Chapter 9:
Into the Depths
-
The real Naruto trudged across the dead earth, flanked by his team — Lee, Kiba, Chōji, and a Hyūga whose name he still hadn’t bothered to learn. Twenty kilometers of silence, broken only by the crunch of scorched stone underfoot and the occasional hiss of still-smoldering alien corpses.
War machines, twisted and blackened, jutted out of the terrain like forgotten titans. The air reeked of metal, smoke, and something far fouler — the alien stink of a dying invasion.
They approached one of the many tunnel mouths dotting the battlefield like scars. It rose before them like a blister carved into the ground, jagged and unnaturally wide. A pale mist seeped from it, clinging low like breath from a sleeping beast.
“This one leads right into the heart of it,” Naruto said, nodding to the others. “Everyone ready?”
Lee cracked his knuckles.
“I was born ready!”
“Ugh. Of course you were,” Kiba muttered, adjusting his jacket ato cover his nose the stale wind. “Let’s just hope whatever’s down there doesn’t smell worse than up here.”
Chōji said nothing. He reached into a pouch and popped a protein pill into his mouth, chewing solemnly.
Naruto looked to their Hyuuga friend as if to ask if the coast was clear. He nodded wordlessly, his pale eyes already flaring with Byakugan.
They entered single-file, descending into the dark. Kiba dismounted Akamaru even thought the tunnel was more than large enough.
The first corridor sloped gently, its stone walls strangely smooth. The only light came from glowing fungi spaced intermittently along the floor, their bioluminescence casting long shadows behind them. The path was so steep that they had to use chakra in the soles of their feet to keep from slipping down.
Then, without warning, the tunnel dropped away into a vast chamber.
Naruto stepped into the open and drew a sharp breath.
It was massive.
The space could have housed the entire village of Konoha — maybe more. Hundreds of meters overhead, a curved ceiling of dark stone glittered faintly with condensation. All around them, tunnels identical to the one they had entered opened like gaping mouths into the central basin. This had been a staging ground — a subterranean fortress built by the enemy, hidden for who knew how long.
Shinobi were already here. Teams from Konoha, easily four dozen strong, were methodically burning the remains of alien spores and corpses with focused bursts of Fire Style. Their flames lit up the chamber in stuttering pulses. Burn teams moved in circular patterns, sterilizing every crevice. One section was cordoned off where researchers, including Anko Mitarashi, were examining remains.
Naruto spotted Asuma near a cluster of Jonin.
“Asuma!” he called, jogging over.
The bearded Jonin turned, wind-scarred and clearly tired.
“Naruto. You made it.”
“How far in have we pushed?”
“We’ve already cleared this chamber and begun advancing through the next tunnels,” Asuma said. “Minimal resistance. Too minimal. Doesn’t feel right.”
“It’s like they left the front porch open,” said Kurenai.
Naruto nodded.
“Any sign of where they might regroup?”
Shikaku Nara stepped into view from behind Asuma, his fingers pressed thoughtfully to his temple.
“We suspect there are more chambers like this one,” he said, eyes tracing something invisible on the cave wall. “Larger, deeper. A layered formation. Either they're prepping new wave assaults or digging in for a long siege. We’re trying to figure out which.”
Naruto took a breath.
“Then we’re going to map it all. I’ll break those defensive lines before they’re ready.”
He formed a seal.
“Shadow Clone Jutsu!”
Dozens of Narutos exploded into being. Each clone saluted, then rushed down a different tunnel like white blood cells swarming through capillaries. Behind them, various squads surged forward into the tunnels, ready to push deeper into the alien stronghold.
Naruto left two clones behind to assist the research effort.
“Talk to Anko. Ask them everything about their weapons, armor, anything. Then dispel. We’ll sync intel across the front.”
“Got it,” the clones echoed.
The real Naruto turned toward the central tunnel — the largest of them all, positioned dead center like a main artery.
“Lee. Kiba. Chōji. Hyūga — let’s move.”
“Right behind you, Naruto!” Lee said, hopping excitedly on the balls of his feet.
“Don’t get us killed,” Kiba grumbled, though his grin betrayed excitement.
Chōji gave a quiet “Mm,” then followed.
