- Three days later -
Gathered around a campfire, Kakashi, Naruto, and Karin eat and chat about the changes of the last three days. Naruto continued to refine his Flying Raijin, Karin continued to work on her elemental training, and Kakashi mixed his training with swordplay and fuinjutsu, just now taking the time to work out his own Flying Raijin formula. Along with the training, Kakashi had made a change: he no longer wore his face mask and had removed it from his uniform entirely.
"I'm still not used to seeing you without the mask, sensei."
Naruto said after finishing his lunch of meat, veggies, and rice.
"Hey! We need to go! Now!"
Jiraiya's sudden shout made them all jump to alertness, and they turned just in time to see him land in front of them.
"The war in Kiri has taken an unexpected turn. The Fourth Mizukage has been personally hunting down rebel bases and has begun preparing to wipe out the rebels. We need to leave. Tsunade has ordered us back, and me, you, and Naruto are to come back and pick up Sasuke before heading to Kiri."
Kakashi nodded, quickly gathering their supplies back into scrolls before they were reverse summoned by Fukasaku back to Konoha.
Rushing past the gate guards, they arrived at the Hokage tower, where Sasuke was already packed and waiting, wearing his new chunin vest.
"Good, take this and leave immediately. Kakashi, you're to provide direct support, as the rebel leader, Mei Terumi, specifically mentioned you in past correspondence with Sensei. Jiraiya, you're mainly there to provide support to Kakashi and help the rebels flee if necessary. Naruto and Sasuke, as newly appointed Chunin, this is your time to observe and help Jiraiya when you can, but don't engage in battles where you're not needed."
Tsunade ordered, nodding when they replied in the affirmative, tossing Jiraiya the mission scroll and ordering them to leave right now.
The team promptly left the office after Kakashi and Naruto said their goodbyes to Karin, as quickly as they had arrived, leaving behind images of them running full speed through the village, then tree-hopping at full speed once outside the gates.
"Once we're close to a port town, we'll need to acquire a ship. Naruto, you'll create shadow clones to row while using your Rasengan to propel us forward."
Kakashi proposed a plan, looking to Jiraiya.
"Not a bad idea, but let me row, Naruto, you focus on getting us there faster."
Jiraiya offered an alternative, and the rest agreed easily, not stopping for a moment as they sped up.
Reaching the port town at the edge of the Land of Noodles, Kakashi paid a reluctant fisherman five times what his rowboat was worth before the team piled in, Jiraiya grabbing the rows just as Naruto put a Rasengan at the back of the boat, the jutsu launching them out of the dock and into the open water.
Kakashi stood at the front of the boat, applying weight so it wouldn't tip as the wind blew his hair back.
The wooden boat groaned, clearly not made for this sort of thing.
"Don't worry about the boat, I got it!"
Kakashi shouted above the wind as he channeled Haki through the bottom of his feet and into the boat, reinforcing it, and the only reason it continued to hold.
Spreading out his senses while keeping the ship imbued with haki, Kakashi felt a large amount of chakra chasing down other strong but weaker signatures. However, two of them were at the Kage level in terms of chakra volume, the weaker one seeming to have just barely gotten to that level.
'Terumi Mei, and…. Zabuza.'
Kakashi was a bit surprised that Zabuza had gotten this far, but he figured the constant battles against real opponents and the pressure had pushed him past his stagnant bottleneck.
"Naruto, we need to speed up, don't worry about destroying the ship!"
"Ok!"
Naruto shouted back, putting his other hand down next to the water as two rasengans now propelled them, the bottom of the boat only barely skimming the water a few seconds at a time.
Jiraiya, in response, had to work even harder to keep the ship on course, weaving through a collection of islands.
Within 25 minutes, the tiny ship reached land, skidding on the ground for about a hundred yards before everyone jumped out, the little wooden boat falling apart without Kakashi's haki holding it together like glue.
Landing on their feet, they didn't miss a beat, running full speed towards the sounds of heavy ground-shattering explosions and blood-curdling screams of the dying.
"You two need to be prepared for what you're about to see; it won't be pretty, war never is."
Kakashi warned his two students.
Sasuke steeled himself, having been no stranger to horrible sights. The combination of seeing all clan members die and being forced to relive all their deaths over and over made Sasuke less squeamish when faced with bloodshed; he only hoped he wouldn't lock up at the sight of the dead.
Naruto took a deep breath, readying himself for some truly gruesome sights, and despite seeing and being involved in death, the idea of this level of death and destruction never sat right with him. War tugged at a part of him that he couldn't quite grasp, a wrong tight feeling in his gut. Naruto retrieved his kunai, wanting nothing more than to end this war with the least amount of death as possible.
"I'm going ahead."
Lightning flickered at the bottom of Kakashi's feet, and he was gone, streaks of lightning following where he passed.
Blurring through the trees, Kakashi summoned his sword into his hand and quickly unsheathed it in a smooth motion, haki and lightning chakra gathering on the edge of the blade, bleeding a soft silver.
The two opposing sides felt a sudden, intense pressure, the weaker ones finding it hard to breathe. The rebels looked to the Fourth Mizukage, thinking he was causing this, but the sudden alertness on the Fourth's face made it apparent that this wasn't him.
A sudden horizontal slash shot out and carved a deep trench, separating the two sides, a silver-haired man landing in front of the rebels, his back to them as he stands just behind the line.
