Chapter 6:
Defense on Most Fronts
The sun crested the ashen ridge behind them, casting long shadows across the shattered battlements and trenches of the eastern front. Naruto stood atop a hastily raised watchtower of scorched timber and chakra-reinforced stone, his jacket fluttering in the morning breeze. His clone, stationed there since the night before, squinted across the desert horizon.
They were coming.
In the far distance, a thunderous rumble echoed across the dunes. Not the rhythmic pounding of marching feet — no — this was deeper. Wilder. The growl of crude engines, sputtering and shrieking like wounded beasts. The green tide returned, and this time, it came not on foot, but in machines!
The first of the alien warbands crested the slope riding rusted monstrosities—vehicles cobbled together from scavenged metal, barbed spikes, screaming horns, and glowing fungal growths that pulsed like diseased hearts. Some had wheels, others were spider-legged walkers, and a few rolled on logs that burst into flames from friction as they spun. Each was crewed by massive green brutes in metal scraps, bellowing in a language of roars and violence.
Naruto could only stare.
"Who builds a car out of a water tank, a slab of stone, and a flaming wheelbarrow?" he asked himself.
The question went unanswered. The ground shook. The wind screamed. The first wave hit the trenches.
Konoha was ready.
The lead vehicle—a roaring, tusked monstrosity spewing black smoke—tore through the outer defensive barrier, iron prongs aimed downward like a battering ram.
Then it stopped. Abruptly. As if time had frozen. Because it had been kicked in the face.
Might Guy dropped from above like a thunderbolt in green spandex, both feet smashing into the nose of the vehicle with a crack loud enough to rival the engine's death knell. The machine crumpled beneath the impact, front axle folding in on itself.
"Behold the power of youth!" Guy bellowed, rebounding backward in a spinning arc.
"Dynamic—entry!" Rock Lee shouted, his voice a split-second behind his master's arrival. He spun from the right flank, sweeping through the now-stalled enemy formation with a perfect Leaf Hurricane, catching two of the brutish aliens mid-charge and tearing them apart as if his legs were fan blades.
The green soldiers poured out of the wreckage like ants, shrieking and armed with jagged cleavers, guns held together with nails and spite, and bizarre fungal cannons that belched spores on impact.
Gai and Lee used them as training dummies, but they turned out to not be of material strong enough to handle their fists and kicks. Thankfully, there were plenty more of the training dummies on their way to the slaughter.
Flanking squads emerged from side trenches, launching coordinated barrages of kunai, explosive tags, and wrathful elements.
Lightning crackled across the trench lines, jumping from metal-bound vehicle and creature in beautiful arcs.
Another surprise came in the form of beast riders.
The aliens had found even more new pets. They were not like the mouths on legs, for they had four legs and looked like a cross between an elephant and a rhinoceros. These ones did not go down easily, tanking explosive tags almost better than the vehicles.
There was an explosion in one of the trenches, but Naruto didn't see what had caused it. He did see a couple dead Chunin who had been caught in the blast and strewn human body parts.
"Don't let them cluster!" he warned. "They burst!"
He wasn't wrong. One of the new mouths on legs—bloated and twitching—charged the battlements like a living grenade. It barely made it halfway up the incline before Asuma sensei threw one of his glowing fist kunai right into its eye.
It exploded instantly, but nobody was within range this time. The only casualty was the charred remains of an already dead tree.
More of the lumbering beasts resembling elephants came, this time with patchworked armor plating and fungal tumors. Shinobi fire teams opened up with coordinated jutsu: torrents of flame from Fire release users and blasts of compressed air melted them and the sands into sludge and glass in a storm of heat and gale force winds. Many continued to fight despite the injuries, but never for long. One of the stomping creatures staggered under the assault—then was lifted into the air by the combined weight of five Shadow Possession Jutsu, courtesy of the Nara clan's finest. They held it long enough for a Hyūga trio to strike it at every part of its exposed flesh, sending it crashing to the sand paralyzed.