"My name is Ko." Said the Kyuuga.
Ko it is then.
They vanished into the shadows, the echo of their footsteps swallowed by the earth.
They walked for what felt like hours.
The tunnels no longer followed the logic of a warpath — they twisted like veins, layered and interwoven like the inside of an ant colony. They sloped upward and downward without reason, curved in maddening spirals, or flattened into tight chokepoints only to widen again unexpectedly. At times, they had to leap down sheer drops, only to climb back up winding paths that reconnected at odd angles. More than once they passed other shinobi teams, some reporting in, others breaking off to explore new branches.
Naruto pressed his hand to the wall at one junction, feeling the subtle vibration beneath the stone. There were engines at work here — alive things, not just biological but mechanical, humming with foul purpose.
He got updates in flashes — his clones dispelling from the north and south borders with Stone and Mist.
The northern tunnel system mirrored this one: tight, erratic, and dry, like a termite mound carved in haste and rage. But the southern one… the clone’s memories painted a picture of order. Wide burrows sloped smoothly, interspersed with natural water catchments. Cavities shaped like cisterns. Gravity-fed drainage and even basic filtration systems. As if they expected to reach water.
That could only mean planning was put into it. Which meant there were brainy aliens among the brutes. Planners. Commanders. And the fact none of the forces had encountered them yet was concerning.
Finally, the path ended. But not with a wall. It opened. The tunnel gave way to a vast vertical space — and Naruto’s breath caught in his throat.
It made the last staging chamber look like a storage closet.
The walls fell away into an abyss, descending level by level like an inverted tower. Tier after tier of platforms and bridges spiraled downward, the center hollowed out like the gullet of some buried god. Glowing blue growths lit the pit in rings, revealing a world carved in descending chaos. On every level, the enemy teemed — more than Naruto had ever seen.
The other shinobi had already arrived, and the fighting had already begun.
The green-skinned monsters moved in swarms, but their weapons and machines were what truly turned his stomach.
Towering bipedal constructs stomped in half-circles, each limb ending in different weapons — claws, drills, flamethrowers, buzzsaws. One had a belly cannon that churned with fire, belching molten metal. Another rolled on pillbug-like wheels, launching caged beasts into the air like cannonballs. Dozens of smaller machines skittered alongside — crude tanks with jagged teeth for plows, walkers with blades that spun like fans, beetle-shaped bombs that hissed as they rolled toward the edge of the platform.
And creatures. So many creatures.
Grotesque beasts of every shape imaginable — some armored like siege engines, others frothing and twitching with explosive sacs strapped to their backs. One squig leapt the height of three stories just chasing a kunai. Another roared as multiple riders jabbed it forward, steering it into a tunnel mouth like a battering ram.
Naruto's gut twisted.
They’d built an army in the dark.
Behind him and to either side, the rest of the allied forces emerged from the tunnels. One by one, they filtered out onto ledges and platforms, trying to tcatch their bearings and plan what to attack first. The options were plentiful.
Then, from below… a sound.
A chant. No… not a chant. A scream.
"WAAAGH!"
It rose like thunder. It echoed off every wall, vibrating through Naruto’s chest like a drumbeat of madness.
The enemy surged. And the allies leapt to meet them.
Explosions rocked the upper levels. Fire jutsu arced into the darkness, followed by blasts of water and waves of sharpened wind. Lightning carved trenches into metal skin. Claws tore into chakra-infused kunai.
Lee punched his palm.
“Let’s go!”
“Not yet!” Naruto said.
They froze.
“We’re not fighting from the top down,” Naruto said. “Leave that to our allies. We're going straight down to the bottom and fighting our way up.”
He turned to Ko. The silent observer had followed without complaint this whole time. The man’s Byakugan was still active, his eyes scanning the chaos below.
“You,” Naruto said, forming a clone beside him. “I’m leaving a shadow clone with you. You watch. You feed him what you see. Every other clone will get the info.”
The Hyūga nodded curtly, understanding.
He then turned around and jumped straight into the pit.
He fell like a comet. Lee, Kiba, Akamaru and Choji did the same.
As they descended into the bottom-most chamber of the subterranean world, Naruto finally saw it.
The Excavator.
