"What is your purpose for attacking us here?" Naruto called out, with a pant. Kakuzu took a step toward him, and his eyes narrowing, Naruto lowered himself into a defensive stance before continuing.
"You're an intelligent one, aren't you?" said Kakuzu, not sounding even the slightest bit winded. "At least, more so than the last jinchūriki we captured."
...
Naruto froze. As if an eraser had wiped across the chalkboard of his mind, everything went blank.
From a distance, he heard Mayu speak up, her voice tight with anxiety. "'Captured'? What do you mean?"
Kakuzu opened his mouth as if to answer – and then suddenly, he stumbled. A look of fleeting surprise flashed across his face.
"What's this...?" Kakuzu held a hand up to his head, as if holding himself steady. A shadow of a bird's wing flashed across his face, and as he looked around at the birds, understanding filled his expression. "Ah...the birds."
"My birds have poison on their beaks," Mayu said shakily. "And once a sufficient amount reaches your heart, it'll stiffen the heart muscle until it becomes so hard, it completely stops pumping blood, rendering it useless."
"I see," said Kakuzu. His hand dropped to his side. He looked at Mayu, his strange eyes glinting. "How fortunate for me, then, that I have multiple."
Before Mayu could react, Kakuzu exploded forward. He ignored Naruto, and as if in slow motion, Naruto blankly watched Kakuzu go straight past him. His eyes trailed from the moving ninja to, just ahead, the target – a pale, shaking form with widened eyes.
Where have I seen this before?
The nostalgia of the scene, as if clubbing Naruto in the head, brought him back into his senses.
"Mayu!" Naruto cried out. With a painful crackle, lightning chakra swept through his entire body, and he flung himself forward.
Moving faster than he could ever remember moving before, Naruto got in front of Mayu – but before he could do anything else, Kakuzu's kick connected with his chest, making a terrible crushing sound. The force behind it was powerful enough to send the two of them flying into the air before careening into the muddy ground.
With the wind knocked right out of him and his ribs screaming at him – he was fairly certain they were at the very least fractured, if not broken – it was all Naruto could manage to land on his two feet. To his relief, he heard Mayu land on her feet as well; with Naruto having taken most of the impact, it seemed that she was unharmed.
He felt something warm trickle down his chin, and when he raised a hand to wipe it off, it came away red.
Calmly, Kakuzu lowered his leg and looked straight at him. Panting, and with his teeth gritted, Naruto regarded the ninja.
The way Kakuzu seemed to always be one step ahead of him and the way Naruto's attacks seemed to be a mere hindrance, rather than an actual threat...it was almost like fighting Kakashi. But in this case, a Kakashi who did not care at all for his well-being.
One thing was for sure – Kakuzu was too strong for him.
Naruto wiped away another trickle of blood from his mouth.
What should I do?
Clearly, fighting Kakuzu one-on-one the way he was now would only get both him and Mayu killed. Even fighting two-on-one was also out of the question; Mayu was a long-range support ninja, and one of her most offensive weapons – the flock of blue birds – seemed to have no real effect on Kakuzu. Their escape strategy had failed them, and their attempts at reasoning or bargaining with the man had gone nowhere. Worst of all, Kakuzu had talked about jinchūriki as if he'd fought with one personally before – and as if he knew about what Naruto was.
However, that didn't matter, at the moment. What mattered was that Naruto was going to be dead very soon if he couldn't figure out how to take on Kakuzu.
But how? Kakuzu was stronger and faster than him. Naruto couldn't keep using his lightning chakra forever to dodge him, and he'd yet to even show his hand at jutsu. Kakuzu was completely out of his league...so how could Naruto defeat him? What did he have, that Kakuzu didn't have? That Kakashi didn't have?
Naruto felt a cold bead of sweat drip down his temple. He recalled in his mind the words of a year ago – the words of a monster – "You've got guts, if anything. Very well then. Here is a gift for coming this far!"
His hands balled into fists by his side.
He'd told himself that he was merely putting off talking to the beast because he was so busy, but the truth was...he'd never wanted to use its power. But now – what other choice did he have left?
Letting out a deep breath, Naruto forced himself to relax. Closing his eyes and clearing his mind of everything else, he prepared to set foot once more in the long watery corridors of –
"What?" he heard Kakuzu suddenly spoke up, and his eyes flew back open.
Kakuzu had been silently regarding him – occasionally batting aside the birds that still continued to peck at him – but now, his head was tilted upward, as if talking to someone in the sky. After another long silence, Kakuzu bowed his head.
"Very well, then...as you wish." Kakuzu lowered his eyes to meet Naruto's shocked ones. "I'll be back eventually. Prepare yourself."
And then without another word, he disappeared.
...
The ship's departure from the dock had been stalled for some time for an unknown reason, but finally, when both the sky and the ocean had become a deep inky black, it set off again. The lights from the cabins cast a reflective yellow glow across the sea, making it an easy mark for Kakashi to follow.
Keeping watch from below the stern of the ship, it hadn't taken him much effort to identify the cabin Naruto and the others were in. Naruto must have passed by an uncovered porthole, for Kakashi had immediately noticed the flash of red.
It's not like you to let down your guard, Naruto, even if you're returning from a completed mission, Kakashi chided silently.
As the hours passed, the wind picked up and the lights in the cabins began to flicker off. Kakashi himself was starting to feel it in his shoulders – I'm getting old, aren't I?, he thought amusedly to himself – and he'd been drenched in icy sea water more than once from straying too close to the ship.
Finally, only when Kakashi had narrowly avoided being vomited on by some poor straggler at the deck of the ship, did he decide that it was time to actually get on board.
Projecting a burst of chakra down to his legs, Kakashi shot himself up along the ship's side, landing silently in the shadowy silhouettes of a stack of wooden barrels. Looking around the empty deck, he made sure that the coast was clear. Though even if it weren't, he doubted he'd come across any real trouble – the ship had some hired guards, but they were at best genin-level ninja who could barely tell apart clones from the real thing. No, the hardest part about this would be hiding his presence from Naruto and the others.
However, Naruto's cabin was all the way at the other side of the ship, and it was unlikely that any of them would venture out before dawn – by which time they'd already be at the border of Fire country. The best course of action, he decided, would be for him to simply sit tight where he was, and then get off the ship before it docked at port.
Suddenly, hearing footsteps, Kakashi shrunk further into the shadows – but it was just a stumbling, pale-faced cabin boy simultaneously swearing and hacking up what looked like the rest of his dinner over the railing. Nevertheless, Kakashi kept his eyes sharp and watched the boy, with a final utterance of a curse word, stumble back down through a hatchway.
Kakashi wrinkled his nose; some of the vomit must have splashed on to the deck, for he could quite clearly smell, along with the distinct odor of stomach acid, that dinner must have involved quite a few potatoes.