"The most obvious presences are gone now...but to be sure, I'll keep the clones around for as long as I can," he said quietly.
It had been Kaine's idea.
...
While they hadn't exactly announced themselves to Wave country, Naruto and his team hadn't bothered to hide their presence or their identities. That was the point of their hitai-ate after all, to identify them as ninja of their villages. Anyone who dared to trifle with someone wearing the Leaf hitai-ate would be responded to in kind by the full might of Konoha, and Konoha was one of the most powerful hidden villages.
However, Kaine had suggested that Naruto and his team should pretend to leave Wave country, so that her and Tazuna's enemies would relax their guard and underestimate them. Shirakumo had liked the plan, agreeing that eight Leaf nin gathered in one place was too obvious of a confrontation and would likely provoke unwanted attention.
Giving Shirakumo his due respect as the most senior ninja in the vicinity, Naruto had bowed to his suggestion. His shadow clones, disguised as each member of his team, were still in the ship's cabin while he and his real team were to return under cover of darkness to Tazuna's town.
They would have to lie low for a while of course, but the gnawing sense that he was being constantly watched had disappeared, and Naruto suspected their plan had went off without a hitch.
As Naruto continued to run in the deep darkness, his thoughts turned to the clones he'd left behind on the ship. He'd told the others – mostly for Sai's sake – that he would dismiss them as soon as the ship reached Fire country, but it'd been partially a lie.
Everything about the Hokage's 'missive' had seemed fishy to him, and it hadn't been the fish stew. Why had the messenger given the message to Menma, instead of Shirakumo, for whom it had been intended? Normally, messengers were under strict orders to deliver their message to a specific recipient, and depending on the importance of the message, had to go through several stringent procedures to verify the recipient's identity. And even if the message really had been from the Hokage, why were they being told to stay in Wave country, effectively interfering with the affairs of another nation?
At least another dozen questions raged inside his mind, but Naruto suppressed them. One of his clones had left the ship with them at the pit stop, and would make his way back to Konoha. Once there, he'd be able to get a direct explanation from the Hokage about what was going on. Until then, he would obey the Hokage's mandate. And while he didn't like it, he would go along with Kaine's fantasies of freedom and Mayu's illusions of playing hero.
At the moment, Naruto couldn't see his teammates, but he could sense them running beside him, and he felt something hard clench in his stomach. It was dangerous out here in Wave country...and he'd do whatever it took to protect his team.
Whatever it took.
But suddenly – his eyes widened and Naruto came to a screeching stop, as with zero warning – almost as if slamming headfirst into an invisible wall – he felt a horrifyingly familiar aura of cold blood lust surge up out of seemingly nowhere. A cry of alarm rising belatedly to his lips, he immediately fell into a defensive stance. Hearing Rai swear beside him, he felt the others do the same.
"Well, well, what do we have here?" A gloating man's voice rung out from the darkness several meters in front of them. "New heathens to offer up for divine judgment, that's what."
"Shut up and do your job, newbie."
"Stop calling me a newbie!"
...
"You must be Nine Tails."
"What do you want?" came the rumbling reply.
"Lend me your chakra," said Naruto. "Otherwise, we'll both die."
The claws that had been futilely swiping at Naruto from between the bars froze in midair – and then without any warning, the being behind the gates burst into a deep and rasping laugh that, as it resounded across the brackish water, raised the hairs on the back of his neck. "True, if you get killed here, that'd be inconvenient for me...You've got guts, if anything. Very well then. Here is a gift for coming this far!"
...
"Man, I'm sick and tired of this stupid patrol duty," said the man, making a spitting sound.
Naruto felt his eyes narrow; the roiling bloodlust he was exuding was even stronger than Naruto could remember it being just two years ago in Yugakure. It could have felt that way due to the sheer vastness and emptiness of their surroundings, but nevertheless, if it had been a single storm cloud before, it was now a tempest.
"You think I want to be here wasting my time?" replied another man's gravelly voice.
"Who are you? Name - name your purpose!" Naruto heard Mayu speak up bravely beside him, and he realized she must not have recognized the man.
"We're not supposed to let ninja in this area," said the man he had identified as Hidan, ignoring the first part of her question. "So we're going to kill you. Or actually - Kakuzu, how about you stay out of this and let me have some fun?"
Naruto slowly began to reach for the tantō strapped to his back, thankful for the darkness. It seemed that Hidan had not recognized them either...but what could he mean by 'not supposed to?' And who was the other ninja – Hidan had called him Kakuzu – with him?
"From the sounds of their voices, I doubt any of them would even fetch a price at the bounty office," grunted Kakuzu, sounding wholly dissatisfied.
Rai let out a nervous laugh. "Whoa, whoa, ease up man. Let's not be too hasty. Don't you know who we are?"
"Hah?"
"The boss told us to rendezvous with you guys here," Rai continued, his voice remarkably smooth. "Well - he did mean you guys, right?"
