra, and we already know you can draw it out easily enough. I think we should call it a day and pick it back up tomorrow."

As the days passed, Naruto got more and more proficient in drawing out the Kyuubi's chakra. He didn't always get it right, sometimes the beast would decide to try and take him off guard with a burst of chakra, but he was usually able to get it under control.

He wasn't sure it was a good thing that he was getting used to the oppressive energy. He could feel the hate inherent in it. Sometimes, when he lost himself too deeply in the chakra itself, he could feel some of the old, buried hatred deep in his memories. The glares he got from the populace, the ostracization, these old memories rose to the surface and were more clearly remembered than ever, the more he used its power.

Sasuke and Sakura wasn't taking it easy either though. They had their own duties, Sasuke was coordinating with the Suiton support team, who was responsible for large scale water jutsu from the backlines. He would supplement the jutsu with his Raiton, giving the technique an extra kick. Hopefully the electricity would slow some of the enemy shinobi down just long enough for them to be caught in the technique.

Sakura was going to take a less active role, but a vital one nonetheless. She got a crash course (again) on emergency medicine, filling in some of the gaps in her knowledge. Slowly but surely, she was gaining confidence and proficiency in medical ninjutsu.

As the day drew closer a palpable tension permeated the camp. The moral wasn't helped by the constant bursts of bijuu chakra, and it wasn't hard for someone to connect the dots and figure out one of the three Konoha genin was a jinchuuriki. Their only other experience being the despotic Mizukage, they were (understandably) wary.

Team 7's standing in the camp plummeted, but the Sasuke and Sakura were unwilling to reveal Naruto's status as the jinchuuriki. As a result, they got a first-hand experience on how life for Naruto must have felt, as many of the camp were convinced one or the other was the container.

With Kakashi…

"Taichou," Kotetsu spoke up, "The only way none of your ninken would have been able pick up their scent means that either we're dealing with an organization with much more resources than we previously thought, or they've been taken across the sea."

They were standing in a dock, having been led there by the genin's scent. The trail ended here, but it was obvious where they were headed.

"Taichou, they could be anywhere."

"… This dock, we have to find out what it's used for." Kakashi spoke, breaking his silence, "Spread out, gather information. Documents, people, it doesn't matter. I want answers."

"Hai!, Taichou!"

Back in Kiri…

The time had arrived. One way or another, the rebellion would end with this battle. Naruto stood behind Mei and a nervous looking boy not much older than himself, along with some other rebels, somewhere between the forward garrison and Kirigakure. They were waiting for a signal.

Compared to the loyalist shinobi in the garrison the rebels' attack force outnumbered them at least ten to one. Victory was a foregone conclusion, but that wasn't the main battle. Sasuke and Sakura were stationed nearer to Kirigakure, waiting for the same signal.

Naruto fidgeted. This was it, in a few minutes he would be facing down a fully realized Jinchuuriki. If the Mizukage didn't take the bait he was to move closer and closer to the village until he did. It didn't sit right with him, it felt too much like what happened with Konoha that fateful day almost 13 years ago.

A single red flare shot up from the garrison in the distance, followed by two more to either side.

"There's the signal," Mei said, then joined the other shinobi as they took up various positions in the misty forest, hidden from the naked eye.

"Got it," Naruto clasped his hands together, the now familiar chakra welling up inside of him. Without pausing, he expelled the chakra into the air around him, generating a corona of red flames.

"He has to know this is a trap," Mei thought to herself, from her perch directly above Naruto, "But he'll have to respond, the threat of a jinchuuriki can't be ignored."

Naruto continued to expel more and more chakra, the fox continuously increasing its output. Before long, red chakra started to bubble from Naruto's navel, covering and enveloping him in a crude silhouette of a fox. The chakra accumulated slowly, but at a constant crescendo.

It wasn't long before Yagura appeared, flanked by a team of Kiri hunter nin. Yagura was a young looking despot, with light brown hair and a savage scar down his left cheek. He held a hooked staff in his hand.

"Who are you?" Yagura asked, voice flat, "You are not the jinchuuriki of the Rokubi, have the rebels enlisted the help of another hidden village?"

