Naruto Fan Fiction ❯ Colors of Life and Death ❯ For the Clan ( Chapter 25 )

Naruto froze. ((“Uzumaki Minako..”)) “U...zu...maki?” he choked out.

Minako’s eyes widened when they came to rest on Naruto’s face. “Oh my God....It’s true....” After a moment of staring at Naruto in awe, she whipped her head back toward Kakashi. “You, son of a BITCH! You LIED to us!”

“Minako-chan, it’s not that simple....” Kakashi began, just as Sasuke came into the room.

“Don’t you DARE use ‘chan’ when speaking to me! And it is that simple! He’s standing right THERE!” she yelled as she jabbed a finger in Naruto’s direction.

Sasuke looked confused. “Sakura...what....?” he asked softly.

Sakura put a finger to her lips. “Shh!”

Sasuke frowned, but stayed silent.

“Even I didn’t know who he truly was until recently,” Kakashi replied evenly.

“Naruto...” Minako nearly whispered, her expression softening. “I’m...I’m your aunt. Arashi was my brother,” she said as her eyes misted over.

Naruto’s eyes went as wide as dinner plates. “My...aunt....?”

Minako knelt down and held out her arms. “Naruto...come here....” she said with a tearful smile.

Kakashi rushed in between the two Uzumaki. “Don’t, Naruto!” he said as he glanced backward at him. “I can only imagine how you feel, but she is not the kind person she wants you to think she is.”

“FUCK you, Kakashi! He is my blood!”

“Blood or not, he doesn’t need someone who hurts the innocent!”

“I was protecting my family line!”

“Even the Hyuugas wouldn’t dishonor themselves by trying to murder someone just for being in love with a member of their clan.”

“Would someone tell me what the HELL is going on??” Naruto yelled.

Kakashi sighed heavily. “Before the attack on Kyuubi there were three highly prominent clans in Konoha...The Hyuugas, the Uchihas...and the Uzumakis.”

“There was a whole clan?” Naruto asked with his eyes wide.

“Not just a clan, Naruto. One of the greatest clans in history!” Minako said proudly.

Kakashi rolled his eyes. “Because most of the Uzumakis were anbu, they were put on the front lines of the battle against Kyuubi,” he sighed sadly, “They were nearly wiped out. Only three remain...you, Minako and your cousin. The latter of whom I assume is the blonde woman upstairs.”

Understanding dawned on Naruto’s face. “So that’s how she knew Chichiuei.”

“Minako heard about your birth and sent your cousin to retrieve you after the battle. Since I thought you were dead, that’s the information I gave her,” Kakashi explained, shooting a pointed glare at Minako.

“Naruto, come here,” Minako nearly commanded.

“No!” Kakashi countered urgently, “She hurt your mother!”

At hearing these words Naruto stopped in his tracks. “What?” he asked in disbelief.

Kakashi rubbed his tired, visible eye with his fingers. “Your mother was my instructor at the academy. When I was put on Arashi’s team after I graduated, he asked me to introduce him to her. They connected right away, and in less than six months your father was showing my team and I the engagement ring he planned to give her.”

“No one expected the relationship to get that far.” He looked at Naruto, a hard look entering his eyes. “There’s something you have to know about the Uzumakis...They basically made the Hyuugas look like a loving clan.”

Naruto’s eyes became wider for a split second as he sucked in a breath. “What do you mean?”

“Members of the clan were only allowed to marry within it. When the head of the clan learned of Arashi’s plans to propose to Nabiki, they sent Minako...to kill her,” Kakashi finished with venom in his voice.

Naruto’s face filled with horror as he backed away from the woman who had her arms held out to him just minutes before. “You...you tried to kill my mom?”

Minako’s expression showed the panic that was entering her heart. “Naruto...you have to understand...I....” she sputtered as she reached out a trembling hand toward him.

Naruto slapped Minako’s hand away. “NO!”

Minako’s eyes filled with tears. “The purity of the clan had to be protected! There was no other way!”

Naruto lowered his face so that his hair covered his features. “I don’t give a damn about ‘clan purity’! You tried to kill my mother! I would never’ve been born!!” Naruto screeched as he raised his head with a violent snap.

Minako suddenly pulled her hand back and simply stared at Naruto. “Wh...what’s the matter with your eyes?”

Kakashi pushed Minako out of the way so he could get a look at what had stunned the woman. “What the hell?”

Naruto’s eyes had changed from their normal cerulean blue, not to the eyes of the Kyuubi, but to something Kakashi had never seen before. Both of them were raven black with a vivid purple ring on the outer edge. The purple streaked into the black, making it look like the purple was a fire that was reaching for a small, white dot in the center.

Sasuke and Sakura moved to Kakashi’s position. Sakura gasped. Sasuke simply stared. “Naruto...you....”