It wasn’t a machine — it was a cathedral of destruction on treads.
Larger than Shukaku. More massive than Gamabunta. A towering amalgamation of steel arms, corkscrew drills, gouging claws, and spiraling teeth. It moved with the grim efficiency of something that had never known hesitation. Like an industrial titan chewing through the earth, devouring bedrock by the ton.
But it wasn’t the only thing feeding.
Stationed in the walls of the chamber were hundred of living mouths burrowing like larvae. They resembled caterpillars, if caterpillars were made of plated muscle, rusted iron, and too many eyes. These biological drills writhed and burrowed at assigned tiers, sucking up broken stone and belching it out as sludge. The half-purified metal and liquefied waste that poured down into a lake of the same substance below.
Small green humanoids, the same ones they’d seen in Suna, swarmed over the byproduct like worker ants, carting the gunk away in twisted metal wheelbarrows or piping it into storage tanks.
It was industrialization without a soul.
Naruto barely landed before the chaos broke loose.
Kiba and Akamaru were the first to strike — twin whirlwinds of chakra and fangs tearing through one of the wall-mounted worm creatures. Chōji followed next, spinning into the fray as a massive human boulder and crushing an entire swath of sludge carts under his weight.
Naruto? He dove straight into the fire.
Two Rasengans spun in his hands, and he aimed directly at the joint of the closest mechanical arm. The impact was devastating — the chakra sphere bored through reinforced steel like it was tin. The entire arm shuddered and cracked before falling in a slow, catastrophic arc toward the muddy basin below.
Naruto went with it. Hell, he fell faster than it and he hit the muck hard.
For a moment, he struggled. The surface was thick — thicker than water but not quite solid — and it took delicate chakra control to find the balance between water walking and wall sticking. His feet sank ankle-deep, but he held fast, even as the fallen arm slammed down nearby and sent a muddy tidal wave washing toward him.
He braced himself, chakra flaring — and held his ground.
Somewhere above, Kiba and Chōji continued wreaking havoc. But Naruto couldn’t spot Lee. Not yet.
Then the real threat revealed itself. Worms.
Not the caterpillar feeders — these were larger. Vast, armored serpents that breached the mud like whales breaching ocean waves. Dozens of teeth churned in concentric circles in their mouths. They trained their hollow maws on him.
He moved. Leaping up the nearest one’s slick body, chakra gripping its hide. A shadow clone burst into life beside him mid-leap, forming a Rasengan into his outstretched hand. He aimed for what he hoped was it's middle.
The impact shredded flesh and plating. The beast split clean down the center, but the victory was short-lived. He and both halves of the worm fell into the sludge. Naruto remained on the surface while they sake. But they reared up again to reveal that it had mouths at either end. Worse, the mud was moving, not just rising but alive.
Tiny snapping mouths broke the surface, nipping at his heels. Piranha-like creatures hidden just below the sludge, fast and hungry.
He retreated, climbing up the Excavator’s single central leg. From below he could see that the metal beast was a perfect metal cylinder, as wide as the entire Village Hidden in the Waterfall. Tree, lake and all.
As he ascended, gunfire rained around him. Cude bullets ricocheting off steel. He looked up and saw the source: hundreds of the green-skinned creatures stationed on carved-out ledges above, aiming their twisted rifles downward.
Naruto braced for impact—then blinked.
Lee. He was there, tearing through the gunners like a human typhoon. His bandages snapped behind him. His fists moved in blurs and the shooters fell like dominoes.
Naruto nodded in silent thanks and kept moving.
Then the earth shook.The mud below rose ten meters in an instant — and Naruto’s eyes widened as he saw the reason.
Choji he had used the Expansion Jutsu, and not just to grow, but to tower. He was colossus, not quite Excavator-sized, but close enough to grab its limbs and tear them off like paper joints. One by one, he ripped through the massive arms like a kid tearing the branches off of a bush.
Naruto smiled.
Lee was handling the enemies on the ledges. Kiba and Akamaru were on the worms. Chōji was breaking the machine itself. He wasn't going to be left out of the fray.
He created a dozen clones. Each of them made a dozen more, all scrambling up the cylindrical leg, spreading out like ants across its upper surface. By the time they reached the top — the operator’s deck — they’d formed a perfect circle and each of them held a rasengan.
