53 Naruto : Chapter 53

Inside the house Naruto was waiting for the report of his second, disguised shadow clone. When it dispelled when the Iwa team left, he turned to his team-mates and sensei.

"Well, they have decided that trying to wear down the seals won't do them any good and that it would be suicide to try and take us out after spending that much chakra on taking out the lightning seals.

They intend to inform the Tsuchikage about Konoha having an Uzumaki skilled with seals in the ranks and about a new assassination expert, though they are not sure if it is one of us or someone else.

The problem is they want to destroy the bridge before they go. And I can't make enough seals in time to protect the bridge." Naruto said grumbling, annoyed that he hadn't taken that possibility into account earlier on.

"So that's their last plan to get us out in the open. Our mission is to protect Tazuna until the bridge is finished. If he needs to start from scratch again, even if we take out Gato, that will cost us too much time.

We will have to fight then. Sasuke, Sakura, have you loaded the chakra storage seals like I told you?" Kakashi asked looking at both of them questioningly.

Both nodded.

"Good. Sakura, you will prepare for being Sasuke's backup when he takes out as many thugs in the village as he can. I want you to get rid of them. Try conserving chakra if you can.

No normal thug will be able to get through the seals here so Tazuna and his family are safe as long as they stay here. Sasuke, do you think you can take them out without me or Naruto backing you up? It will be your first kills." Kakashi asked.

"I can do it, sensei." Sasuke said confidently, silently pleased that his sensei would entrust him such a mission with only Sakura as backup.

While he would have preferred to test his strength against ninjas he had realised in their team training that he was a good distance away from being on the same level as Naruto and Kakashi.

Knowing that Naruto was basically a jonin just without the experience required to get that rank was irking him to no end, but instead of complaining he would simply train as hard as he could and close the gap over time.

One day he would be as strong as Naruto and after that Itachi would be the next one he took on. For now Naruto made a good levelling board to see how far he still had to go.

"Good. Don't hesitate. The thugs won't be a problem if you get them in smaller numbers, but be careful if you have more than ten at once. Sakura, I want you to aim to kill with thrown weapons.

That should be the best way for you to help at the moment. Without me or Naruto being there in an emergency I want you to wait with close combat with bigger groups if you can avoid it." Kakashi declared sternly.

"Understood, sensei." Sakura said.

Naruto pulled up a mask over his lower face to completely disguise his most memorable features.

"Are you trying to copy sensei now, Naruto?" Sakura asked.

"No, I just can be identified too easily from the whisker marks on my face. We want to prevent Iwa getting too much information on me too early on.

That they know that I'm an Uzumaki and skilled in fuinjutsu is already too much to know about me, but that couldn't be prevented. They don't need to get a good picture for their bingo books right now.

I don't know if we can take them out or if they will escape, but the fight at the bridge if we want to prevent it from being destroyed will be hard. The less they know the better it will be." Naruto informed the others.

"Why wouldn't you want to be known out there? It will give you more respect." Sasuke asked confused.

"It is too early. I need more mission experience. If Iwa sees me as a threat too early on, it wouldn't do me any good. I have the skills, but not the experience to take on a strong fighter. As long as they underestimate me, I can get easier wins.

Being a good ninja isn't about flashy jutsus, it's about getting the mission done efficiently. You don't want to fulfil a mission but have your team heavily injured or killed.

That looks extremely bad in your record. And that can happen if you are seen as too big a threat to other villages. Ask Kakashi sensei, he went through that." Naruto replied neutrally already going into mission mode.

"It's true. With how early I graduated and who my father was, I was a popular target for enemies. I intentionally got a sensei that could make sure the attempts to take me out before I got too strong would fail." Kakashi confirmed.

"So that is the reason you got this team." Sasuke realized.

"Yes. One of them." Kakashi said.

...

Half an hour later on the bridge Kakashi and Naruto were waiting for the Iwa nins. Like they had expected they appeared shortly after they had arrived.

"So threatening to destroy the bridge did get you out of your hideout." Tomoharu said triumphantly.

"It would have been too troublesome to have the bridge builder rebuild the whole bridge." Naruto said.

"With how you talk some could think you are a Nara, boy." Ichikawa said.

"Who knows?" Naruto said shrugging his shoulders.

