Chapter 10
Mission: Rescue Rock Lee
Naruto's body hit the cot beside her with a wet, thudding slap. The sound alone made Sakura's stomach drop.
His face was... gone. Not bloodied. Not bruised. Caved in. The front half of his skull was concave, crushed inward like clay beneath a hammer. His breathing was ragged. Shallow. His eyes open and unseeing.
"What happened to him!?" Sakura demanded, hands already glowing green as she dropped to her knees.
Choji, still slick with sweat and half-limping from bruised ribs, exchanged a grim look with Kiba.
"It was Lee," Kiba said. "Something happened to him. He went feral. He's gone. We think it's a genjutsu."
Before Sakura could process that, one of the Naruto clones standing beside the medical tent nodded and vanished with a puff of smoke.
"I'm on it," he said.
The real Naruto was a mess.
Worse, his skin had begun to glow red. A thin veil of chakra bubbled over him in pulses, licking his limbs with corrosive heat. The Kyuubi, no doubt furious and afraid, was trying to save its host.
Sakura's hands trembled. She gritted her teeth and pressed her hands to his skull, trying to guide the chakra to feel exactly what the damage was. But something was wrong.
His bones were knitting together too quickly—and in all the wrong places. Cartilage and bone shards pressed into the soft tissue of his brain, threatening to crush it from within.
And still, the chakra boiled hotter.
A hand gripped her shoulder.
Tsunade had arrived, panting slightly as she stepped into the tent, her eyes widening at the sight.
"Good," the Hokage muttered. "He's still alive. Barely."
She knelt beside Sakura and cracked her knuckles.
"I'll keep the bones from healing or break them again as needed. You focus on putting them back into place."
Sakura nodded and blinked back tears, trying to focus.
The red chakra lashed out.
It caught her across the cheek, a thin whip-like burn that stung all the way to her teeth. Another flare slashed Tsunade's sleeve, drawing a thin line of blood across her forearm.
But neither of them moved. Neither of them stopped.
Sakura's lip quivered. Not from pain. Not really. Her tears kept falling onto Naruto's chest, and still she kept working.
They went like this for several minutes; their arms and torsos receiving minor lacerations and burns as they went.
She heard the tent flaps opened again with a hiss of cold air. From her peripheral vision she saw Kiba and Choji draw their weapons.
She dared to turn her head slightly and paled at who she saw.
Orochimaru stepped inside without a word, yellow eyes gleaming, his presence thick with wrongness. The medical shinobi on either side of the entrance reached for scalpels, but the next person to enter the tent stayed their hand.
Jiraiya.
"What is he doing here?" Choji demanded.
"I just arrived to provide my forces, then I felt that," Orochimaru said, nodding toward Naruto and the bubbling cloak of chakra around him.
He didn't wait for permission.
"Out of my way, ladies." he ordered.
He shouldered past Tsunade, who snarled and nearly decked him on the spot, but the tension in the tent held.
Orochimaru raised his right hand. Five characters lit up in twisted violent chakra, one on each fingertip.
Then he drove them, finger-first, into Naruto's stomach in the same maneuver, and likely jutsu, she had seen him use on Naruto all the way back in the forest of death.
Sakura flinched at the sharp crack and smell of scorched air. But it worked. The red chakra died away.
All at once, the bubbling pressure vanished. The burning stopped. The tent was quiet again.
"There," Orochimaru said, brushing dust off his sleeve. "Get back to it. Jiraiya, undo the seal when the idiot's skull isn't a jigsaw puzzle. I will be waiting for debriefing with the two of you when the emergency here is subsided."
Jiraiya gave a small grunt of agreement. He and Orochimaru turned and left the tent together, leaving a silence behind them that felt like the breath after a scream.
Sakura finally wiped the tears from her eyes and let out a shaky breath.
Tsunade placed both hands on Naruto's jaw and frowned.
"All right," she said. "Let's put his face back together."
All the way north in the great iron sea, Naruto stood up at attention.
"What's wrong?" Princess Koyuki asked.
They were still in the airship heading south, only now approaching the land of Iron. But he didn't have time to explain.
"Madara!" Naruto called out.
The lavatory door opened and out popped an orange swirl mask.
"What." The deep voice demanded from him
"Uh... We have to go," he said, voice urgent.
Madara fully exited the toilet and approached him.
"What is the emergency now?" He asked. "And what do you need from me?"