They reached the canopy, a pit full of green-skinned operators, shouting and pounding controls in frenzied desperation. It was too late for them to do anything.
“Rasengan Barrage!”
The clones struck as one. A hundred spiraling orbs of chakra tore into the platform, eviscerating the crew and destroying the cockpit.
Steel screamed. The machine groaned. It shuddered, sparks flying from every exposed wire. Then, with a final metallic whine… the Excavator collapsed, its core shredded and useless.
Naruto landed back on the main deck, mud splashing off of his ankles.
He exhaled.
“One down,” he muttered, glancing toward the tunnels above where more light flickered.
The Excavator still stood, but it was no longer a machine — just a broken shell of ambition, its operating systems annihilated and canopy shredded beyond function. Gouts of steam hissed from severed pipes. Lights flickered and died. It was now just a big metal tree stump.
Then Naruto got the pulse of memory — the signal from one of his shadow clones stationed with Shikaku Nara.
“Lee, Kiba — to me!” Naruto shouted from atop the ruined canopy. “Chōji, prepare for rocks!”
Kiba and Akamaru disengaged from their quarry mid-leap, twisting in the air to land beside Naruto with practiced precision. Lee blurred forward from the ledges above, appearing beside them a heartbeat later in a burst of green and dust.
Chōji, still in his giant form, grunted and lumbered toward them. He planted one foot, then the other, climbing up the remains of the Excavator’s leg using what remained of the arms as footholds. He stood lik a mountain at their backs. Then he knelt low and arched his massive frame over his teammates like a living canopy.
And then the sky fell.
It began with a distant sound: the pop-pop-pop of thousands of explosive tags detonating in waves high above them.
Their allies had prepared the trap well. Every shinobi who’d reached the upper rim of the chamber had hurled kunai and tagged kunai into the cracks and faults. Now they all detonated at once, turning stone to shrapnel.
The landslide began. Boulders the size of wagons. Gravel like iron hail. Sheets of sediment torn loose from above. The cavern roared with it — a howl of falling earth.
Chōji braced. The first slab struck his back with a wet crack, but he didn’t flinch. The second followed, and the third, and then the sky itself poured down. Hundreds of impacts pelted his expanded frame with enough force to shatter bone and rupture lungs.
He held.
Mud and debris surged below as the falling rocks rolled off of him and filled the bottom of the chasm. The sludge was swallowed beneath rising rubble until the entire floor lifted, inch by inch, toward their perch atop the broken Excavator.
Finally, the last rock fell.
Silence returned, save for the low rumble of settling stone.
Chōji exhaled through grit teeth, then stood. He lifted one massive leg out of the fractured debris, then the other. He shrank back to normal size in a slow ripple of chakra, his form slouching with exhaustion.
He joined the others at the summit.
Kiba winced at the sight of him.
“Bruised?”
“Badly,” Chōji muttered. “And even as a giant… bullets still hurt.”
The back of his shirt was shredded, peppered with blood-speckled holes the size of pin pricks. A hundred puncture wounds where shrapnel and bullets had torn through armor and flesh alike.
Chōji reached into his pouch and retrieved a small rectangular box. Inside was a single yellow dumpling, bright as mustard. He ate it without a word, leaving the red alone.
Chakra flared off him like firelight in the wind.
Kiba followed suit, popping his own soldier pill and throwing one to Akamaru. The both braced as energy surged through their frames.
Naruto and Lee stood tall, untouched. They had paced themselves, but now it was time to push forward again.
The earth groaned.
From beneath the rubble, the enemy began to rise.
First one. Then five. Then hundreds. Small and large green humanoids dragged themselves up from the stone, bloodied but grinning. Massive beasts with slavering jaws clawed their way free, some with snapping maws, others with churning drills or scythe-like limbs.
They kept coming.
“Everyone good to go?” Naruto asked, turning to his team.
No one answered.
They didn’t need to.
They leapt.
-
Back at the Konoha border outpost, the mission had quietly shifted.