"Mei Terumi. I'm Kakashi Hatake, from Konoha. I'm here to help, but there's something I need to know."
Kakashi glanced over his right shoulder at her.
"Would you prefer if I killed them or knocked them unconscious?"
Zabuza tensed.
"Don't tell me."
He muttered quietly; even Mei and Haku next to him didn't pick up his words.
"If you can knock them out, I'd prefer that. Most on that side are just too afraid to betray Yagura."
Kakashi nodded, looking back to the tense Kiri ninja before calling upon his Conqueror's Haki, the ground beneath him cracking in a spider-web-like pattern as even the strongest jonins in the army fell to their knees, using all their power just to stay awake.
Though admirable, they couldn't hold out for much longer. From weakest to strongest, the remaining jonin fell face-first into the ground, 10,000 knocked out in mere moments.
The rebels shivered with amazement, awe, and no little fear, hushed whispers spreading through the ranks.
A few moments later, the rest of the leaf team caught up and saw the defeated army.
Sasuke, though not wanting to see a bloodied battlefield, wanted to have a fight as well. He could feel his Sharingan getting stronger every day; he was close to three tomoe, and he knew it.
Jiraiya and Naruto, on the other hand, were simply happy that the battle was seemingly ended.
Soft footsteps approached, stepping over and through the unconscious ninja was what appeared to be a young blonde child, but this was a grown man, and the Mizukage.
"I don't know what you did, but that won't work on me."
Yagura's voice was calm, reaching behind him to grab his weapon.
"We could test your theory if you'd like. It wasn't my intention to target you in the first place after all."
Kakashi smiled softly, eager to test out his haki on a tailed beast host.
A red two-tailed chakra cloak enveloped Yagura, the malicious chakra wafting off him in waves as the two tails softly waved behind him.
"You seem confident."
Yagura spun his hook weapon and planted it in the ground, then ran through three quick hand seals. A wave of water 30 meters long sprang up and headed toward Kakashi and the rebels behind him.
Mei quickly melded her chakra, ready to defend her people with a wall made of lava.
"Relax, sensei has it handled."
Naruto told Mei, and was proven right when Kakashi's sword cut straight down the middle of the water and parted it down the middle.
Kakashi's observation warned him of an attack from the left, leaning his head back just in time to avoid the hook weapon that tried to wrap around his neck.
Left and shooting up and grasping the curve of the hook, Kakashi and Yagura stared each other down.
"You hid in your own jutsu, not a bad idea."
"But you still dodged, let's see you dodge this."
The end of Yagura's hook shot pressured water droplets at Kakashi's head.
Kakashi let go of Yagura's weapon, tilting his head from side to side as he dodged the volley of water droplets.
"Similar to the 2nd Mizukage's water gun, I have something like that too."
Kakashi raised his right hand into a shooting motion, lightning gathering quickly at the tip of his index finger.
Yagura quickly quit his attack and drew a circle in the air with his staff, a water mirror conjured in front of him, reflecting the image of another Kakashi just as the attack came, the reflection of Kakashi matching the attack with the same one, the two lightning bullets colliding and violently exploding off one another before the reflection of Kakashi collapsed into water and Kakashi was forced to jump back as a red chakra claw slammed down in his previous position.
Looking up without a hint of surprise, Kakashi saw Kagura coming down, the cloak around him now much deeper, the features of Yagura no longer there.
With a shout, Yagura blew up the ground wherever Kakashi ran with wind pressure alone, unable to catch him.
Getting pissed, Yagura began to gather chakra in front of his mouth, red and white orbs mixing to form a small black ball.
Smiling, Kakashi flooded his blade with advanced Armament(emission) and Conqueror's Haki, his blade humming like a tuning fork as lightning danced off the blade's edge.
"Let's see how you deal with this then, Yagura."
Kakashi ran straight at him, a move that many would consider suicidal.
Narrowing his blank white eyes, Yagura charged on all fours, the tailed beast ball thrumming as he pumped more and more, compressing it to village-destroying levels.
"MOVE! WE ALL HAVE TO MOVE!"
Mei ordered everyone, including the leaf team, made distance quickly.
Driven by instinct, Yagura formed coral over his body, layer after layer as fast as he could, the two now mere feet apart, moving faster than most in the elemental nations could, but in this moment it seemed almost in slow motion to them.
Kakashi's blade cut a lethal arc.
"Divine Departure!"
Haki met tailed-beast bomb and exploded between them, Kakashi's blade carving through the coral armor and into Yagura's chest before he was sent flying past the clearing's edge and into the misty forest, trees falling like dominoes in the path Yagura was flung.
Kakashi looked down, seeing his upper body bare, the explosion having burned the vest and undershirt off his body.
'I'd have felt that much more if it wasn't for my haki.'
Kakashi sighed, having still felt the weight of the point-blank explosion.
In the distance, the Kiri rebels watched on in awe, some tearing up as they began to celebrate their victory.
A loud, anamalistic growl shook the area, and the giant 3-tailed beast appeared in all its glory, shooting two Tailed Beast Balls right away.
Kakashi quickly dodged the area of explosion, eyes widening as he watched the attack move past where he thought they'd land and head for the watching rebels.
"MOVE!"
Kakashi shouted, eyes flashing red and spinning into the mangekyo.
- Chapter End -
Hello everyone, hope you enjoy the chapter.