“What is it?” Naruto asked.

Sakura reached into her weapons pouch, pulled out a small mirror, and held it up so Naruto could see. His knee-jerk reaction to his reflection was to jump backwards a few steps.

“What’s going on, Kakashi-sensei?” Sakura asked.

“I don’t know, Sakura. But this isn’t the issue we need to worry about right now.”

“You’re right, Kakashi, it isn’t,” Minako replied with a dangerous tone. Her hands flashed through a series of seals. “Doton- Kane Genken no Jutsu!”

The floor began to shake and crack. As small sections of it broke away, what looked like chunks of raw metal ore flew up through the holes and began forming into vicious looking steel dogs about the size of wolves.

All the Konoha ninja now stood back to back, with kunai at the ready. “Kane no Jutsu?!” Kakashi exclaimed. “I thought no one had found a way to do it!” he thought as the sound of metal scraping against metal grated on his ears.

“You see, Kakashi...I will not allow you to take my brother’s only child back to that pathetic hole you call a hidden village,” Minako spat.

The now completed metal dogs lunged at their targets, carefully avoiding damage to Naruto. Everyone slashed at the attackers with their kunai, but the most they could manage to do was push them back.

Minako smirked as she watched Kakashi’s team. “The great Kakashi,” she said with a mocking chuckle. “I would’ve expected a more intelligent plan from you than that.”

Naruto barely jumped out of the way in time to avoid one of the dogs as it tried to body check him in an attempt to knock him out. “These things are fast,” he thought.

TenTen hopped backward to avoid being disemboweled, then screamed as another dog bit down on the end of her foot. Blood speckled the floor under the spot where she fell.

Lee was instantly at TenTen’s side. He picked her up and brought her over to the stairwell. As he began to take her shoe off to inspect the damage, TenTen scolded him.

“Lee, forget my foot!” she said as tears of pain leaked out of her eyes. “Help the others!”

Lee immediately went into a saluting pose. “Hai!”

After Lee had left, TenTen took some medical wrap out of her equipment pouch and bandaged her foot. She gritted her teeth and stood up, inhaling sharply from the pain as she did so, and ran back to the fight.

Lee saw TenTen fighting and smiled in approval. “That’s it TenTen! The fire of youth shall not be put out!”

TenTen rolled her eyes and dodged a steel paw.

Beads of sweat began to appear on Sasuke’s forehead. “This isn’t good, these things are fast, and we can’t seem to damage them!” His eyes suddenly widened with a spark of inspiration. He made his favorite series of seals. “Katon- Goukakyuu no Jutsu!” A ball of flame shot from his mouth at one of the dogs; but instead of melting it like he had intended, it only served to make the dog scalding hot to the touch. “Shit!” he cursed as he moved out of the dog’s way.

Naruto slowly began to notice that he was the only one the dogs were not trying to maim. “KAGE BUNSHIN NO JUTSU!”

Minako smirked as her nephew increased in number by five. “As expected from an Uzumaki.”

“Everyone...form a small group!” Naruto yelled to his comrades.

Kakashi looked up at Naruto’s sudden ‘command’. “What is he up to?” he thought as he and the others huddled together.

Naruto quickly had his clones surround his friends.

“What the hell?!” Minako said.

Naruto folded his arms in defiance. “Now what are you gonna do?!”

“Naruto! Move out of the way!” Minako commanded.

“I thought so. You don’t wanna hurt me,” said all of Naruto’s clones at once. He smiled in satisfaction as his aunt gritted her teeth and made a short sound of irritation. “Now, call off your dogs.”

“NO! You are coming home!”

“What home?!” Naruto shot back. “You live in an abandoned apartment building! Not to mention you’re a criminal!”

Minako frowned in shame for a short moment before becoming angry. “Shut up! You don’t know anything!”

From inside the ‘Naruto wall’ Hinata kept her Byakugan trained on Minako. Suddenly, she noticed Minako’s chakra flow waver for a second. “Naruto-kun,” she whispered.

Naruto didn’t turn around but shifted his eyes toward Hinata in interest.

“She has to concentrate to maintain her jutsu. When you upset her just now, her concentration dropped. I...I think if you make her mad enough she may drop the jutsu.”

“Gotchya, Hinata-chan,” Naruto thought. “I know you almost killed my Mother! I know she was a better person than you!”

“Naruto!” Minako raged, barely remembering to keep her hands folded in the serpent seal.

“I know you’ve hurt people I care about!”

“Naruto!”

“I HATE YOU!!!”

“NO!” Minako yelled, forgetting her seal and balling her hands into fists in front of her.

Naruto dispelled his clones and everyone he had been protecting resumed their battle stances.

“Dammit,” Minako thought as her dogs reverted back to the raw ore they had once been. “I don’t have enough chakra left to recreate them.” She let out an angry puff of air through her nose. “Takeshi,” she said tersely to the large man on her right. “Kill the rest, but damage Naruto as little as possible.”