The mapmaking plan was abandoned; not from failure, but from necessity. The two wooden structure had been dismantled, its walls carefully fused into one by the masked Anbu's wood release. Inside, they were no longer working on tunnel diagrams or terrain sketches, only war art.
The interior walls were covered in paintings; not of landscapes, but of monsters.
Dozens of grotesque shapes loomed across every surface, drawn in ink, charcoal, pencil, and paint. Nightmarish beasts of alien mak. Machines that crawled like insects and bore tusks of steel. Swarms of gnarled, mouth-legged things with blinking, alien eyes.
It was a mural of horror, unfinished and raw, the strokes crude but the message clear: this is what we face.
A dozen Naruto clones moved quickly between intelligence officers stationed around the room. Each clone delivered battle data like runners in a war room, passing between Ibiki, Inoichi, Shizune, and her adorable but jittery assistant with spiraled glasses and wild hair. The girl barely looked up from the clipboard she was scribbling on, muttering things under her breath.
Ibiki’s usual composure was frayed. He worked alongside the pale-masked Anbu with red feather-like paint on his mask. The two were furiously sketching the monsters described to them by the clones, one clone per artist, and often more. The result was a scatter of overlapping depictions: incomplete, rushed, but increasingly accurate.
“Too many types,” Ibiki muttered. “They’re using war beasts like a weapons rack.”
“They are weapons racks,” the ink-painter corrected gently. “Biological ones.”
The clones moved like ants,dispensing intel from the battlefront: types, tactics, weaknesses. Some described the insect-like ones that detonated on contact. Others the oversized green ones who carried flamethrowers shaped like bagpipes. One described the caterpillar beasts that excreted metal after consuming dirt. Another rattled off a field report on worm-like siege mounts with detachable jaws.
Inoichi, standing at the center of the structure with his fingers to his temple, listened to a clone who had stopped moving and now stood stiffly like a messenger drone.
“It’s too drawn out of a battle for the current forces there to finish off,” Inoichi said aloud, after a long pause. “Are our allies already showing signs of fatigue or injury?”
“Oh yeah,” the clone answered. “Pretty much everyone. Soldier pills are already being used. Chōji was bruised up pretty bad, even at giant size. I think Kiba and Akamaru are still going, but they’ll need a break soon.”
Inoichi let out a quiet breath through his nose.
“Then you’ve completed your mission,” he said. “You’ve mapped this sector. You’ve delayed excavation and sabotagued their industrial ability. You’ve revealed dozens of new enemy types. That is not only success — that’s above and beyond.”
The clone blinked.
“Sooo… tactical retreat?”
“Regroup. Plan. Recover.” Inoichi’s voice was firm. “This is a victory. There’s no need to overextend it into a loss.”
The clone nodded, clearly reluctant.
“Yeah, alright.” He closed his eyes for a beat, then formed a seal. “Let’s pull back and do this right. Now that we know where the big chamber is we can just dig down from the surface with our full forces.”
He created a final shadow clone, who immediately dispelled, sending the order rippling back to the front lines in an instant.
-
Lee and Naruto stuck close as they fought through the enemies surrounding them. Both kept to pure taijutsu.
Naruto, with his single kunai, aimed for accuracy. He slipped between bodies, slicing open vital points — the necks, thighs, underarms — then darted back before the aliens could react. They already knew the enemies bled out slowly, but they did die from it all the same. So long as you didn’t let your guard down after delivering the blow.
Lee focused on power.
Every kick shattered a knee. Every punch folded an arm. He ignored heads and torsos. Killing took too much energy. But disabling? That was efficient. He let them scream and writhe. They could be finished off later. For now, he was a machine designed to break momentum and snap bones.
It worked.
But even with Choji flattening creatures with his body and Kiba carving a path through the more monstrous forms, the numbers didn’t thin. The bodies stacked higher and higher until they were fighting atop a mound of corpses slick with mud and blood. The air stank of ozone, bile, and gunpowder.
Even Lee was beginning to tire.
Lee gritted his teeth and forced open his second gate. The surge of chakra washed through his limbs like lightning and fire. It gave him another burst, enough to kick apart a trio of armored beasts with blunt tusks and gnashing jaws.
But the fatigue snapped back just as fast.
In that moment of distraction, something wrapped around his arms and chest; a bear hug strong enough to crack ribs.
