54 Naruto : Chapter 54

Kakashi was now giving Tomoharu massive problems. Before Mikiko and her bees had forced him to divide his attention between two opponents, now he only had to watch out for one. Kakashi was the superior fighter.

That was completely obvious. While Tomoharu kept his distance, he had problems as he had to avoid looking into the sharingan. And Kakashi was a lightning element primary, so his earth jutsus were not as effective as they were against other opponents.

Kakashi led Tomoharu away from the bridge. The main intention of facing off against the Iwa nins had been to prevent damage to the bridge. Though Kakashi was surprised how easy the fight was.

He had thought Tomoharu would be stronger. Kakashi was faster than Tomoharu and had the elemental advantage. Tomoharu was physically stronger, but nothing compared to Gai.

They exchanged jutsus and after five minutes Kakashi knew enough to do a final attack to take out his opponent. He jumped away to prepare.

"Already exhausted, Kakashi?" Tomoharu mocked.

"You say something?" Kakashi asked playing bored.

"Those childish tricks don't work on me, Kakashi. I've been a ninja when you were still in diapers." Tomoharu replied.

Tomoharu went through handseals and Kakashi copied him immediately. Both ended at the same time.

"Earth release: Stone pillars." They called out.

Around both men big pillars of stone appeared. It was exactly what Kakashi had wanted, a chance to hide undetected. He quickly made two shadow clones, equipped one with a chakra seal and let the other jump up to draw attention to himself.

He himself meanwhile used a camouflage jutsu he had copied in the third war from Iwa nins. His clone with the seal went underground.

His first clone was found quickly and involved Tomoharu in a fight with fast ninjutsus and some taijutsu. Meanwhile the clone underground went in position under Tomoharu.

Kakashi himself was by the side, watching and preparing to deliver the last strike with his new raikiri variant if necessary.

Tomoharu first took out the not empowered shadow clone and then the clone from the earth broke out under him and delivered a massive strike with raikiri.

Tomoharu just managed to get away, but was hit all over the chest with a cut from the slash the clone had made.

"Shit." Tomoharu said through gritted teeth.

"You should just have returned to Iwa and not tried to get in the way of my team's mission." Kakashi commented.

"I wouldn't have let the chance to kill his student pass by when you were here and handicapped with protecting a genin team. Who would have thought that one of them was at least high chunin?" Tomoharu commented.

"Your bad that you didn't get all the relevant information." Kakashi's clone said coldly.

"Well, I know I've lost, but in the end I will at least fulfil my duty to Iwa. I will take you with me into death!" He shouted and then formed one handseal that activated a seal array on his body and he jumped at Kakashi's clone.

The kamikaze attack only took two seconds and the clone exploded together with Tomoharu's body.

The real Kakashi stepped out of his hiding place and walked up to the now dead Iwa jonin. Naruto joined him.

"A bit fanatic, wasn't he?" Naruto asked.

"A bit. Too much of a grudge against sensei. He should have known that he wasn't strong enough to take me on his own when I had no problems against both him and Mikiko. He also should have known that I know about the suicide arrays of Iwa from the last war." Kakashi answered.

"He definitely should have. Hm, it looks like the sealing array didn't work the way it should have done. There is a lot of his body left to be analysed by our forensic." Naruto said.

"My clone sabotaged it a bit. As I said, I know that trick. When you push a shitload of chakra into the array the explosion isn't as strong as it should be.

Your Dad came up with the idea to save more of our ninjas. If you are faced with the choice of giving up chakra and perhaps save your life or dying for sure, you will choose the chakra. While we still lost thirty per cent of those that were confronted with that trick, we could save the rest with injuries and most could return to duty after being healed at the hospital.

Tsunade Sama developed a treatment that worked faster than the normal method until then. The time you had to stay at the hospital was reduced from four weeks to one and a half." Kakashi told Naruto.

"Now let's see how Sasuke and Sakura have fared."

"I'll just leave some clones here to discourage any thugs that might get the same idea as the Iwa nins. Meanwhile I will create some seals to make the bridge withstand ninja attacks in the future." Naruto said and made ten shadow clones.

"Good thinking. Let's go." Kakashi said and both ran towards the position where Naruto felt Sasuke and Sakura being.

...

Sasuke had to admit, killing wasn't as easy as he had thought it to be. So far he had killed twenty of the thugs, Sakura had downed ten. It wasn't that defeating them was hard; it was ridiculously easy to be honest.

No normal thug stood a chance against a well-trained genin. And he and Sakura were really well-trained by now. All of Kakashi sensei's training from hell had had impressive effects. He had improved massively since his time at the academy.

And he could take out the thugs with little effort. But the psychological effect was still hard on him. No wonder Naruto had had problems to deal with it after the mission last night that he and Kakashi sensei had done. Naruto and his clones had taken out about seven hundred thugs.

He had cleared one part of the village from the thugs and was working his way over to the next part. He wondered how Naruto and Kakashi were faring on the bridge.

But so far nothing indicating that the Iwa nins had had success with destroying it had happened. Just then another group of seven thugs noticed him and started to attack.

Really, why did they always use the same not working strategy? He took aim and killed three immediately with hits to their jugular veins. It was the easiest point to hit and these thugs were not smart enough or fast enough to protect that point on their bodies.

He saw two more falling to Sakura's kunais. The remaining two he swiftly killed after a short exchange of blows by cutting their jugular veins. It had been like this from the beginning.

So far the thugs hadn't got the idea to take villagers hostage or this would have been so much harder. And from his estimation they should be done with the thugs in the village soon.

Gato should have fifty or so at the base, cleaning up while forty kept the village oppressed. Ten were unaccounted for, most probably off to investigate the situation at the camp. Well, at least this part of the mission he was doing gave him experience.

He knew he couldn't take on a jonin yet. He would probably be able to defeat a normal chunin that didn't have a bloodline limit. During the fight his sharingan had finally activated.

He could predict the movements of the thugs easily and had no problem evading their attacks. He had turned off his sharingan after the first ten minutes though, noticing that it was quite a drain on his reserves and he really didn't need them against normal thugs. He would have to train using the eyes properly later.

"Sasuke, the last ones are running away to the east. Do you want to pursue them?" Sakura shouted from the roof.

"No, let them run. We have done our job for now. Sensei wanted that we kept it to the village." Sasuke answered.

"Okay." Sakura answered.

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