“Hai, Minako-sama.” Takeshi replied. He and the other five ninja that had arrived with Minako hurried from the shadows and made a wide circle around the group of Konoha ninja.

“Sougu fujin heki!” TenTen pulled out two scrolls from her equipment pouch and flung her hands forward, causing the scrolls to unroll onto the floor. From the open scrolls, various weapons appeared in puffs of smoke, jutting upwards and taking out one of the two women in Minako’s team.

“CHISA!” yelled Takeshi. He stared in open-mouthed horror at the woman on the floor, who was impaled in various places; all of them fatal. He rounded on TenTen. “DAMN YOU TO HELL!!!” he yelled before charging at her.

TenTen tried to move out of the way, but when she moved her damaged foot she was greeted by a sharp twinge of pain that caused her drop to the floor.

Hinata focused her chakra through the tenketsu, stabbing Takeshi with small, needle-width poles of it. The burgundy-haired man winced as each of the needles cut through his body and exited the other side. “Aaaaugh!”

As Hinata attacked Takeshi, Naruto suddenly felt a throbbing pain behind his eyes and his vision blurred for a moment. When he could see clearly again, the air was filled with thousands of tiny, glowing purple dots. “Huh?” He reached out a hand toward the dots, but all he managed to do was make them swirl around. After a few seconds of aimlessly swatting at the dots an idea struck him. “I can use chakra to stick to walls. I wonder if it’d work on these things.”

Naruto put his hands together in the tiger seal, and focused his chakra to them. They glowed in a swirling mass of red and blue. He reached out toward the dots again...and grabbed one. He stared at it for a second. “I wonder what would happen if I grabbed a bunch of these?” He held out his left hand and began pushing dots into it with his right. It was very easy since the air was thick with them, and it wasn’t long before he had a several hundred in his hand.

Sasuke had just ducked under a woman’s roundhouse kick when he noticed Naruto batting at the air with his right hand. “What the hell is that dobe up to now?”

Naruto stared at the mass of dots he was holding. He decided to see if he could squish them together and squeezed them as hard as he could. When he opened his hand he held a snow white sphere just a little smaller than a golf ball. “What is that?” he mused.

Sasuke was getting irritated that Naruto seemed to be doing nothing but staring at his hand. “OI! Dobe! You gonna fight or what?!” he yelled as he dodged a punch aimed at his midriff.

Naruto blinked his eyes as he was snapped out of his thoughts by Sasuke’s voice. “Shit!” He tossed the ball behind him, intending to join the fight, but when the sphere hit the wall it exploded, sending him sailing through the air and into the woman who had been fighting Sasuke.

Sasuke looked at direction of the explosion, then back at Naruto. “What the hell did you do?” he asked in wide-eyed confusion as Naruto began to get to his feet.

Naruto looked at the wall behind where he had been standing moments before. There was a gaping hole in the wall. His jaw dropped. “That little thing did that??”

“What little thing?” Sasuke asked.

Naruto rapidly shook his head. “I’ll explain later!” he replied as he dove back into the fight.

Sasuke sighed in defeat and joined his brother.

TenTen was getting irritated. Most of her attacks relied on open space and the crowded battle conditions made them too risky to use. She pulled out a scroll from her equipment pouch, unrolled it and performed a series of seals. “Souga meshi!” She touched the fairly short length of paper and a pair of nun chucks appeared in a puff of smoke. She swung at a male ninja. He ducked out of the way, but couldn’t avoid the second nun chuck that hit him in the ribs, cracking a few of them.

The man gritted his teeth and hit TenTen with an uppercut to the jaw. She countered with a nun chuck to his kidneys.

“Sanza, stop playing around!” Minako yelled in irritation.

Sanza glared at his leader for a split second, and then went back to his fight. Rat, tiger, hare. “Araihada No Jutsu!” His skin was suddenly covered in sharp bumps. He lashed out at TenTen and raked his right forearm across her left bicep.

TenTen cried out in pain as thin peals of her skin fell to the floor. She grabbed her bicep, blood leaking through her fingers.

“TenTen-chan!” Sakura yelled as she hurried toward TenTen. Her path was quickly blocked by Minako’s last remaining female comrade who jumped over her, grabbed her dress at the shoulders, and used the momentum to throw her over the woman’s shoulder and into a nearby support beam.

Sakura coughed a small amount of blood before wiping her mouth and standing back up again. Breathing heavily, she looked to where TenTen was and saw her get hit with Sanza’s arm again; this time right across the stomach. “Dammit, I can’t get to her. If only there were two of me.” Her eyes flashed wide open as she had an idea.

