18 Chapter 18: Jiraiya

"Then tell me Danzo, who the hell gave you the guts to attack me with troops from Root?"

Izuryu got straight to the point.

Why play mind games and use roundabout words when you could directly address the problem?

Danzo had an indignant expression on his face, the question from Izuryu directly hitting the core.

"Hmph, what do you mean by 'attack'? I merely sent some of my troops in order to fetch the information that you and that boy were carrying. I was worried that you wouldn't be able to bring the information back safely."

'This bastard-'

Izuryu felt a sense of disappointing rage in his heart.

He wanted Danzo to be angry due to his words, not shamelessly avoid them.

Izuryu arched his eyebrows up, he mouthing spouting up words dripping with venom and sarcasm.

"Oh really? Then was the assault by the shinobi merely a 'test' you had prepared for me? Were you worried that I didn't have enough combat experience that I needed help from your dogs? How touching."

Danzo's face went black from embarrassment, yet the bastard not only did NOT get angry but became even MORE shameless.

"So, you actually understand this old man's help? I thought that you would be blaming me for 'attacking' you."

Hiruzen's eyelids twitched. He had never seen his friend being so shameless.

"Now then, jokes aside. Rasengan."

A glowing ball of rotating and pulsing chakra appeared on Izuryu's hand.

Izuryu flashed towards Danzo with the Rasengan, his hand aiming for the man's chest.

Danzo tried dodging. His body quickly moved to dodge the attack, but the speed of his nearly-crippled body was no match for Izuryu's speed.

However, there was someone that was.

Hiruzen, who was older than his glory days, was still very strong in the Kage-tier.

His adamantine staff expanded and collided with Izuryu's Rasengan.

BOOM!

CRASH!

A loud explosion occurred due to the collision.

The resulting shockwave moved through the whole room, blasting the room with an explosion.

The walls cracked and turned into debris different shapes and sizes.

Dust rummaged around the whole room, making it hazy and hard to see anything.

Hiruzen waved his hand, and with his wind chakra; moved the dust away.

The 'room' was heavily destroyed, with barely any traces of its former self.

Hiruzen noticed Danzo in the debris.

The shockwave of the two's collision had launched the man quite a few feet away.

He was lodged within the dust and stones, his body half within the debris.

His bandage had come off to reveal a ghastly cut on his right eye. The bandage had torn off as his wounds that had been healed slowly had ruptured once again, blood flowing from his head.

The man had fainted due to his collision with the wall.

Hiruzen shook his head and sighed. He waved his hand as 2 Anbu flickered inside the room.

"Take him to the hospital." He spoke.

The two Anbu carried Danzo away towards the village hospital.

Another two Anbu appeared inside the room as Hiruzen sent them away to search for builders to repair the room.

***

"You attacked Danzo-sama?!"

Sakumo wore a shocked expression on his face, although it was hidden due to his mask, the shock was evident from the tone of his voice.

"Heh, that bastard dared to 'teach' me about fighting with Root Shinobi so I naturally had to pay him back for it don't I?"

"Sure…?"

Sakumo was confused.

He didn't if needed to be angry at his subordinate for attacking a major figure of the village or be happy that his subordinate stood up for himself.

Sakumo chose the latter, happy that Izuryu didn't wimp out of his anger.

FLASH!

Sakumo waved his sword as a slash of light appeared where he was slashing.

"It seems we have guests. Get ready for an ambush."

Izuryu nodded and unsheathed Muramasa, the blade extending into standard chokuto length.

The pitch-blade shined within the dimly lit forest; its blade ready to taste blood.

Izuryu opened his sharingan. His iris slowly changed into a blood-red color, the pupil surrounded by 3 tomoe.

He looked around and saw 4 chakra signatures.

"12'o clock, 4 o'clock, 1 o'clock, 10 o'clock. Mid-Elite level Jonin."

Izuryu commented.

Sakumo and nodded and flickered towards that direction.

Izuryu bent down.

His feet lodged into the thick branch of the tree he was stepping on.

Crack!

Woosh!

Izuryu launched his body, the sheer force of his leg breaking the branch that he had stood on.

He brought Muramasa straight in front of him as the blade extended to a size of 70 inches.

"Lightning Release: Chidori Katana!"

Lightning chakra enveloped the sword. Faint crackles could be heard every second as the blade let out lightning sparks to the air every moment.

"Lightning Release: Lightning Ray!"

A sharp ray of lighting extended from the blade. The ray cut straight in the direction Izuryu was pointing Muramasa in.

He swung the sword towards the nearest shinobi.

The lightning sword ray cut through all of its obstacles, creating a short but deadly cut straight through the air.

The enemy shinobi jumped up and revealed his disguise.

He was wearing the standard uniform of a one-sleeved red outfit, a lapel at the side with a brown flak jacket.

He had the Iwagakure logo on his forehead protector.

"Earth Release: Rapid Stone Bullets!"

Hundreds of stone bullets were launched from the shinobi's mouth towards Izuryu's direction, creating a spray where stone bullets were moving towards Izuryu from all sides.

Izuryu smirked under his mask.

"Fire Release: Stone Melting Flame!"

A bright red flame burst out from Izuryu mouth in short bursts, creating tens of red fireballs.

The stones that came in contact with the red fireballs quickly melted into lava and fell to the ground.

The stones that melted created an opening for Izuryu.

"Chidori: Senbon!"

Hundreds of lightning infused needles were launched at the Iwa shinobi.

The Iwa shinobi was between a rock and a hard place. Ironic.