The darndest thing happened then. Somebody sealed the steed inside of a scroll.
Naruto marveled at it all. Even while fighting the shinobi of his village were experimenting, testing out different tactics with a strange combination of caution and incaution.
These weren't the half-panicked scrambles of the day Sunagakure fell. This was war. Real, organized war. Every squad knew their place. Every jutsu had a purpose. One of only two, though sometimes both. Kill or test.
And despite the chaos, the casualties were minimal. There were wounds — there were always wounds — but this was different.
They were winning! And overwhelmingly at that.
"Let them come," Naruto yelled over the chaos.
Seeing as he couldn't fight he could at least cheer lead. His war cry inspired similar shouts from his allies.
He formed another shadow clone and dispelled himself, intent on sharing the information on this battle with the other battlefields.
On the southern border, another Naruto clone stood at the lip of a trench with arms crossed, hair damp with seawater and mist.
Before him, the desert stretched like a breathing corpse. But here—on the southernmost border of Wind Country—the line had been drawn. And this time, they dug it themselves. The trench he stood over stretched as far as the eye could see to the east and west.
Lady Mizukage hadn't been joking about her plan; it really did stretch the whole width of the land of wind. It was five meters deep and twice as wide, fortified by earth release and filled to the brim with seawater hauled in by a trench to the sea that had already been filled int. The stench of bleach hung heavy in the morning air.
Above it, rolling across the dunes, was the mist. Chlorine-infused. Controlled by Kirigakure's elite. Pale yellow vapor curled and drifted over the desert in thick, lazy coils—soft and pretty, but deadly to all life.
Then the information arrived.
He formed his favorite hand seal and sent out ten shadow clones to every team leader nearby to share the new information on enemy variants and ally tactics.
The Naruto clone took a deep breath.
So far, the enemy hadn't shown up here, but they were due to arrive any minute. The first sign was a confusing one, as a few minutes later the trench began to… drain?
It was subtle at first. The clone only noticed because the tide mark on the far ridge dipped half an inch in less than a minute.
He blinked. Narrowed his eyes.
Then he heard the gurgle.
Water spiraling somewhere deep beneath the sand.
"Oh no," he muttered. "No no no—"
A loud CRACK echoed across the trench line. Not from above, but below. And then the entire central portion of the trench sank by half a meter.
He turned away from the misty ridge to see Mei Terumī, flanked by a handful of Kiri swordsmen, standing on a lookout. Her face twisted in alarm.
"They're under us!" the Naruto clone shouted. "They've tunneled to the trench!"
A blast of steam jetted from a distant section of the trench. And then another. Tiny black shapes were surfacing in the foam, skittering, clawed. Green and wet.
"Back!" Ao barked. "All units fall back from the center line!"
Before the order could fully travel, the clone formed a hand seal intent on making a clone and doing some rasenganing. But then he himself was forces to step back when he heard multiple people to his left and right all enunciate the same jutsu.
"Lightning Style: Thunder Pulse!"
Electricity arced into the trench. Water exploded into white light. The stench of burned flesh and fungal ash erupted upward as alien shrieks echoed through the waterlogged tunnels.
And then—
BOOM.
The water convulsed. Many more sounds of explosion reached him the the earth beneath his feet. The middle of the trench lifted, then collapsed. Lines of earth in front of him, leading a way from the trench, formed in the sand in the form of depressions. The clone staggered as the shockwave rocked the ridge.
The trench stopped draining. The burrow had caved in. Hopefully sealed.
"Self-detonating troops," he yelled to the sounds of confusion. "They got electrocuted and popped like paper bombs."
He then got another message from the clone with the Konoha troops.
He didn't wait. A quick breath, a trio of hand seals, and a puff of smoke erupted beside him.
A storage toad appeared before him, and it immediately spat out four figures who quickly stood up at attention despite being covered in slime.
"Glad you could join me," the clone said, brushing water from his sleeve. "We've got company beneath our feet."
