"Good morning," Naruto said to the assembled village leaders, body guards, and the trio of Akatsuki visitors.
Naruto had discussed things with all the leaders in the past few days as they'd arrived and the inevitable political maneuvering started up, doing a lot of 'promising nothing' in the process, but had also intentionally not gone into any significant details about today. During those talks he'd moved to a 'first name' basis with everyone other than the Tsuchikage though, who was reserving that for 'if he proved himself'.
"My understanding is that Gaara and Temari are planning on sitting things out," Naruto continued. "But I honestly think that you could use all the help you can get."
"I highly doubt that my skills have improved to the point where I can beat you with the handicap of basically not being able to use my sand remotely effectively," Gaara answered. "Temari, as much as she's improved, would also be unable to stand up to you. As such, I see no reason to waste our time."
"More fighters, even weaker ones, would still likely be appreciated."
"The kid just said that he and his sister won't be able to wear you down much at all," the Tsuchikage retorted. "Why bother?"
"One on one? Perhaps not. But I believe that you will find that my agreement to spar never actually said individually. I decided that this is going to be a 'me against everyone else' match, including any of your bodyguards and the three S-Class missing-nin here that wish to join us, because I want to show everyone that it would be rank idiocy to gang up on Uzushio again."
"There's no way," A said. "You're undoubtedly stronger than our last match, but not 'fight seventeen of us at once' stronger."
"I've never put my full power into a fight. Not once have I fought while holding nothing back, not even against you, and I don't think I'm going to need to do so today either. I'm just willing to get much closer than I usually do to prove a point. And for the benefit of the Tsuchikage?" A quick formation of a dust release cylinder was done, though it was deployed into the air instead of at anyone. "That particular cleanup technique is decently well known here."
"I expected that," the Tsuchikage said with a sigh. "And you're probably able to use the defense against it too."
"Yep. I figure an agreement that neither of us bother to use it would be best for the day."
"Agreed."
"Perhaps we should give him a quick test," A said after a moment of most of them absorbing that dust release was more common than expected. "If he can dodge my fastest punch then he has a shot at taking on more than one of us. Otherwise he hasn't even reached the level his old man managed."
"If you want to throw a slow-ass punch at me then feel free," Naruto quipped.
Instead of giving any warning, A went from 'standing still' to 'wrapped in lightning chakra and darting forward' in an instant. Naruto filled himself with wind and lightning at the same time, then held his position as though he'd not noticed the attack coming until A was fully committed. Only then did Naruto dodge to the side slightly, grabbing the man's arm and using his momentum against him in a throw while tripping him up at the same time.
There was a moment of silence as A flew, his trajectory entirely out of his control, before he crashed into the ground a good distance away.
"I think he needs to work on his speed more," Naruto finally said.
"Dude," Darui said. "That was more than just dodging."
"He left an opening and should be happy. After all, I just threw him instead of sticking a kunai into his side."
A ran up to them a moment later. "I'm convinced that he's got skills, but want to see what he can really do."
"If I'm being honest," Gaara said, shaking his head. "I still don't think Temari and I stand a chance at that level, and I am unfortunately still operating at an incredible disadvantage against Naruto in general."
"I didn't even blink and I still missed what happened," Temari added. "Probably another couple of years before I'd be comfortable with entering a battle at that level."
"At least you two have the sense to know when it isn't worth trying to fight," Mei said. "I'm questioning if I'm ready for this, but don't think I can back down."
Kimimaro had signaled Orochimaru during that exchange and got what looked like a confirmation back. The man then half-bowed towards Naruto. "Excuse me, but I can't help but notice that it looks like you're wearing multiple clan symbols?"
Naruto nodded. "Each clan that I'm a recognized member of, yes. I was born an Uzumaki, but have demonstrated everything needed to be considered a full Hyuga, Senju, and Uchiha and was placed onto their rolls because of it."
Orochimaru seemed to be the only one that put the pieces together, beyond Shisui and Jiraiya that already knew, and his eyes went wide. "Everything?"