He was midair so he didn't have any earth to block Izuryu's senbon, the only moves he could use were techniques that would spray earth bullets at Izuryu. But after seeing that Izuryu had a technique that would melt his rocks, the Iwa shinobi didn't know what to do.

"Earth Release: Added-Weight Rock Jutsu!"

The shinobi felt his body become extremely heavy and fall to the ground. His face beamed with delight at the fact that he would have earth to his disposal.

He reached the ground and immediately performed a jutsu.

"Earth Style: Fighting Blade Rod."

Several columns of humongous sizes emerged from the ground, creating a maze of various rock pillars.

However, the man didn't attack.

'I need to escape!'

He immediately moved from within the rock maze, running as fast as could towards the base in Kusagakure.

He thought that the rocks would help him as their size would made it very hard for Izuryu to find him.

Yet it was his mistake to think that. After all, the man didn't know that Izuryu had a sharingan, a three tomoe one to boot.

As such, Izuryu quickly saw a human shaped chakra signature run through the rock maze.

"Lightning Release: Lightning Ray!"

A ray of whitish-blue, extremely condensed lighting moved towards the moving figure and within a split-second and arrived in front of him.

Stab.

The blade stabbed right at the figure's chest.

The shinobi stopped moving, but the momentum launched him straight at the direction he was running towards.

As his heart stopped beating, blood stopped flowing, his consciousness started blurring.

As the black of death slowly started taking over him, all he could hear was the soft voice of his wife.

'Come back home safe, okay?'

"It seems I won't be able to hold you in my arms…"

The shinobi finally stopped moving, his dead body lying in the mesh of rocks; slowly bleeding out.

***

"Agh!"

Sakumo stabbed his sword into the last remaining shinobi, his saber creating a slash of light at his swing.

Izuryu flickered next to him and looked at the 3 bodies, each having been killed with a single slash to either the head or torso.

Sakumo stomped lightly on the ground as the earth rose up and buried the bodies.

"It seems the Iwa shinobi know that our troops will be coming."

Izuryu remarked as the two started moving again.

"Indeed. It seems that they've started becoming more aggressive in their attacks."

Sakumo replied to Izuryu.

"Who's the commander shinobi at the Kusagakure base?"

"Jiraiya. He'll stay there for another 2 months, after which he'll return to the village. He'll stay there about 6 months after which he'll be switched to the Rain village base."

"What about Orochimaru?"

"He'll be sent to the Rain base and Tsunade will return to the village."

"I see…"

'I hope there's a chance for me to visit Mount Myoboku…'

Izuryu hadn't forgotten about his Eight Gates. Yet over the span of over 6 months, no matter what he did.

Yet at that moment, his critical thinker came into play.

He divided the gates into 2 separate gates.

The first two gates, Gate of Opening and Gate of Healing, were opened by his own chakra.

Yet the 3rd gate, the Gate of Life couldn't be opened no matter what he did.

'If chakra couldn't open it then what about Natural Energy?'

He wondered if the white spots he had seen within the 'Gate' was Natural Energy. If it wasn't Natural Energy, then perhaps it was the 'weakness' or 'flaw' within the gate.

Following this train of thought, the 1st and 2nd Gates were opened by chakra, the 3rd and 4th gates would be opened with just natural energy, the 5th and 6th with perfect Sage Chakra or Senjutsu Chakra and the 7th and 8th would be opened with Sixth Path Sage chakra.

Initially, he found this ridiculous. Yet, then he remembered the moment when Six Path Sage Mode Naruto healed the Guy who had almost died due to opening the 8th Gates with his Six Path Sage Chakra.

If the raw human body couldn't handle the explosive power of the 8th gate, but the Six Path Sage Chakra could heal the damage done by the 8th gate, then perhaps the secret to opening the 8th gate without dying was having the Six Path Sage Chakra continuously heal your body and limit the damage done to your body until it could handle it without over-exerting the user to death.

(A/N: Nothing in these paragraphs is canon, I made all this up.)

After this 'enlightenment', Izuryu had been searching for Jiraiya, but had found no traces of him.

Now that Izuryu finally knew where Jiraiya was, he was excited to meet him.

If could go to Mount Myoboku and learn Sage Mode, then not only would he be able to open 4 gates, but the mode itself would give him a humongous boost in strength and elevate him to Kage-Level strength.

The man had taught him jutsu when Izuryu was young but back then, Izuryu was too young to have known about Mount Myoboku and Senjutsu.

Along with that, after the situation between the villages had tensed up, Izuryu had barely ever seen Jiraiya again.

***

30 minutes later, the duo of Izuryu and Sakumo finally reached the Kusagakure base.

As soon as they got near it, 4 shinobi appeared in front of him.

"Who are you two? Identify yourselves!"

Sakumo took his mask off and brought out his shinobi badge. Izuryu did the same.

The shinobi authenticated the badges and nodded, letting Izuryu and Sakumo in the base.

The base was just as lively as the one in the Rain Village, but there wasn't any rain that kept falling.

"We'd like to meet Jiraiya."

Sakumo asked the shinobi which 'welcomed' them.

He nodded and started leading them towards Jiraiya's direction.

Or so they had thought…

The post where Jiraiya was supposed to be was empty, a note written next to it.

"On a break~"

"Ehehehe~ These are some beautiful figures~"

Far away, a spike white haired man was using a pair of binoculars to see within the roof of the nearby bath house.

"AAH! PERVERT!"

A female scream sounded as Jiraiya was assaulted with many different types of toiletries.

He fell on the ground and sighed.

Jiraiya jumped and appeared in front of Sakumo and Izuryu.

"Hello! I'm the Toad Sage Jiraiya!"