Hyashi Hyūga was a surprise, but with information on the Mist having a Byakugan user it made sense that he'd want to be here. He was stoic and sharp-eyed as ever, already activating his Byakugan with a grimace. Shibi Aburame, silent and composed, had already uncorked his gourd to unleash the swarm within. Tsume Inuzuka, wild-haired and flanked by a snarling Kuromaru, both baring teeth at the trench like it owed them money.
"We need subterranean scans now," Naruto said. "Start sniffing, seeing, and swarming."
Tsume crouched low, fingers to the dirt.
"Already picking up sulfur and blood."
Torune's insects scattered into the damp sand like living smoke.
Hiashi's pale gaze narrowed.
"They're massing in pockets. Waiting. Still moving." he said. "Only a few small tunnels within my range. And all dug right into the canal. Larger subterranean pockets lie beyond where they are preparing."
"Waiting for the mist to lift?" Naruto guessed.
"Or for us to assume it's over," Hiashi replied.
"Well," said the clone, cracking his knuckles, "We still have ten kilometers between us and the ocean so we still have plenty of room to intercept them. In the meantime could you get a move on and scan areas further along the coast?"
"We already dispatched many of our family from the east, they're scanning the border along the way." Hiashi said, indicating Shibi and Tsume. "We'll head west."
"Ao is already starting from the far east, he wanted to give Itachi and Kisame the heads up they need first if the enemy was approaching them." Naruto told him. "You should stop once you meet with him. He has one of my clones with him."
"Send one with us too." Tsume ordered.
It was done, and he watched the five figures run off.
The Land of Stone had turned the border into a graveyard.
Artificial canyons sliced across the desert floor — narrow, jagged corridors dug by Earth-style masters throughout the night. The layout was brutal in its efficiency: trap zones, kill boxes, and funnel points carved into the earth itself. It wasn't elegant.
It was a slaughterhouse. It was meant to be ugly.
From the high cliffs above, the shinobi of Iwagakure rained death without mercy.
A team of six unleashed a wave of kunai, their steel payloads crashing down like hail. A trio of veterans launched molten projectiles that burst in arcs of lava over fungal targets. One massive Jonin simply shoved a boulder off the edge, watching it bounce twice before pulverizing a swarm of writhing green things in the trench below.
Naruto's clone crouched behind a hastily raised bulwark, eyes narrowed as he monitored the ebb and flow.
It wasn't a battle. It was a flood. And the flood had no fear. Neither did the stones it crashed against.
There was good news and bad news, and they were the same bit of news. This was the undermanned section of the northern front. This was both heartening, as they were still winning despite their low numbers, but also bad news because backup was far away. The teams to the east and west, whose copies of him ought to be informing them of their being needed here by now, would take up to an hour to arrive.
They were all a little too evenly spread out in anticipation of not knowing where the main battles would be. Now they knew.
Wave after wave of the alien horde poured into the trenches, scrambling up blood-slick walls, biting at the air with teeth too wide for their faces. They exploded when pierced. They bled mist when burned. And still they came.
The stone shinobi were winning, handily, but they were tiring.
"Fire teams! Move in! Burn the corpses!" barked a squad captain.
Flamethrower-style Jutsu ignited the trenches. The smell of burning mold and boiling blood carried into the air, thick and choking.
But even as they purged one canyon, fresh shrieks echoed from another. A new swarm skittered over the dunes, slamming into the canyon mouth like floodwater against a levee.
"They don't stop!" someone shouted. "They don't even slow down!"
The Naruto clone exhaled through his nose. Then the clone with Konoha's forces sent him the green light.
He formed a quick seal. Poof.
A storage toad appeared, already bulging at the throat. It opened its mouth and released three familiar figures, all soaked but alert. Hoheto Hyūga, tall and broad-shouldered, her Byakugan already active and scanning the battlefield with calm detachment. Muta Aburame, silent and hooded, a constant drone of insects humming beneath her cloak. Hana Inuzuka, fierce-eyed and flanked by her trio of medical ninken — all three growling low at the scent of blood and mold.