"What's it to ya?" Naruto straining to keep his mind, the more distracted he was the harder it became to supress the chakra.

The clearing exploded in fighting as the rebels took Naruto's words as a signal. Naruto, even with his enhanced senses in this form could barely follow some of the fighting.

"A trap. I see. As I suspected. " Yagura looked up to see a wave of lava speeding towards him. With a confident air of someone used to getting his way, he tapped the air in front of him with his staff, forming a mirror out of thin air.

"Oh shit!" Naruto used the speed of his enhanced form to roll out of the way and take cover behind a particularly sturdy looking tree. A second wave of lava appeared from the mirror and met the original, waves of heat washing over the fighting above.

"Chojuro! To me!" Mei called, preparing another technique.

From his cover, Naruto concentrated on suppressing the bijuu chakra. When he finally managed it, he took a look around. Naruto was in awe, shinobi well above his calibre duked it out all around him, and not one of them moved slowly enough for him to follow.

One of the Kiri hunter nin spied Naruto hanging back. Finishing off the particularly inept rebel he was currently fighting, he snuck up above Naruto's position.

Naruto barely had a moment's notice before he was forced to dodge out of the way again, this time away from a wave of knives. With a deft flick of the wrist, still a little exhausted from drawing on the Kyuubi's chakra, he released and caught a couple cards in each hand.

The two clashed as the fighting around them intensified. Naruto shot a few razor sharp cards spinning towards his adversary. The Kiri nin dodged out of the way, quickly taking to the trees and peppering Naruto with a few dozen knives in response, who spun out of the way.

Naruto was feeling supremely outclassed. His opponent was stronger, faster, much more skilled. There was no way he was winning against them in a fair fight.

"He's a long range specialist" Naruto thought, as he took cover from a water bullet technique, "I need to bring the fight to him."

He created a shadow clone that immediately ran out and attempted to flank the hunter nin. The clone was agile, but barely made it halfway before dispelling from a well-aimed kunai to its unprotected forehead. By then, however, Naruto had snuck up to the other side of hunter nin, and managed to get close enough to release a few dozen cards careening towards his enemy.

With a spin, Naruto took a card in each hand, reinforcing the razor sharp chakra in the cards and slashed them towards the surprised hunter nin. Definitely a long range specialist then, he seemed to scramble to get away from Naruto.

He kept up the assault, cards shooting from unpredictable angles constantly, each one of them deadly. The two shinobi shot through the mist laden forest, constantly on the move and probing each other's defenses. Naruto managed to keep up, if only just.

This didn't change the fact that his enemy was still stronger and faster though, and Naruto was hard pressed to keep up the melee. Something needed to change, and fast, before the hunter nin wised up to his advantage.

Naruto, with his mind going a mile a minute, thought back to his fight with Kakashi during the bell test. With nothing to lose and everything to gain, he started to pepper his dwindling reserves of gravity and explosive cards.

The hunter nin stumbled, caught momentarily off guard.

Naruto sensed an opportunity. He planted his feet high up on a sturdy tree trunk, and whipped his arm around releasing the last of his explosive cards. If this didn't work he wasn't sure how he could get out of this without calling on the Kyuubi's chakra a second time.

As the hunter nin recovered from his momentary lapse in footing, their eyes widened as he attempted to intercept what they now recognized as extremely dangerous explosive cards.

Shuriken pierced the cards, one after the other, disrupting the fuuinjustu that Naruto had painstakingly crafted. Naruto's heart dropped as his final gambit was taken apart with unnerring accuracy. With only a few milliseconds left before the last of his cards was torn apart, he reached out with his tired chakra and pushed.

Answering his desperate plea, the card sped up fractionally, just enough to dodge the intercepting shuriken. With a wet slice, the card embedded itself in the hunter nin's neck, the more experienced shinobi not anticipating the sheer agility that the card could reach.

Naruto winced at the aftermath. Panting in exhaustion and adrenaline, he was nonetheless a little disgusted. That had been an explosive card after all. The sounds of battle around him jolted him out of his disgust.