He was as quick on the uptake as ever.
"We need to find someone who can stop Lee. Do you know anybody?" he asked.
"Who is Lee?"
Naruto rephrased.
"Can you think of anybody who could stop a rampaging, feral, Might Gai?"
Madara actually had to think on that one for a few seconds. It was a tall order after all.
"There's only one person I can think of beside myself. Come." he ordered. Then, as an afterthought added. "Leave a clone here."
Naruto obeyed, forming another shadow clone to remain aboard the ship. Then Madara placed a hand on the original clone's shoulder, and in a blink, they were gone.
They reappeared in a location Naruto didn't immediately recognize, but he could tell it was still within the borders of the Land of Wind. The ground beneath them was cracked sandstone, but the wind carried the sharp chill of the western desert front.
In front of them stood two cloaked figures.
Itachi Uchiha and Kisame Hoshigaki both observed them curiously. As did the sand shinobi backing them up.
Itachi's eyes slowly tracked toward Madara. Kisame, ever the opposite of subtle, grinned wide at the newcomers.
"Itachi," Madara said simply. "Your genjutsu skills are required elsewhere."
Itachi didn't respond with a nod or a word. He just stepped forward in silence, falling into formation on Madara's right. Naruto instinctively moved to his left, still watching Itachi like he might explode.
"Where to?" Madara asked, eyes now on Naruto.
Naruto did some mental math, recalling the clone's last transmission.
"About three hundred kilometers west of the Konoha encampment. Big canyon system. It's raining there."
Madara grunted in acknowledgement. Without another word, he teleported them again.
They landed on uneven rock, soaked through instantly by heavy rain that hammered the ground in a constant sheet. Water pooled in the ridges and gullies around them. The terrain was brutal — even before factoring in the green tide that still lingered beyond the fog.
Madara dropped to one knee, breathing heavier than usual.
"I've really pushed myself today," he muttered. "No more jumps. Not for a while."
Naruto gave him a quick glance — not out of concern, but urgency. Another clone's memory had just returned.
"Kakashi and Gai are briefed," he said. "They're on standby inside the storage toad."
Without wasting a second, he performed the summoning jutsu.
The aforementioned storage toad popped into existence beside them, it's great mouth slowly yawning open. Out walked Kakashi and Gai, both covered in alien gore and ready for action.
"Where is Lee?" Gai asked, already tensing like he expected to sprint into action.
"Somewhere underground. Around here," Naruto replied. "The clones I left behind… they're not holding up too well."
He paused suddenly.
"We've got incoming." he warned.
The words had barely left his mouth when the earth groaned beneath their feet. Off to the east, no more than five kilometers away, the desert floor warped unnaturally. A dome of sand swelled upward like something breathing beneath it, then collapsed violently into a sinkhole.
From the darkness of that new void something emerged. A massive, cylindrical hulk of twisted metal launched into the air, trailing dust and flame in its wake. It was the remains of the excavator, now little more than a kilometer-wide metal tube, sheared of all limbs and weapons. It sailed upward like an arrow.
Lee flew up beneath it, his hands, shoulders and face pressed against the bottom as he lifted and flung the mighty object into the sky.
In the blink of an eye, Lee vanished from the bottom and reappeared high above the ascending wreckage. He struck downward with a thunderous stomp kick. The blow connected with the top of the machine with such force that the entire structure crumpled like a crushed soda can. The compressed mass plummeted downward, faster than it had risen, and ignited as the speed and pressure ripped the air apart.
It slammed back into the sinkhole with a detonation that rivaled a meteor strike.
A shockwave of sand, stone, and flame erupted from the impact. The desert floor rolled in a churning tsunami of heat and debris, crashing toward them like the wrath of a Bijuu.
None of them waited for it to reach them.
"That's the Seventh Gate!" Gai shouted, his face a mask of panic.
"I thought he could only go up to six?!" Kakashi barked, eyes wide.
"Me too!" Gai admitted, just as shocked.
"Gai-sensei!" Naruto interrupted their growing alarm. "Can he open the Eighth Gate—yes or no?!"
Gai hesitated.
"If you had asked me even an hour ago, I would've said no…"
That was answer enough.
"Go hold him off," Madara said without hesitation. "You're the only one who can. In the meantime, the rest of us will come up with a plan."
Gai didn't wait for another word. He dropped into his stance, his expression calm but deadly serious.