"Glad you're here," the clone said. "We're neck-deep in fungus and just ran out of neck."
Hoheto stepped forward, squinting into the distance.
"They're using deep burrow tactics again," he said. "Splitting under the canyon floor. Trying to rise between waves."
"Then collapse the damn floor," muttered Hana. "Come on, girls."
Muta was already deploying clouds of kikaichū, the bugs fanning out into the canyons like scouts reporting to a silent general.
A captain from Iwa dropped down beside them, panting.
"You coordinating this sector?" he asked.
His team must have been the closest to the west as they were all winded. A scout team that just happened to be closer? Good on them for making double time.
"I'm coordinating the entire northern line. Me and a hundred copies of me," the clone said. "But I guess this sector is mine until more of the backup I called gets here."
The man nodded.
"Then I'll defer to you. What's the call?"
Naruto was a little taken aback. He was more used to relaying other peoples orders and sharing information, not coming up with his own. But between Hiashi and this guy it seemed people were willing to defer to him. Not due to his rank, not due to strength, but simply due to his being the most knowledgeable and composed.
It was a good feeling.
"Stop working so hard." Naruto said. "They're down below, and we're up here. Let gravity do most of the work. Marathon, not sprint. Just keep the pressure from above, scan from within, backups in the rear to relieve the front when they tire out,"
He then thought on it.
"Burn what's left. Then salt the earth."
He turned to the new arrivals.
"You three are going to be the eyes, nose, and nerves of this fight. Plug any hole before it opens, and no matter what, don't let a single one of those bastards dig past this line." He ordered.
"Yes, sir," Hoheto said flatly.
"You're bossier than I remember," Hana muttered with a wink.
The clone grinned.
"Yeah, well. You'd be cranky too if you were stuck on the sidelines while everyone else got to fight."
From the cliffs above, another massive stone rolled.
Another canyon screamed. And still, the enemy surged.
"Shukaku is down!" the Naruto clone shouted, his voice cutting through the storm like a thrown kunai.
Nagato's real body, suspended atop the airborne chimeric bird, reacted instantly. At his command, the Paths ceased theor seals and the great thunderstorm — maintained for nearly a full night — began to fade. The clouds broke like shattered glass in the sky, and sunlight cut through in fractured beams.
Below, the desert was no longer a desert. It was a swamp.
What had once been dunes of blistering sand was now a field of mud, steam, and ruin, soaked through by the relentless artificial rain. Green corpses — shredded, twisted, fungal monstrosities — lay in heaps, many buried halfway in the muck. Their unnatural biology had proven no match for the full wrath of a Tailed Beast paired with apocalyptic weather.
The mountain of sand that was once Shukaku now collapsed under its own weight.
Nagato's flying summon descended in a tight spiral, wind shrieking around them. The collapse was accelerating, the chakra that once bound the One-Tail's form now dissipating in the wake of its berserker battle. Sand fell in sheets.
"There!" the clone pointed.
A lone figure — pale, unmoving — was cradled at the heart of the devastation. Half-buried already, on the verge of vanishing forever beneath his prisoner's dying remnants.
"Gaara!" the clone cried.
With a flick of his fingers, Nagato sent the fat Path down in a blur of motion. The body landed with surgical precision, scooping Gaara from the slough just as the last of Shukaku's body gave way. It placed a hand on the collapsing mount and Naruto saw chakra drain from it into his body, and then into Gaara.
Just like Samehada then? Nifty.
A final rush of sand surged over where he'd been seconds earlier.
Back atop the flying beast, Nagato accepted the unconscious Kazekage into his arms.
"Take us to the western line," he ordered his steed.
The bird summon obeyed, and they flew off to the west with such speed that it took chakra in his feet for Naruto not to fall off.