As Naruto turned to leave, his part done, he was surprised at the bijuu chakra he could feel permeating the air. Having become so used to the presence of the chakra from ground zero, he hadn't noticed until now.

Peering to where the chakra was coming from, he broke out in a cold sweat as he took stock of the situation. Chojuro was taken out of the fight, slash wounds littering his chest, and Mei wasn't doing too well either. The Mizukage seemed to be covered in a dark, opaque shroud, his eyes little more than shining dots on his chakra covered face.

With speeds Naruto had never seen before, Yagura dashed towards Mei in a straight charge, the rebel leader barely managing to sidestep the blow. Without her support, Mei's powerful ranged jutsu, her specialty, was severely hampered. Yagura's linear strategy was compensated by the fact that he was very, very fast and very, very powerful. His lunges left furrows in the ground beneath them, and his blows left craters where they landed.

Naruto was a genin, yet even he could see how much of a disadvantage Mei was at right now. None of the other rebels seemed to be able to help, all deep into their own battles.

With a sigh Naruto knew he had to help. But how? His cards couldn't hold up to the corrosive chakra, he had tried a few days ago, and the cards just weren't sturdy enough to stand up to the chakra shroud Naruto realized all jinchuuriki must have in common.

There really was only one option. Naruto clasped his hands together for the second time that day, reaching for the chakra he had become so adept at drawing from. It responded with all the speed of an eager bijuu this time, sensing it would be used for much more than just bait.

Chakra exploded around Naruto again, and he wasted no time charging at the more experienced jinchuuriki in his base form. The shroud formed as Naruto lunged towards Yagura in a shoulder charge, his sanity escaping as he fully immersed himself into the bijuu's chakra. Naruto knew instinctively that this wasn't a battle he could even hope to survive with his wits intact.

With a roar, Naruto careened into Yagura. Mei didn't question the chance she had been given, immediately preparing a massive technique. Naruto didn't let up, and charged at the more powerful jinchuuriki with reckless abandon, only to be battered aside with a supernaturally quick fist.

That, however, was all the time Mei needed. Flashing through a final dozen or so hand seals, she brought her hands up to her lips, gathered a massive amount of chakra, and shot a widespread combination of acid and lava at the stunned Mizukage. Too late to dodge, Yagura reinforced himself with more of the corrosive chakra, in hopes of surviving the deadly attack. The jutsu, a combination of both of Mei's bloodlines, destroyed everything in its path. Yagura was thrown back by the force, the chakra itself unable to fully shield him from the effects.

Mei slumped to the ground, barely conscious after the exertion from such a powerful technique. Naruto retained just enough of his mental faculties to suppress the kyuubi's chakra once more. The fighting started to die down as the rebels started to win their battles, and help their allies win theirs as well. Soon, all the hunter nin were either dead or incapacitated, and only a few of the rebels remained standing. Naruto finally supressed the last of the Kyuubi's chakra, but he felt a pit of dread as the bijuu chakra in the air remained.

From the devastated ground before them, Yagura's chakra shroud had regained its transparency, falling to the level that Naruto was capable of. Yagura however was still very conscious, and now very angry. With a stumbling charge, Yagura sped towards them, intent on ending the rebellion once and for all.

Naruto wasn't going to be able to call up the kyuubi's chakra again for a third time today, especially on such short notice. Mei was still struggling to get up, but she didn't have the chakra to shoot off another jutsu. The remaining rebels braced themselves, bravely holding their weapons aloft, prepared to defend their leader to the last breath.

As Yagura's dash took him past the devastation caused by Mei's jutsu, and as Yagura approached once final time, Naruto started to hear… chirping?

A form spearheaded by crackling blue lightning stabbed into Yagura's back, killing the dictator immediately. Kakashi had arrived just in time.

"Naruto…" Kakashi said, annoyance and relief in his voice, "What exactly are you doing on a battlefield?"

"Heh, saving a country from an evil overlord of course." Naruto laughed in abject relief, "I knew the Hokage was lying when he said there weren't any."

A/N: Shorter chapter here, but next chapter is back to Konoha, and the start of the chunin exams for team 7. As always, let me know how my writing was. Always happy for constructive criticism.