Ooo Chapter 9: And Run Like Hell ooO

Naruto didn't know how, but somehow, this was the old Sannin's fault.

He'd managed to grab his kite at the last second, and sealed it up as they ran—uphill and through the snow, no less—for the relative cover of the rocks. He glanced back to see Jiraiya apparently squaring up to fight all by himself, and his eyes traveled further down the steep slope to see a veritable small army advancing. What am I doing? he thought suddenly.

Without a second thought, he dropped his pack, stuffing the kite scroll in his pocket, and dashed back down. Each step slid in the light snow, and he zipped past Jiraiya at a high rate of speed. "Come on, old man!" he called. "I bet I can take out more of them than you!"

"Like hell you—kid!" came the angry response, already fading behind him. "This isn't a game!"

He knew it wasn't a game. They were outnumbered by at least six to one, and it was the enemy's home terrain. But he was going to be a shinobi, and shinobi protected other people. He could hear Hana and Red shouting his name, too, but he ignored them. If they wanted to talk, they'd just have to come down and fight with him.

As he raced down the steep slope, he took stock of his situation. He could move much faster toward them than they could toward him—he had the advantage of elevation. Better try something ranged, he thought.

He slid to a stop and sent up a spray of snow that disguised his hand-seals. When you're fighting in the snow… "Katon: Kiribi no Jutsu!" What was ordinarily a tiny shoot of flame used to ignite bits of tinder, Naruto pumped with enough chakra to turn into a full-blown jet of fire that exploded from a white-hot point at his mouth and grew into a roiling inferno. It was barely able to reach the first ranks of enemy shinobi, and they quickly dropped to put out the flames, but it melted the surface of the snow, turning the crust into a glassy slab of ice.

Without wasting another moment, Naruto reached into his supply pouch and wrapped explosive tags around several kunai and sent them flying. They impacted the uppermost reaches of the thickest ice with concussive blasts. The weight became more than it could stand, and the whole thing cracked away from the slope and began to slide.

Naruto could hear the panicked shouts of those shinobi who could see what was heading their way and gaining speed: a massive plate that was pulling half the mountainside down with it and would slice them all off at the knees without even slowing down.

Naruto, who didn't want to kill them, quickly flung several more kunai laden with explosive tags into the center of the roaring flow. The detonations rocked the whole hillside, blasting apart the ice into flying chunks that would only knock the shinobi out and bury them instead.

He quickly discovered he'd underestimated the Iwa shinobi, because a great swath of snow swept up and solidified in front of them, causing his own tumbling flow of ice and snow to ricochet up and over them in a bizarre wave.

But Naruto wasn't out of tricks, either. "Fuuton: Wariki no Jutsu!" The wind technique was commonly employed to chop up small pieces of firewood. Naruto used it to send several slicing wheels of wind howling down the hill, and the massive ice shield collapsed into perfectly dissected slabs.

"Holy shit, kid," Jiraiya marveled, having finally caught up. Hana and Red appeared behind him. "Now all we need to do is—"

It was Naruto's opinion that you should never say 'now all we need to do is,' because inevitably, something always happened to make completing that sentence impossible. Like having fifteen of your enemies suddenly appear, not crushed, as they should have been, but racing up the steep slope on stones that cut through the snow like it was water, while the remainder scrambled around down below as if they had big plans.

"Ergh," Naruto said, pulling out a pair of kunai. He wrapped another tag around one of them and flung it. As he suspected, the small blast sent one rock-surfing shinobi off course, but the woman quickly recovered.

He heard Jiraiya mutter to himself, "Either they really thought it was him, or they're just mad about being tricked… Any way you slice it, this is total overkill."

Naruto didn't have time to puzzle over that comment—he could see several of the fast approaching shinobi going through hand-seals. Crap! He shouted, "Jousuiki (water filter) no Jutsu!" just as he heard Jiraiya bellow, "Kuchiyose no Jutsu: Shitagama (Toad's Tongue)!"

Naruto's technique kicked in at the same time as Jiraiya's—a wide swath of hillside below them was suddenly pulled apart as the snow separated from any contaminants, instantly turning the deep snow into a torrent of melt-water. At the same time a massive, fleshy tongue appeared under the team's feet just before dozens of pillars of rock shot out of the mountainside beneath them. The result was that Naruto, Jiraiya, Hana, and Red were slammed into the air, but shielded from the brunt of the damage, while fifteen Iwa ninjas suddenly found themselves fighting a waterfall of freezing runoff.