"Sixth Gate—Gate of Joy!" he bellowed.
A green aura burst from his body, and the ground cracked beneath his feet. The transformation hit like a shockwave, knocking the rest of them backward.
And then he leapt.
The incoming tidal wave of sand and flame parted around him as he punched through it, split like water before the prow of a ship. A sonic boom echoed through the air as Gai rocketed toward the impact site.
Naruto scrambled back to his feet, shielding his eyes from the swirling dust. Even Madara, still recovering from his earlier exertion, looked momentarily impressed.
"You said something about a plan?" Kakashi asked, brushing sand from his flak vest as he glanced between them.
They all looked at each other. The tension hung in the air like static, the aftershocks of Gai's leap still rumbling beneath their feet.
Naruto broke the silence, deciding that thinking aloud might lead to something productive.
"Uh… we wait for an opening…"
"Yeah…" Kakashi encouraged, nodding slightly. "And what exactly are we looking out for?"
Naruto chewed the inside of his cheek.
"The moment he tries to open the Eighth Gate… or maybe right after the Seventh wears off. That moment when his body gives out, just a little window—just enough."
Madara picked up where he left off.
"Then I warp Itachi in close enough to make eye contact and put him under. No distractions. Just precision."
Itachi nodded once.
"Understood."
"With what?" Kakashi asked. "Tsukuyomi? Because if he's physically on death's door, the last thing he needs is three days of torture compressed into a second. That'd kill him just as surely."
Itachi didn't blink.
"No. I'll show him puppies and rainbows. A tea party in a field of flowers."
The flatness in his tone was so complete Naruto almost missed the fact that he was being entirely serious. There was no sarcasm in the Uchiha's voice, only a grim commitment to calm the mind of a dying ally.
"…Right," Naruto muttered, still trying to process the image of Rock Lee sipping tea with Itachi in a hallucinated meadow.
"What if he succeeds in activating the Eighth Gate?" Itachi asked quietly.
There was a pause.
"Then he's dead anyways," Kakashi said. His voice was low, pained. "If it comes to that, I can… send him somewhere else. To die without endangering anybody else."
Naruto flinched at the words; not for what they meant, but for how much they clearly cost Kakashi to say. Still, he understood. If they couldn't save Lee, they'd have to save the world from Lee.
He didn't ask. But something in the way Kakashi's visible eye narrowed, in the way he held himself just a little apart, told Naruto this wasn't just talk. He had a method, a space manipulation jutsu, maybe, where even someone like Lee couldn't hurt anyone else.
"Hatake," Madara said suddenly. "Do you have a spare soldier pill?"
Kakashi reached into a pocket, rummaging for a moment before pulling one out and handing it over without hesitation.
Madara lifted his outer mask just enough to toss it back, then stepped behind Itachi and placed a steadying hand on each shoulder. Four sharingan glinted in the gloom. All of them trained on the battle before them
To Naruto's eyes, it was pure chaos; green blurs tearing through the landscape like vengeful spirits. One second, a plateau was there. The next, it was a crater. A line of trees turned to ash. A hill exploded into a newly formed lake. Every impact shredded the terrain, turning the desert into a battlefield that wept under the force of every blow.
And then it happened.
For one moment -one perfect, terrible second - the two green blurs resolved into humans. Both Lee and Gai, legs extended in mirrored high kicks, collided mid-air. The force was so immense that the falling rain evaporated, forming a dome of absolute stillness around them.
Naruto barely registered it. But the three sharingan-wielders were quicker on the draw.
All three stiffened like drawn wires, sharingan glowing as if ready to act. Naruto saw Madara shift his weight. Kakashi's hand twitched. Itachi's fingers flexed.
And then, too late, the moment passed. The dome collapsed, the blurs returned and the storm swallowed the opening.
The window had been too small but their next chance came just moments later.
Lee broke from the fight, flinging himself high above the shattered battlefield in a spiraling arc of green light. He hung there in the air for a moment, suspended like a meteor about to fall.
Then he shifted his body. It wasn't random. It wasn't instinctive. It was a stance, a pose of power, held with deliberate, terrifying intent. Naruto didn't know how he recognized it. He just knew that this was the activation method of the Eighth Gate.
"Now!" all three of his Sharingan-wielding companions shouted at once.
In an instant, Madara and Itachi vanished.
Naruto barely saw them go. One heartbeat they were beside him, the next they were airborne and far away.