This seemed to give Hidan actual pause; for a split second, as if a dog had just caught the scent of something other than its prey, the thick bloodlust wavered.
And in that same instant, Naruto formed the clone seal –
"Kage Bunshin no Jutsu (Shadow Clone Technique)!"
Accompanied by the sounds of exploding smoke, ten physical copies of Naruto solidified into existence, each one bearing a readied tantō in hand.
"Go," he said, and his clones burst forward in the direction where he sensed Hidan and Kakuzu. In response, as they'd practiced, he heard the high-pitched warbling of blue birds as they freed themselves from Mayu's hair and the telltale rustling of paper as Sai drew out his scrolls.
"4 o'clock, Rai!" Mayu cried out, and from Rai's direction came the sound of hissing, and then the whistling sound of deadly metal flying through air, followed up by a string of explosions. Slightly averting his eyes from the brief orange glows of the blasts, Naruto saw on the floor ink black snakes wriggling straight into the resultant smoke.
In theory, it was a simple tactic: using his clones to first surround and herd the enemy, Mayu would use her blue birds to confuse them – and in the case where they didn't have any visual information on their targets, to gain intel on their whereabouts. Rai would follow-up with exploding tags to further confuse them and in the resultant disorder, Sai would bind them with his ink snakes. Then – in theory – Naruto and Rai could go in and finish off whoever was left.
He blinked, processing the newly-gained memory of one of his clones who had just been destroyed; in the fleeting glimpse the clone had gotten from the light of the exploding tags, neither Hidan nor the other man seemed particularly perturbed by the commotion they had just set off. However, Naruto had never expected it to.
"Now!" Naruto said. As the others disappeared using the shunshin, he dashed toward the cloud of smoke with his tantō raised in his hand. In the passing split seconds as he approached its center, his remaining clones began to leap out of the smoke, their tantō at the ready. Naruto's brow furrowed as he urged a current of lightning chakra – now almost as second nature to him as his wind chakra had been – to run through his body – and then simultaneously, he and his clones thrust their tantō into the boggy ground below.
Blue and pure white sparks lit up the watery surface, as with a crackling sound, the earth broke into pieces, consuming anything still remaining on its surface. Naruto's clones exploded in sequential clouds of smoke – but Naruto himself had long since flashed away.
The night clouds had momentarily drawn back, allowing through a few stray rays of moonlight to light his way. Touching back down and running as fast as he could in the direction they'd been headed, Naruto soon caught up to the rest of his team. With chakra powering their feet, they were running in spearhead formation with Mayu at its head.
"How much of a lead do we have?" Rai hissed, as Naruto quietly drew beside him.
Naruto drew another tantō from his back. "Not much," he said shortly. "The moon's back out, and it'll be hard to lose them in open space. Where are we headed?"
"My birds tell me there's a forest about three kilometers ahead of here," said Mayu, casting an anxious eye back. Lifting his head, Naruto looked straight forward – but even with some of his vision restored, most of the horizon was still a haze of dark outlines and blackness. "But...why are they even chasing us?"
"I'm not sure," Naruto admitted. Hidan hadn't seemed to have recognized them even after their exchange, so it couldn't be some twisted form of vengeance. And it didn't seem to be out of malicious boredom either – he and his partner had some sort of ulterior motive in mind.
"Maybe they've given up," said Rai in a hopeful tone. But even before he'd finished talking, all four of them stiffened as a voice howled from behind them –
"And where the hell do you think you're going?!"
They fell silent, straining their ears as if they would be able to hear the approaching footsteps of their pursuers. The wind was blowing in their faces, and Naruto thought grimly of how it must be carrying their scents back.
"We'll be killed if we only run like this," said Sai matter-of-factly, sounding as serious as Naruto had ever heard him.
"And killed if we fight them head-on," Rai muttered. "We need another diversion – a better one. Until we can reach the forest."
"I - I can try staving them off with my birds," said Mayu.
"No," said Rai immediately in a brusque voice. "They'd break you as soon as they were upon you. Mayu, that's the guy who took on Kakashi-sensei back in Yugakure and survived...and this time, he's got a buddy with him."
Mayu's control over her blue birds worked best when she was physically near them; while they could instantaneously process information over a distance of up to five kilometers, actually channeling her genjutsu through them was only possible when she was within a radius of a hundred feet of them.
The others had all turned to Naruto for his orders. As his thoughts raced over their options, he felt his pulse rate begin to pick up.
If they continued to simply flee toward the forest, Hidan and Kakuzu would catch up before then. But at the same time, Naruto couldn't ask any one of them to stay behind in order to distract the two to make time for the others – that would essentially be condemning them to death. But what other choices were left to him then? Should they try fighting head-on with Hidan and his partner, despite not knowing the extent of their combative abilities?
Naruto glanced at Mayu and Rai's pale but determined faces, and felt his throat go dry.
"Well, Naruto?" Rai prompted him.
"This is what we're going to do," he said at last.