A wedge of stone was thrust up far down the mountain, protecting the other half of their forces, and the rush of water split to either side, running off harmlessly.

"Any ideas?" Jiraiya quipped as they hit the apex of their flight and began to descend toward the lumpy, pink mass.

"Why don't you summon a toad or something?" Naruto shouted.

"Can't—they don't do good in the cold. Probably would fall asleep."

"Great!"

"Hey, it's probably too late to really help," Jiraiya added, loud enough for all three kids to hear, "but you guys should hide your hitai-ate!"

Naruto had just enough time to think about what a shady guy Jiraiya was, before Hana threw a handful of shuriken with flash seals in an effort to slow the enemy down, and the four covered their eyes as the hillside lit up.

A second later they landed on the squishy tongue, and it dispersed in a gust of smoke. Most of the Iwa nin were picking themselves up—the hillside had melted through to the rocky scree beneath, and Naruto realized with disgust that now the enemy had good footing. They rushed up the slope en masse, sending up new shoots of rock that forced Naruto's team to leap and dodge in an effort to avoid getting pulverized.

In the next moment the Iwa nin were on them, leaping through the pillars and swinging massive swords like they were yardsticks. Naruto's team scattered—Hana shouting, "Shikyaku no Jutsu!" with relish and tearing into their enemies like some kind of beast, Jiraiya spinning and laying down a swath of Iwa nin with needles raining from his hair, and Red whipping out a pair of long knives to dance and whirl between their bulkier adversaries like a panther in a herd of oxen. And Naruto—well, he learned the hard way that those swords weren't just simple stone.

He got a good look at one as it swung upward toward his face—it was some kind of green jade flecked with black and red—just before, instead of dodging the strike as he thought he had, his entire body was clubbed with a rocketing swath of rock.

He landed hard against another column, wondering dazedly what the hell had happened and tasting blood. He had his question answered when the shinobi swung his green sword again, and stones sprouted in an arc that raced toward him.

Naruto flipped backward, landing feet first against the column, and sprung off just as the line of destruction toppled it. He's controlling the rocks… he's channeling through that sword!

A quick glance told him only three of the Iwa nin had weapons like that… but it was three too many. He leapt and darted between the columns of stone that jutted from the steep slope, some nearly horizontal while others intersected vertically, and mentally catalogued all of the techniques he knew. He couldn't think of anything that would help him. He couldn't melt stone—not yet anyway—he couldn't separate it like water, and he didn't think slicing up the swords would take away their ability to channel chakra through them. Though it couldn't hurt to try.

He reversed direction, bounced off a column, and leapt for another that jutted out sideways. The shinobi with the sword had never given up the chase, and Naruto spotted him with ease. Running toward the end of the pillar, Naruto went through the seals and panted, "Fuuton: Wariki no Jutsu!"

The shinobi swept his sword in an arc at his feet, and a stone rampart erupted in front of him. The wheel of wind chopped right through it, continuing on to slice into the ninja's raised sword before dissipating. The attack had taken a fair chunk out of the green stone, and with an irritated grimace, the Iwa nin knocked off what was left of the end of it before resuming his attack.

Crap, now what?! Another close call with rupturing stone jogged his brain. That's it—if you can't destroy it, take it away! He just had to get close enough…

When the next roaring slice of earth nearly bisected him, he whispered, "Henge!" Suddenly he was a simple hunk of snow that had gotten thrown into the air along with the rest of the debris. To the Iwa nin's eyes, he had disappeared, but in truth he rolled down the slope, right past the man's feet.

"Kai!" And there he was, springing up behind the shinobi. The man was already turning, but it was too late. With a chakra-powered kick, Naruto swept his legs out from under him, hearing an ankle crack, before leaping over his flailing arm and touching the sword. In the next instant Naruto had dashed away.

The Iwa nin tried to recover, falling to one knee and raising the sword for another slash.

"Nope," Naruto muttered, giving a yank. Attached to his chakra strings, the sword ripped from its master's fingers and sailed through the air, imbedding itself in the snow behind Naruto.