They reached the western border within an hour, near the still-unmolested edge of the desert. The atmosphere here was starkly different. The dunes still stood tall, the wind swept gently, and the air lacked the fungal taint that hung heavy elsewhere.
Chiyo was already there, awaiting them at a mobile triage tent positioned on elevated stone. Around her, medics worked rapidly — most of them from Konoha — setting up treatment wards.
The flying summon landed and Gaara was lowered carefully onto a padded stone slab where they were all sprayed down with antifungal powder.
Three elite support shinobi arrived almost instantly:
Kō Hyūga, Byakugan already pulsing with pale chakra, scanning for internal trauma and foreign contaminants. Tōu Aburame, his kikaichū gently crawling across Gaara's, Narutos and Nagato's many bodies. They probed for microscopic invaders and ate what they found. Tsume Inuzuka, flanked by her ninken, sniffing the air around them for unnatural scents or fungal decay.
Their collective verdict, a few breathless momets later: no infestation. No lingering corruption. Only chakra exhaustion, mild contusions, and one hell of a dehydration crash in the case of Gaara.
They hooked him up with an IV drip and waited.
Then they waited some more. The morning passed with no sign of enemies approaching. The western front really was that far away from the action. It was nearly noon when Gaara woke; groggy, but lucid.
"What… happened?"
"You won," Chiyo said quietly, placing a hand on his forehead.
His friends eyes turned to him.
The clone grinned, relieved.
"You bought us a whole day, Gaara. You and that raccoon of yours. You held the center line better than anyone." he complimented.
He sat up, wobbling slightly, but his eyes sharpened as they took in the defensive layout, the shifting sands, and the growing influx of shinobi.
"What now?"
Nagato answered.
"Now we shift tactics. The desert is soaked. The spores won't spread easily. It's the perfect battlefield for Lightning-style." he said. "I wanted to wait for the enemy to get above ground before heading out with Kakuzu."
Gaara blinked, clearly not recognizing the man or the name he said.
"Then send in the lightning users of Suna as well, Kage's orders." He said.
Naruto's clone turned toward the staging lines and created a new shadow clone, only to dispel it. He heard his counterparts to the north and south repeat the same orders.
"All Lightning shinobi — frontline. The desert's yours!"
Across the far encampments, the response was nearly immediate. Dozens of Sunagakure shinobi, already equipped and prepared for their moment, poured into the sand like thunderclouds crashing to earth.
Raiton chakra sparked across blades and fingertips. They vanished into the dry dunes towards the wet— finally, their moment had come.
Nagato, meanwhile, raised a hand and offered it to Gaara.
"I am Nagato Uzumaki. The Amekage. I am loaning my forces, and my Akatsuki, to this war effort."
Gaara shook his hand.
"I think I need rest." Gaara admitted. "And food. And water. In reverse order."
"I need the same." Nagato confessed. "How long until you think you'll be recovered?"
Gaara thought on this for a moment. He turned to lady Chiyo.
"At least two days, then the desert will be yours to wield fully again." she said.
"Then we shall buy you two days. And then, this war will be ended." Nagato promised. "Tonight, I'll go back out there and pick up where you left off."
Naruto's clone arrived in a spiral of chakra, landing with a soft tap on the canyon floor. A second pulse of warped space followed as Madara appeared beside him.
The rocky gorge of Kurosuki village echoed with the clatter of pots and the bubbling of oversized cauldrons. Great rectangular tents lined the winding paths, erected along narrow shelves carved into the canyon walls. Dozens of tables had been assembled, and over them hung the scent of turmeric, pepper, and garlic — the unmistakable aroma of Sansho's legendary Curry of Life.
Rain had recently passed through, leaving the stone damp and the air cool. A
Waiting for them were five familiar figures: Neji, arms folded in crisp composure; Tenten, adjusting the straps of a fresh supply satchel; Karashi, wiping his hands on a stained apron; Ranmaru, seated quietly near the edge of a cookfire; and Old Lady Sansho herself, standing proudly at the head of the encampment with her hands on her hips.