He was pinned.
"Third Gate — Gate of Life!" he roared, chakra bursting from his skin in a visible halo of green.
He twisted inside the alien’s grip, faced its armor-plated chest, and stabbed both hands into its ribcage like daggers. With a growl and a scream, Lee tore it open. Pulled it apart. He parted the creature’s sternum like a scroll, and its hearts — plural — spilled out in a glistening mess of alien organs.
Lee climbed through the steaming hole in its torso and stood on top of its twitching body.
He looked up, breathless, bruised, wide-eyed. Something inside him snapped free.
He roared a war cry that sounded oddly similar to that made by these aliens. When he spoke, they lsitened.
"WHO ELSE?!" he roared. “Who else would like to trade blows with the Green Beast of Konoha?!”
The words echoed.
Not once. Not twice. But again, and again, and again — bouncing off the walls of the impossibly massive cavern. Everyone had already stopped fighting. The war cry alone had silenced the battlefield. Even the Orks.
They stared.
Lee stood hunched forward, fists clenched, arms loose like chains, chakra roiling around him like fire.
"...Beast?" one of the green aliens grunted.
"Green beast. He green boy. He... one of us?" another mumbled.
"He fight like us. He Waagh! like us."
"He look like us."
"...One of us!"
"He threw down gauntlet! I accept!"
"No you don’t! I fight him first!"
"OVER MY DEAD BODY!"
"DEAL!"
And then — chaos.
Lee, Naruto, Choji, and Kiba watched in utter confusion as the Orks turned on each other. They ripped each other apart. Limbs were torn, teeth shattered, weapons discharged point-blank. One particularly massive creature leaned in to what looked like a kiss, only to bite the entire face off the other. No tactics. No coordination. Just brutal, frothing madness.
Lee panted, still trembling from the Third Gate. Blood and sweat soaked into his ruined green jumpsuit. His bones ached, but his heart? His heart was pounding like it wanted to leap out of his chest and keep fighting.
The hand landed softly on his shoulder. It was a familiar warmth, a grounding presence.
It was a mistake.
Lee spun without thinking. The Fourth Gate opened almost on its own. His fist collided with Naruto’s face like a cannonball. The sound of bone snapping preceeded his friend being sent flying thirty meteres into the mountain of corpses.
A second later, Kiba and Choji were already beside him, voices overlapping in panic. One of the clones screamed for a toad. A summoning seal flared to life as the emergency escape plan was executed.
But Lee didn’t hear any of that.
He barely noticed them dragging Naruto’s limp body onto the summoned toad’s tongue. Somewhere deep inside, a whisper said, You hit your friend. Another voice screamed louder: He got in your way.
Lee’s mouth opened wide, and the roar that emerged had nothing of humanity left in it.
“WAAAAAGH!!!”
His vision blurred. Red. Not the red of blood, but the red of rage, of glory, of war. Every movement around him was a target. Every sound a call to violence. The air tasted like adrenaline and gunpowder and victory.
He dove from the top of the excavator into the churning chaos below.
And then he was gone.
No technique. No strategy. No finesse. Just raw, explosive, unrelenting destruction.
His hands were no longer hands. They were sledgehammers. Blunt-force meteors. One swing shattered three skulls. A backhanded slap tore an alien’s torso like wet parchment. A stomp crushed chests like overripe melons. He grinned as bone cracked underfoot.
Every movement was perfect; every dodge, unconscious.
Bullets sang past him in harmony, a chorus of percussion accompanying his every strike. They didn’t hit him. Couldn’t hit him. He didn’t think to avoid them; the WAAAGH did it for him.
Something big charged. Bigger than the others. Maybe a warbeast. Maybe a humanoid. Lee met it head-on, shoulder-checked it mid-charge, and drove it into the wall where he used it as a punching back. He didn’t stop until the wall cracked, until his knuckles bled, until there was no beast left to kill.
He kept going.
They came at him in waves — eager now, chanting with him, matching his rhythm.
“WAAAGH!” they yelled.
“WAAAGH!!” he yelled back.
As fire flickered and bullets danced around him like butterflies, he let go. It was all so beautiful. It was all so him.