Whipping out his kite scroll, Naruto bit down on his finger and, using blood because he didn't have time for ink, scrawled another containment seal next to the one already there. In his haste, he wasn't sure that it was perfect, but he only wanted to keep the sword away from any Iwa nin. "Seal!" he shouted, and the sword flashed into the scroll, blazing a new kanji: Blade. He stowed the scroll away, saluted the downed ninja, and turned to rejoin the battle. One down… twenty to go.

He had just dashed into the fray, engaging a pair of blessedly sword-less shinobi, when Jiraiya appeared at his back. "We need to end this like right now," the big Sannin told him, kicking an Iwa nin in the face with a wooden sandal.

"What do you mean?" grunted Red, dispatching another with the flat of his blade.

Jiraiya pointed down the mountain, toward the other half of the Iwa forces. Naruto had completely forgotten about them, but they hadn't forgotten about his team. "See that? That's a support circle," the big man said, slamming his fist into the face of another ninja coming up from the side. "This is peaches, but if they pull off what it looks like they're trying to, we're going to be…well, use any euphemism you like, but we'll be dead."

"Aren't you supposed to be some kind of legend?" Naruto shouted, outraged.

"I could easily kill them all, but we can't do that!" Jiraiya shot back.

"Why not?" Hana roared, fending off a small group. The four were slowly being surrounded, and the distant 'support circle' of shinobi had begun to glow.

"Because Konoha can't handle another war with Iwa, and this is quickly becoming a political incident!" Jiraiya whirled, grabbing Naruto by the shoulder. "Kid, I need you to take the three Salamander charges out of my pack and drop them up there—" and he pointed up to the near-vertical rise that shadowed their route up the pass. Thick shelves of wind-sculpted snow hung over the sheer rocks and folds of ice, ripe and ready to fall.

Naruto gaped. "You want me to… to drop an avalanche on you?"

"No, I want you to drop an avalanche on them—the rest of us will be miles ahead of them by the time you get up there, and they'll be…almost harmlessly buried!"

In the breath that Naruto hesitated, he felt wind being sucked past him, down the hill—toward the glowing circle. The ground began to rumble.

"Move!" Jiraiya shouted, and Naruto jumped into action. While Red and Hana continued to kick the proverbial snot out of any Iwa nin who got too close, Naruto pulled the three massive charges—it would be a ridiculous understatement to call them 'fireworks'—out of Jiraiya's pack, and clenched them by their fuses in his teeth. Unsealing his kite with a spit and a muffled "Kuchiyose no Jutsu!" he quickly snapped the big struts open and strapped his arms in.

He met Jiraiya's eyes, and the big man gave him a nod. Naruto had never flown this high or this far before—not from a standstill, and not after fighting a battle. But it didn't matter. He nodded back with fierce determination, crouched low as he gathered his chakra in a rush of swirling wind, and jumped.

His first instinct was roll the air under the kite wings, just as he'd done that first time, and it pushed him upward at a dizzying rate. He sailed out as the sheer slope dropped away beneath him, and twitched his finger-grips to bank around toward the steep ridge with its blue-white load of snow. But his chakra was depleting at a ridiculous rate, and he quickly switched tactics, to an idea he'd gotten from chakra strings and water walking.

People couldn't walk on air because there weren't enough molecules in any given square inch to support the weight (per square inch) of a human body balanced on a foot, or so Dog had told him. But Naruto wasn't planning on stepping on it. He mentally cast out his chakra to net the air—he only had to know approximately where the molecules were—and pulled. He did it over and over, in quick succession, and the result was a hazy blue blur that sent him rocketing through the air like he'd been shot out of a cannon.

It was difficult focusing on his slingshot technique with his chakra, while controlling the kite with his fingers and gripping the charges in his teeth. The cold wind whistled past, making tears leak out of his eyes, and the vast white ridge loomed ever closer with pulse-quickening speed. He knew a moment of panic as he realized he couldn't un-strap his arms to handle the Salamanders, but then inspiration struck. Agh, this is going to hurt. Between clenched jaws—after performing each half of the hand seals with his arms strapped in—he mumbled, "Katon: Kiribi no Jutsu."