"I call dips on Kakashi." Mikiko said gleefully.

"Whatever. Ichikawa, do you want the boy? I will see if Mikiko can get rid of Kakashi herself and in case he is too strong for her I will help her." Tomoharu said.

"Sure. It will be great to kill this Konoha brat." Ichikawa said maliciously.

"Don't play, just take him out." Kakashi ordered Naruto.

"Yes, sensei." Naruto answered.

"You really think your little student can kill Ichikawa? No way. You will regret that you met us here on this mission." Mikiko sneered and let her bees out to attack Kakashi.

Naruto looked at Ichikawa. He had already released all his seals and was ready to go at full speed. His opponent was a mainly earth element user, which meant he had to keep his jutsus to mostly lightning.

And he was a taijutsu specialist, which he enhanced with earth chakra. Well, now his work with the lightning element seals would fully pay off.

"You should just give up, boy. There is no way that you can beat me." Ichikawa said.

"I think differently. Let me show you." Naruto said and took out his tanto.

"You will see why my armour is so famous. No kenjutsu user has managed to get through it. Earth armour." He said after flying through a few handseals.

Naruto took off at full speed, shocking the Iwa chunin. He used the Uzumaki style of attack and retreat and secretly, while attacking Ichikawa with a lightning charged tanto he placed some of the lightning seals on his opponent's body. Ichikawa defended against Naruto's tanto attacks, but didn't notice the real danger he was in.

Earth armour had one major disadvantage for the user. He was desensitised against soft contact. It was due to the armour being able to take major physical damage without injuring the user.

But for a seal master like Naruto it was prefect. Once he had placed the seals all over the body he jumped back to get a little more distance.

"See, even with your lightning chakra in the tanto you are not my league." Ichikawa taunted.

"No, you are not my league. Good bye. Activate." Naruto said and made a single handseal.

The lightning storage seals unloaded all at the same time and fried his opponent's system completely. Naruto inspected that his opponent was really dead and then sealed him into a scroll quickly before he ran over to Kakashi's fight.

...

Kakashi had no real problems going up against the two Iwa jonin. None of them had a problematic bloodline limit and he could counter the earth jutsus of Tomoharu without problem. His sharingan was showing him what his opponents were planning and so far he had landed some good blows at Mikiko and one on Tomoharu.

"Hey, sensei, I'm done with my opponent and here to help you." He heard Naruto's voice.

"Already? That was fast." Kakashi commented. "For Haku you needed longer."

"Well, Haku had an ice bloodline limit and we were fighting on top of a lake, he had the advantage there." Naruto stated.

"Wait, you beat Ichikawa in not even three minutes? Impossible." Mikiko shouted.

"What can I say? I'm good." Naruto said cheerily.

"Mikiko, take the boy, I'll take Kakashi. Your insects should be more suited to against him than against Kakashi with his fire jutsus frying your bees." Tomoharu ordered.

"Make sure you kill Kakashi." Mikiko said frowning.

"I will." Tomoharu said.

"Then let's see how you fare against a jonin, little boy." She said and unleashed a cloud of bees.

Naruto went through handseals.

"Water release: water bullets." Naruto exclaimed and shot five quick water bullets from his mouth at his opponent. He got perhaps a third of the bees that were headed his way out of the way, the others while getting wet were able to continue the fight. Mikiko had completely dodged the bullets.

"You will have to come up with more than a few water bullets." Mikiko taunted.

"I did." Naruto said and went through new handseals. "Lightning release: lightning torrent."

From Naruto's hands streams of lightning spread out, using the water all over the area as a conductor for the jutsu. The bees that had survived the original attack now were fried and died.

"Now that the annoying bees are out of the way we can start the real fight." Naruto said and ran at Mikiko and started attacking her with his modified Tides' fist style.

Soon Naruto was sure that like many Aburames in Konoha, Mikiko had neglected to have a strong taijutsu.

Sure, she could use it, but she had relied on her insect based jutsus to keep the opponent on a distance too much. And contrary to the Aburame bugs, the bees couldn't just suck up the chakra in their opponents.

They attacked by stinging and poisoning them. Naruto disabled her muscles and in the end he landed a fatal hit to her chest, hitting her lung with a chakra strike.

...

Hey guys I really need some power stones to Elevate the ranking :)

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