Operation: Counter Punch

"Today's the day." I sighed as Temari and I ate breakfast across from each other.

"Yeah." she nodded, obviously torn up about the impending betrayal.

I took that worry off her shoulders when I stood up and pulled a set of chakra suppressing manacles out of one of my kitchen drawers. After sitting back down I put the handcuffs on the table between us and slid them over to her.

Temari's countenance fell and she tried to form words several times but failed until she managed to croak, "How?"

"Gaara was the tip off." I explained to her, "Sending an unstable Jinchuriki to an allied village isn't the sign of someone who wants to stay allies. We sent an infiltrator your way once we figured out exactly who he was, and the whole plot was so out in the open we honestly could have sent some Chunin for the verification."

Temari stared at the cuffs as her eyes watered, "So you knew the whole time?"

"You did too." I shrugged as she broke composure completely.

"Don't fight Temari. You and your brothers won't be harmed so long as you come quietly." I informed her.

"Let me… let me get dressed first." she begged and I nodded.

Truth is she could come out of the bedroom swinging her fan and she wouldn't get away from me, something she knew vividly from living with me for a month. Instead of some desperate escape attempt, Temari came out fully clothed and disarmed, putting the cuffs on which I locked.

I got dressed myself and stepped outside with her. A team of ANBU awaited us and I handed her over after verifying all of their identities. The whole mask thing is cool, but it makes ANBU way too easy to mimic.

With that taken care of, I met up with Jiraiya and a second team of ANBU outside of Baki's hotel room. We busted down his door and subdued the man with minimal difficulty beyond dodging a hasty wind blade.

Our third stop to the room across the hall slowed our roll as I knocked on the door and announced us, "Open up, Gaara."

Kankuro opened the door, making things easier as I put the puppeteer down with a quick cross to the chin and handed him over to the ANBU while Gaara walked up cautiously.

"Father, come to betray me like everyone else." Gaara growled as his sand came out from behind and under the furniture in the room.

"Nah." I denied, "So long as you agree to cooperate we won't restrain you, but you will have to remain with your team until the business with Suna is concluded one way or the other today."

"Or…" Gaara paused as his eyes took on that full crazy wideness, "Mother can have all your blood."

I pounced on the kid faster than he'd ever seen anyone ever move and planted an elbow to his solar plexus while Jiraiya chucked sealing tags on all the walls of the room before working a few quick hand signs that sent out a pulse of chakra that disrupted everyone's control briefly, dropping Gaara's sand armor as the old man hit him in the chest with the Five Elements Seal.

Gaara's sand still moved, although much more slowly and uncoordinated as the spirit of his mother attempted to automatically defend him, but a few seals later and the little psycho was down for the count.

"Good work everyone." I grinned at all the clean arrests we made, "Let's get them to the holding location and then kick some real ass."

"You ready for this?" Jairya asked as we traveled to the safehouse we'd be using to hold Team Baki.

"Born ready, and just got bigger and better since." I nodded to him and patted the two large sealing scrolls on my lower back.

Despite being an absolute hack at sealing, I did manage to bull my way through Storage Seals - though the experience drove home just how fucked my chances of ever getting to even a journeyman level in the art are.

After dropping off the prisoners and our ANBU escort, Jiraiya and I bounced to the muster point where the combined might of the Sarutobi and Inuzuka Clans waited with Naruto, Kakashi, and Guy - roughly two hundred from the first clan and just over a hundred and fifty from my own with their accompanying Ninken.

"Form up!" I shouted to the loosely grouped Shinobi as Jiraiya and I landed.

When they formed disciplined ranks I began the brief, "Welcome to Operation: Counter Punch. I am Kiba Inuzuka, the Fifth Hokage. Today you are all under my command. As we speak, the forces of Otogakure and Sunagakure are in the woods outside our walls, waiting for the signal to attack. And we are going to give them a great big surprise."

I felt myself in that moment as an assembly of hundreds of shinobi hung on my words like a fuck mothering god descended from the heavens to put any asshat dumb enough to step to me six feet under.

"The Inuzuka and Sarutobi clans are here to run defense for myself and my teammate Naruto. The two of us will counter attack the enemy forces. Might Guy, Kakashi Hatake, and Jiraiya the Gallant will be on overwatch, looking for the enemy elite. Should I fall, Command transfers to them flowing from Jiraiya, to Kakashi, to Guy. If all four of us fall then the end of Konoha is nigh, run or fight to the death as you will."

I took in a satisfying breath and let it out slowly while looking up at the picturesque clouds in the sky with a big grin, "But let's face it. That isn't going to happen. We were chosen by the gods to win win win till the end of forever, and no one is ever going to change that. So let's dance!"

I stepped into the ranks and stood in front of Naruto who looked about ready to keel over in nerves.

"Come on, dude. Show me your war face!" I shouted at the startled Genin.

"Yaaahhgh!" Naruto shouted.