With a burst of flame that licked out between his teeth, the fuses ignited, throwing sparks into his face. He reflexively let them go, recoiling, and they dropped through the clear air, disappearing with innocuous thumps into the bright snow.

Realizing what was about to happen, he almost dove after them, but it was too late, and he couldn't take it back now. Still he hovered, torn between wanting to prevent the coming disaster, and knowing that if he tried, he would get himself blow to smithereens. The ridge was so quiet. Too late, kit, rumbled his deep voice in warning. Naruto hastily wheeled away, a slightly hysterical countdown going in his head. Four… Three… Two…

The shockwave caught his kite and sent him flipping through the air, and the sound deafened him shortly after. A roaring, screaming inferno briefly engulfed the ridge, and somewhere in the back of his mind, as rockets and sparks whistled past him, Naruto mourned that it wasn't nighttime—it surely would have been a magnificent display.

Like a slowly waking beast, the mountainside sluggishly cracked, and then much further down it buckled. Then with startling abruptness, the whole ridge collapsed. With an unearthly roar, and a rumbling that even Naruto could feel, the mass of snow and ice thundered down the slope, picking up speed with horrifying alacrity.

He flew ahead of it, buffeted by the ripping gusts of displaced snow and air, and tried to spot his teammates. They were there—just ahead of the Iwa nin, but as Naruto tried to gauge where the avalanche would strike the route, his blood ran cold. They won't make it.

He was going to have to catch them. Pulse pounding in his head, he rocketed toward their fleeing backs. The avalanche was biting at his heels—soon it would overtake them all—and in the next heartbeat he was nearly on top of them. At the very last second, he switched gears. He cast his chakra net to snag his teammates while rolling the air beneath his kite in a burst of heat, and it was like splitting his mind in two. It was almost too much—they were heavy, and he was dangerously low on chakra. But he poured the last of it on, wrenching them off the ground and shooting upward just as the avalanche crashed down.

The snow and ice in the air made it impossible to see where he was going, and he sliced through the billowing clouds with increasingly spotty vision. He was going down—he knew it instinctively. But he was too tired to care. With a last grunt of effort, he flung his three teammates as far as he could, hoping they'd land clear of the devastation. And then he fell.

He was out before he ever hit.

Ooo

"…not saying that—all I'm saying is that it's not normal…"

Just once—just one time—he really wanted to stay awake all the way through a fight. That would be nice. He wearily sat up, pushing away the mounds of blankets that were covering him, and took a moment to let chill, fresh air wash over him.

"Agh, he's doing it again," someone nearby muttered. It sounded like Red.

"What a weird kid he is." That had definitely been Jiraiya. "Just make sure to pull the blankets over him again when he lays back down."

Naruto snapped his eyes open to glare at his comrades, but found they weren't even looking at him. Slightly disappointed, he took the opportunity to take in his surroundings instead. It was hard to see in the dim light, but he saw that they were in a round little building, built out of massive, roughhewn stones that he could tell had been mortared together in the same shape they'd first been picked up, lichen and all. The low ceiling was made of wooden slats and logs that angled upward toward a rough hole in the center. His teammates were huddled around a little fire they'd built in the sturdy fire-pit in the floor, and its smoke was twisting up through the hole. It was dark and cozy inside, but the leather flap that passed for a door was blowing in and out, and he could see that outside was totally white. He frowned. Last he remembered, they didn't have a cabin. And they hadn't possessed firs or copper pots or woven ox-wool rugs, either.

"Where the hell are we?" he spoke up, and everyone jumped.

"He's never done that before…" Red said in a wary tone, pausing the sharpening of one of his big knives.

Jiraiya clambered to his feet and crossed the fire to lean down and snap his fingers in front of Naruto's face. Naruto promptly smacked them away with a scowl. "What are you doing?"

"Oh my gosh, Naruto!" Hana cried, jumping to her feet. "You're awake!"

Naruto struggled mightily to keep the scowl on his face as she buried him in a hug. "What part of 'where the hell are we' made you guys think I was asleep?"

"You keep doing all kinds of weird stuff, man," Red told him. "Sittin' up, walkin' around, talking to yourself—you've been saying some crazy shit—"

"Naruto," Jiraiya interrupted, crouching next to him. "You've been unconscious for almost three days."