Kakashi dropped to one knee beside Naruto. His Sharingan had changed. Not just the tomoe, but something resembling a throwing star. The pattern was sharper, angular — hungry.
Naruto turned back to Lee.
He saw Itachi. Just inches from Lee's face. Eye contact locked. Genjutsu activating.
And then Lee punched.
It wasn't a direct hit. He missed center mass by inches. But even from a distance, Naruto saw the shape of Itachi reduced somewhat.
Then, all three figures began to fall. The two dark ones vanished leaving Lee behind. But before he could hit the ground, a green blur, faster than thought, shot upward and caught Lee mid-air.
Itachi and Madara reappeared a second later, just beside Naruto and Kakashi.
Naruto's stomach dropped when he got a good look.
Itachi was more injured than he'd thought. A single punch from lee had taken not only his arm, but his shoulder too. He could see the white of open ribs. The skin had been burned away from the force and friction of the punch. The man's face was pale, his eyes unfocused. Clearly in shock.
"Medical tents. Now," Naruto ordered, pointing to the forgotten ally behind them.
The storage toad hadn't left them this entire time. Its mouth opened wide, tongue unfurling to form a landing platform.
"For Itachi and Lee, yes," Madara said, his voice like steel. "But leave me here."
Neither Naruto nor Kakashi argued. Gai had already bolted, cradling Lee's unconscious, nearly unrecognizable body like a newborn. He ran up the toad's tongue and disappeared into the summoning.
Naruto and Kakashi each grabbed hold of Itachi - Kakashi at the legs, Naruto at the remaining shoulder - and carried him into the toad's mouth just as it slammed shut behind them.
A moment later, the clone dispelled.
Itachi stood before the projection of Rock Lee's feral mind.
They were not alone. He could feel something else with them, but couldn't identify what it was.
The mental space he had crafted - serene and meditative - was under siege. A still lake reflected cherry blossoms as they drifted from trees that sang gently in the wind. Baby chicks chirped from within their nests. Spring flowers swayed with the quiet rhythm of breathing.
But Lee's presence didn't breathe. It raged.
Like a storm crashing against a temple, Lee tore through the peaceful illusion. The lake boiled. Trees were shredded into mulch. Chicks, flowers, petals – all gone. There weren't even screams. Just obliteration.
Itachi calmly closed his eyes and rebuilt it all, this time choosing a rolling plain under soft golden light. The winds blew slower now. The air smelled of new grass and renewal.
Lee's mind howled again, and it all burned.
Then the dreams turned against him.
Itachi saw stars, so many stars. Galaxies hanging in blackness, distant and cold, yet trembling with malicious pressure. He saw the Toads, or things that wore the skin of toads, locked in a cosmic war against creatures without names. Star-eaters, he thought. Leviathans with mouths the size of moons, swallowing entire constellations. He watched their children die and be reborn in metal frames, only to shatter their devourers from the inside out, reforming in kaleidoscopic violence.
He blinked and restored the illusion. Couples sat at the lake in Konoha, resting heads on the shoulders of their lovers. A first kiss under the watchful eye of a full moon. The scent of wind and home.
Then it vanished, replaced by a tide of darkness.
Worlds shriveled under insectoid swarms. Planets howled, devoured by locusts in chitonous armor. Their hunger was infinite.
No!
He snapped it back to a ramen bar in Konoha wit the steam of hot broth. Then the smoky barbecue place, with pork frying in the middle of the tables. A warm towel handed by an old chef. Dango on a stick, honeyed and perfect.
The air tasted sweet, for just a moment.
Then came titans in sapphire, wreathed in lightning, locked in war against purple-armored demons with tongues like serpents and claws like pikes. They collided with no regard for physics. No thought. Just violence.
Itachi gritted his teeth.
He understood, now. This wasn't Lee. This wasn't even genjutsu. It was possession. Infection. The WAAAGH, whatever it was, wasn't a mind so much as a screaming soulstorm of will and emotion and memories. No planning. No logic. Just momentum. A broken hive-mind of belief given flesh.
He watched Lee roar and crash through the temples of the Fire Nation, thesacred buildings turned to rubble beneath his green fists.
"WAAAGH!"
It was not a battle of illusions. It was a war of dreams.
"Seventy-one hours remaining." Itachi said to himself as the skeleton sitting upon a golden throne towered over him.