"Bullshit you didn't convince me. ARRRGGGGHHH!" I screamed in his face, "That's a war face. Now let me see your war face!"

"YAAAAGGGGHHHHH!" Naruto cried out with his full effort.

"You didn't scare me. You'll have to work on it after we get done scraping the blood and guts off our sandals. Now let's show these people why it's just you and me going over the walls!"

Together we formed crosses with our fingers and shouted, "Multi Shadow Clone Jutsu!"

And as the explosion of smoke rose up and away there stood before the assembled Shinobi an army of Narutos and Kibas.

"Now that almost looks scary, but I think it's time to up the intensity, really make people afraid." I declared as I pulled the large sealing scrolls off my back.

"Get a load of this." I grinned as I unfurled them, chucking the scrolls into the air where they formed a double helix that I leapt between.

My hands moved at a speed few could ever hope to achieve, swiping over the seals of the scrolls and providing velocity to the un-sealed puppets that burst into existence from within. They traveled like blurs to my clones who launched their chakra strings to catch them, three each comprising a melee range puppet, a long range puppet, and a stocky defensive puppet each.

My heart beat an upped cadence and sweat shown on my brow by the time I landed, and a thousand Kiba's carried their puppet army praying for war.

"Well, what are you waiting for? Up and over, NO MERCY!" I shouted at the combined forces of Naruto and Kiba clones.

And they went up and over, leaving us with a stunned force of shinobi meant to defend us while we are down to roughly a thousandth to a two thousandth of our maximum chakra. The Multi Shadow Clone Jutsu really puts the absolute unfairness of this world into perspective, as Naruto can safely divide his chakra into two thousand portions with his obscene waste factor and still have more chakra in his system than the average Genin.

Plus he is only a burst from Kurama away from being topped off again.

I myself took a Soldier Pill from a hard case in my Root style tactical vest and popped that sucker down my throat for that sweet burst of chakra, a big jump in my chakra recovery and a literal temporary three day long doubling of my chakra capacity.

That's right, double.

Now that is more due to a synergy between the Inuzuka and Soldier Pills than a normal feature, but I'm not one to call foul when the random crazy power ups are in my favor. Obviously this was put in to make Naruto's preliminary fight all the more precarious, and it did, almost adding a level of gravitas to the fight that ended in a bit of Fartilary.

With the pill jacking my energy up to the point where I can fight for three straight days I almost felt like sending out even more clones, but considering that only a single one of my clones has popped thus far, I could afford to wait and see.

Naruto himself basked in the awe and wonder of the Clan Shinobi, but reacted rather harshly when a number of girls started flirting with him, shouting, 'I won't give you my seed!' and leaping away from them.

"What's wrong with him?" Tsume, my mother asked as she came over with her partner Kuromaru.

Tsume looked like a shorter version of me with lipstick and eyeliner. Absolutely feral features that she passed down to both me and Hana, though Hana chose to pull her wild hair back in a tight pony tail that has grown much larger over the years since she started practicing Hair Jutsu.

Baru immediately started bullying the Haimaru Triplets as despite being five years younger than them, my Ninken was already taller at the shoulder and far more muscled from his own brutal training.

Kuromaru, a large black and white Ninken fully grown at roughly chest height at the shoulder on my five foot four inch tall mother, watched the aggressive play with his single eye. I had a lot of respect for this dog. He taught me most of the Inuzuka Clan Techniques before my mother got fully on board with my training, and even when they were just a Special Jonin pair, him and my mother were able to chase the Preta Path of Pain around like he owed them money. Making him run like a bitch and they would have destroyed him if not for the revived Animal Path summoning him away.

Mountains of respect for that considering only the rare and incredible few who managed to actually defeat any of the Paths.

"Dude is a little jumpy about the ladies these days." I smirked as Naruto pounded his chest to regain his composure.

From up on top of the wall Jiraiya used his spyglass to scan the battles going on below and whistled, "Damn, kids. They're folding like a pack of shuriken chuckers."

This statement jived with the trickle of information I received from the incredibly rare popping of my clones down in the woodland skirmishes. With my defensive puppets able to tank the big area of effect ninjutsu and my offensive puppets being able to trade damage far better than human bodies taking away effective counter attacks from the enemy forces, my clones operated like human meat grinders.

Quite literally in the case of my melee puppets equipped with heavy grinders.

Naruto's clones could wipe the floor with the Sound Shinobi and Suna Genin, as well as pin down the Suna Chunin, leaving my clones to mostly double or triple team Suna's greatly depleted Jonin Corps, many of which aren't even hear as a complete mobilization of the Jonin Corps would have been impossible to hide. They needed to be active in the field along with many of the Chunin and Genin to cover the sneak attack from an 'elite' vanguard.

Should the attack fail the remaining shinobi would retreat back to their village with all the supplies they could raid and hole up for a siege.

Operation: Counter Punch looked like it would easily do just that, but everything changed when the reanimated Kage attacked.