Naruto blinked. Three hours, he might have been able to wrap his head around. But three days? He squinted at them. "You're lying."

"Go look outside, if you don't believe us, kid," Jiraiya said with a shrug. Naruto jumped up to do just that, padding across the wool rugs in nothing but his boxers and a t-shirt to peek out the door flap.

A blast of snow slapped him in the face, and he could see just enough to recognize a crisp line of rock, and empty air beyond it. Nearby, along the spine of the ridge, there were other cairn-like structures with wisps of cook-smoke rising above them, and lines of light around their doors. If he hadn't known any better, he would have identified them as part of the wind-blasted ridge.

Well… it certainly looked like they were surrounded by mountains, and it certainly seemed like they were much higher in elevation than they had been.

He ducked back inside, beginning to shiver, and Hana pitched a thick blanket at his head. He wrapped up in it gratefully, and stared at his teammates. His mind flashed through his last minutes of consciousness, and he could hardly believe they were all standing there. "So I guess we made it."

"Thanks to you," Red admitted with a grudging smile. "They would've been hauling us out of there in chum-buckets if you hadn't swooped in at the last second."

Hana made a disgusted sound at the redhead's choice of metaphor.

Red ignored her. "You might want to try aiming before you throw people next time, though," he informed Naruto with a grimace.

"You should just be grateful I caught you guys at all—I barely had any chakra left," Naruto told him honestly.

"It never occurred to you to not try to pick up three people while already flying through the air?"

Naruto laughed. "Don't be stupid! Like I'd just let you all get buried."

Red shook his head. "You need to work on your sense of self-preservation, man."

"Also, we shall never speak of this again," Hana said. "I don't like being saved by people half my age."

"I am not half—" Naruto began hotly, before remembering something and turning to Jiraiya with an expression of glee. "Sensei, I beat you!"

The shaggy-haired Sannin, who had been watching the entire exchange with a thoughtful look on his face, blinked in confusion. "Eh?"

"I took out more enemies than you!"

"Yeah? How do you figure?"

"Well," Naruto began with exaggerated consideration. "There was this avalanche…"

"A plan engineered by myself."

"I supplied the kite, the flying technique, the execution, and the getaway. You supplied the 'boom!'"

"Hey, you're just lucky they were all so ridiculously inept!" Jiraiya retorted, a vessel throbbing in his forehead as he tried to staunch the flow of his bleeding pride.

"What—"

"That means they sucked! They were a throwaway band that was lumped together on short notice. You wouldn't have stood a chance against a real force."

"Remind me again why they were chasing us in the first place, sensei!"

Jiraiya clicked his mouth shut, before responding, "I don't know; probably because they could tell you wouldn't put up much of a fight, ya midget!"

"Well you're one of the Legendary Sannin—you're the one who looks bad!"

"Why you little punk—!"

"Okay, okay," interrupted Hana. "So you both did many cool things. Now chill out, all right? Naruto, you should eat something—chakra exhaustion on an empty stomach, especially in weather like this, can get you killed."

Naruto obediently plunked down by the fire and filled a bowl with whatever savory concoction was boiling in the pot, and the other three crowded in next to him.

After a little while, Jiraiya leaned over and ruffled his hair. "I never said this, gaki," he murmured, "but it's good to have you back."

Naruto grinned back at the big shinobi. "Never said what?"

"Good man."

They all sat for a time in contented silence, eating warm food in the warm hut and listening to the snow howl outside. Then, at a little prompting from Naruto, the other three began to talk about what had happened since he'd checked out from the waking world.

Apparently, after the snow and ice had settled and the other three had peeled themselves off of the rocks Naruto had inadvertently chucked them at, they'd set out across the surface of the avalanche to find him. To his delight, they said they never would have been able to spot him if it weren't for the bright orange of his mangled kite sticking out of the snow. They had to dig him out from under more than five feet of the heavy packed stuff, and by then he'd come down with hypothermia.

"We brought your kite back," Jiraiya said awkwardly, pointing at the corner where the poor, brave contraption huddled in a pile. "It's a little the worse for wear…"

"It's okay," Naruto said, waving a hand and shocking them all. "I've got a lot of improvements to make, anyway."