"Thank you all for agreeing to help," Naruto said, already smiling. "You have no idea how much this means."
"Oh hush," said Sansho with a wave. "You know I'm always available to feed the hungry. Speaking of which—" she turned her attention to Madara, eyeing the tattered edges of his cloak and the fatigue in his posture "—isn't teleportation jutsu the most taxing kind of ninjutsu?"
Madara studied her for a long moment, as if unsure how seriously to take the question.
"…Among the most taxing, yes," he admitted. "But I have a few more jumps in me before I'll need to rest."
"Who said anything about resting?" Karashi chimed in cheerfully. He plopped a full plate of steaming rice and pitch-black curry into Madara's hands. "One bite of my special blend and you'll have enough chakra to teleport across the continent. Or your money back!"
"Uh, you guys know he's Akatsuki right?" Naruto asked.
"I don't even know what that means, boy." Sansho said. "From what I gathered he's an ally and clearly working himself to the bone!"
Madara looked at the plate. Then looked at them. Then — with visible resignation — he lifted a hand to the side of his mask.
Everyone leaned in just a little.
He peeled the mask upward with exaggerated slowness and then removed it all at once to reveal... another mask underneath.. This one was a tightly fitting black mesh hood, like a ninja ski mask, with soot-darkened eyeholes and a single, wrinkled eyelid partially visible beneath the left side. His right eye looked oddly youthful for a hundred-year-old.
A beat of silence. Then he took a bite.
"Oh! That's a little spicy," he said, chewing slowly.
Then he swallowed and his eyes widened.
"That's a LOT spicy," he choked. "Ohhhhhh, it's in my sinuses—!"
He doubled over, hand fanning his face, as Naruto and the others – save Neji - burst out laughing. Karashi offered him a gourd of water. Madara snatched it, swishing aggressively before swallowing it down in gulps.
"It feels like I'm dying!" he wheezed. "You can't feed this to refugees!"
"We can and we will," Sansho declared with matriarchal authority.
"You're all assholes!" Madara continued to choke. "And that's coming from a guy whose only friends are mass murderers and war criminals!"
Tenten clapped her hands together.
"Speaking of refugees," she said, "you going to bring them out now?"
Naruto nodded.
"Yes, ma'am."
He turned around and formed a quick sequence of hand signs.
A massive storage toad appeared in the middle of the canyon. Its mouth opened wide and out poured hundreds of people — families, elders, genin, toddlers, civilians with blank eyes war veterans with longer stares. Genin helped one another out of the toad's belly. Some wept. Others vomited from motion sickness. All looked grateful for the ground underfoot.
Temari was among the first to recover. She waved frantically at Neji and Tenten, who moved quickly to help guide her group toward the tents and cots set up along the cliffs.
"We've got food ready," Karashi called out. "Hot curry and water for anyone who can hold down solids!"
As they moved to organize the crowd, Naruto rejoined Madara — who was now dumping spoonfuls of sugar into a steaming mug of milk.
"How many more stops do we have?" Madara asked, his voice still hoarse.
Naruto pulled out a scroll and unrolled it.
"Next is the Village Hidden in the Waterfall. Princess Koyuki and the Land of Springs agreed to take a few hundred. Lady Haruna's people can support maybe a hundred each across five different towns in the land of Vegetables. The Fūma Clan's territory in the land of rice can take a few dozen."
Apparently Jiraiya had thrown Naruto's name around when sending messages asking for help relocating refugees. Is this what it meant to call in favors? Because it felt like Jiraiya had just cashed all of his in for him.
Madara sighed.
"Alright. Let's hit Waterfall next."
He threw back the mug of milk, gargled it, and swallowed. He did this two more times until it was gone and shoved it into Karashi's hands. He put his outer mask back on before grasping the Naruto clone by the shoulder.
They both vanished in a swirl of space.