Ox, serpent, hare, dragon. “Tamashii Guujin No Jutsu!” Sakura felt a bit light headed, but as she looked to her right she knew her jutsu had worked. Next to her was a second Sakura. It resembled her, but it looked like it had been taken out of a black and white photo. Sakura appeared satisfied at having pulled off the jutsu.

The woman Sakura had been fighting looked surprised for a moment, but quickly recovered and brought down her kunai in a wide sweeping motion. The black and white Sakura raised its own dark kunai and blocked the attack.

Sakura ran to help TenTen. She gathered chakra to her hand and punched Sanza in his side, sending him flying.

TenTen collapsed to her knees. “Arigato.”

Sakura laced her arm under TenTen’s. “Here, lean on me.”

TenTen nodded and the two girls walked in tandem to the far side of the room.

As Sakura began healing TenTen’s stomach, TenTen watched the black and white Sakura fight. “Neh, Sakura? Why does your bunshin look so weird?”

Sakura smiled. “Because that’s not a bunshin. It’s part of my bloodline limit.”

“Bloodline limit!? Since when do you have a bloodline limit?”

“I just found out myself, a month or so ago. My spirit puppet is better than a bunshin. It doesn’t disappear unless I get knocked out. I can only make one though, and it takes a lot of chakra,” Sakura replied as she switched to healing TenTen’s arm.

“Very cool,” TenTen said with a grin.

Sakura moved to start on TenTen’s foot when she felt a hand on hers. “The foot’s not that bad. We need to get back to the fight,” TenTen said as she pushed Sakura’s hand away.

Sakura nodded and stood up. “Let’s go then.”

Minako hopped backwards to dodge Hinata’s Jyuken. “Damn, she’s fast for such a little thing. Time to get serious.” Horse, bird, tiger. “Katon: Jiyuuryuusen Goukakyuu no Jutsu!” A stream of fire, much thinner than a normal Goukakyuu no Jutsu, shot out at Hinata.

Hinata’s eyes widened and she threw her arms in front of her face in preparation for the pain. But the pain never came. Instead she heard a boy screaming and opened her eyes to find Naruto covering her with his body, protecting her from the blast. “NARUTO-KUN!!” she shrieked, tears filling her eyes.

Minako’s eyes were as wide as they could get. She dropped her hands to her sides. “No....”

The back of Naruto’s clothes were gone, completely burned away from the waist up. His back, shoulders, and arms were all a horrible shade red and covered with bleeding blisters. With tears streaming down her face, Hinata quickly, yet gently, lowered him to the floor. Working very hard to control her emotions, she began healing him.

“STOP FIGHTING!” Minako yelled.

Merely out of the oddness of the command, everyone froze in their tracks.

“Stop fighting. I don’t want to risk her losing her concentration,” Minako explained as she stared at Hinata and Naruto.

Upon seeing what had caused Minako to stop the fight, the Konoha team ran to Naruto’s side amid a chorus of his name yelled in various ways.

“I...I don’t understand. Why did I get burned?” Naruto gasped out hoarsely.

“What do you mean, “Why did I get burned?”! It’s because you jumped in front of fire, Dobe!” Sasuke yelled with irritation and worry.

“You don’t understand Sasuke,” Kakashi said, “Naruto has never been burned before.”

“What?”

“The Kyuubi protected him from heat. Why do you think you couldn’t kill him with your fire jutsus?”

Sasuke gritted his teeth and looked down at the memory.

“Not only that, but he doesn’t know how to heal himself. The Kyuubi always did it for him,” Kakashi added.

“Hinata-chan...It won’t stop burning,” Naruto croaked out as tears of pain filled his eyes. He had never hurt so badly for so long in his entire life.

“This isn’t good. The burns just keep progressing!” Hinata thought in near panic.

Minako had both hands over her mouth, sobbing loudly. “Please...Please don’t let him die....” she begged Hinata.

Hinata’s head snapped upwards. She glared at Minako with eyes that told her that if she didn’t shut up, she would be the one who would not survive.

Minako took an instinctive step backwards. “She...she loves him....”

“He’s getting weaker....What am I missing!?” she thought. “Byakugan!” Through her enhanced vision she saw that Naruto’s heart was fibrillating. “Oh no!” She increased the amount of healing chakra to the burns, but it didn’t help; his heart stopped. “NO! Sakura-san! Help me! He’s dying!”

Angry at herself for not thinking of helping sooner, Sakura dropped to her knees and pushed all the chakra she could into Naruto’s body. “Please don’t die. Please don’t die.”

The combined healing powers of both girls began to weave back together the damaged skin and muscles, but it was to no avail. Naruto drew in a large, shaky breath...and then lay silent.

Hinata shook her head in disbelief. “No...n-n-no! NARUTO-KUUUUUUUN!”
.........TO BE CONTINUED

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* Dives back into reader proof room and adds several new locks.*