Giving him strange looks, the three continued the story. They had pulled out as many of the Iwa nin as they could, working until the sun began to set and the temperature dropped dangerously with it. Placing mild memory seals on them all, Jiraiya had sent them packing back down the mountain toward Koketsu. And then it had been a mad rush up through the pass as the weather turned nasty, with late summer storms blowing up from the plains and turning to freezing rain as the clouds hit elevation.

The next two days had been like that, as they descended through a valley full of old-growth firs—totally frozen solid from the rain, and so loaded down that several nearly fell right on top of their team—and then up through the second pass. The last day—today—had actually been crisp and clear, and they got a chance to see the magnificent peaks of the Tora no Shikon in all their glory, cloaked in blue and white, with the brilliant blush of red and gold in the late summer slopes. It had been enjoyable, they said, up until they were attacked by a pair of elephant-sized tigers. But eventually they'd made it here, to the third pass, and the whiteout had swept in just a few hours earlier.

"And I had to carry you like a sack of potatoes for the whole—damn—trip," Jiraiya finished, trying to squeeze a last few drops of his shrunken skin of sake.

Naruto slumped sadly. "I missed all the fun."

Hana and Red let their jaws drop, while Jiraiya threw his hands up in the air. "Haven't you been listening, kid?! I'd rather dance naked through the nine circles of hell than go through that again!"

All three kids recoiled in horror at the mental image, and Naruto punctuated it by pulling at his hair and howling, "Gods, erase it from my brain! Erase it!"

"I'd rather dance naked through the nine circles of hell than hear you say that again, Jiraiya-sama," Hana quipped. Then she seemed to realize the repercussions of what she'd said as both Red and Jiraiya considered this thoughtfully. Naruto, feeling a need to cover for himself, shouted, "Gross!"

"Anyway," Hana said hastily. "We're waiting to see if this storm carries over to tomorrow; hopefully if the weather cooperates, we'll be in Iwa in two days."

"By the way, kid," Jiraiya said, helping himself to seconds from the cook-pot. "I'm gonna need you to compensate me for the Salamanders you used."

"Like HELL, you goddam crazy old—!" Naruto exploded, well on his way to working up a good froth. Then he reconsidered. "Actually… no, it was worth it."

"Glad you thought so," Red muttered, grimacing at a memory.

"There is one more thing," Jiraiya added, his tone growing deadly serious. They all went still, waiting anxiously. "The memory seals I used are decent, but there's still a chance something might slip through. I don't think they got a good look at your hitai-ate, but there is a bigger problem." He glanced at Naruto. "I didn't realize it at the time, but you spent half of that fight without your disguise, kid."

Naruto felt as if someone had dropped a bucket of ice on him. Jiraiya was right. He even remembered when it had happened—he'd transformed into that clump of snow, and then when he released the henge, he'd forgotten to switch back again. "Is that… bad?"

The big shinobi snorted. "Bad? 'Bad' barely begins to cover it."

"But… I don't get it. I know we're trying to keep my age a secret and stuff, and you don't want people to know that I left Konoha, but…"

"Kid, just believe me when I tell you, if word of this travels—if they spread stories about a kid who looks like you, doing the things you were doing… There's no eloquent way to put it. We're fucked."

Suddenly, Naruto was not looking forward to arriving at their destination.

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A/N: Thanks for the feedback last chapter, lovely people! So I hope you enjoyed the battle! It was a btch trying to find creative ways to keep writing snow, ice, and rocks, lemme tell ya. Hopefully there aren't too many instances of repeat words . Anyway, for those who are impatiently anticipating Naruto getting home and starting school with the rest of the cast, don't worry--after the end of this bit with Iwa, Naruto will be home again, and things will be... different. Life is going to get hard for our hero very quickly, I am sad to say. But in the meantime, some aaaawesome shit is about to go down, bwahahaa. Okay, just for convenience's sake, here's a list of the new jutsu used in this chapter (and their likely ridiculous translations):

Fuuton: Wariki no Jutsu - "Split Firewood"

Katon: Kiribi no Jutsu - "Flint Sparks"

Jousuiki no Jutsu - "Water Filter"

Kuchiyose no Jutsu: Shitagama - "Toad's Tongue"

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Next Chapter: Iwa! The Tsuchikage! And the Chuunin Exams?