Naruto nodded. "And then some, without needing implanted eyes like Nagato here has."
"Implanted?"
"If you want more details then ask him. Oh, I was nice enough to make this a temporary exclusion area so that those of you with summons can use them."
Nagato frowned as he considered options while the video feeds to each village were being checked.
"So, Leader-sama," Kisame said. "Funny seeing you here as yourself, but what's the plan?"
"I suspect that any significant plans are going out the window as soon as the fight begins," Nagato admitted. "Because young Naruto seems to hold all the information."
"He wasn't surprised when Sasori and I gravitated to you."
"No, he wasn't, nor that Orochimaru shifted this way either." A glance at Sasori showed that he was working on unsealing puppets. "This is going to be...interesting, and I suspect painful."
"Naruto was able to recover from being significantly cut by Kusanagi," Orochimaru added. "Seemingly overnight, but I can't say how much of that was his team compared to him. No real reports exist for any mission-related combat other than when Deidara and Sasori have sought him out either. The closest to a combat report was him summoning multiple giant toads to demolish a building, and he's never really seen using summons otherwise. We're running almost entirely on what he's done in exams and demonstration matches as he didn't seem to fight in Konoha's various zombie invasions. Even my personal encounter with him can't be trusted because he was operating under known self-induced limitations, but you do need to watch out for his killing intent."
"Because it manifests as paperwork," Konan said, frowning. "Nobody should be that comfortable with paperwork, but you made sure everyone was aware of that detail."
"...I don't know why you two have problems with paperwork," Nagato said.
"Because it eats up all the paper and all the time it can," Orochimaru answered. "It can be necessary, but that doesn't make it any easier to deal with."
"But you both know the shadow clone technique, don't you?"
"...yes?"
"Half the Uzumaki scrolls I've gotten my hands on with the instructions for it refer to it as the paperwork clone, which I thought was fitting as I realized that use within three hours of learning it from Jiraiya as a child."
Okay, it was honestly amusing seeing the looks on their faces at that. He wasn't sure how they'd missed the implications though, and was reasonably certain that Konan had seen him using the clones to do paperwork repeatedly.
"Suddenly I find myself incredibly jealous," Sasori said. "Because knowing that makes me think that his 'paperwork puppeteer' trick is sticking a clone into the puppets. Something that I'm never going to be able to do. It also makes me suspect that I'm very quickly going to find myself overwhelmed, and possibly without him bringing out a single puppet."
Orochimaru shivered after a moment. "The idiocy of overlooking that is going to haunt me for the rest of my life, but it creates a new problem. Knowing that means that Naruto is likely a shadow clone specialist, and after being bonded to the remains of a tailed beast he probably has enough chakra to trivially create hundreds to thousands of the things at decent fighting levels. An instant one-shinobi army, with who knows how many tricks, and if he's been using them to train then he could be getting years to decades of training weekly. Add in his insane and impossible collection of bloodlines and this is going to be much, much harder than I was anticipating."
"At least Leader-sama has the rinnegan to even things up a bit," Kisame noted.
That had Orochimaru laugh in a horribly self-deprecating tone. "Naruto is apparently a full member of the Hyuga, Uchiha, and Senju clans. The first two, without marriage, imply that he has the byakugan and sharingan. We can likewise assume full Hashirama Senju wood release for the latter. My research says you potentially need both the sharingan and a connection to the Senju clan to awaken the rinnegan, though the Uzumaki clan might work on its own as well. Based on that?"
"We can assume that I'm barely going to slow him down," Nagato said with a frown. A natural holder of dojutsu generally found them much easier, and less draining, to use than one with implanted eyes...
Naruto's opening moves were to take to the air while forming a hundred clones and unsealing a hundred puppets. Each of the clones then created a clone in a puppet. Only after doing this did he release the suppression of his chakra and activate the sharingan. Another hundred clones were created with the sharingan active, and by then he was dodging ranged attacks. It seemed that most of the group he was arrayed against weren't ready for him to be in the air though, and the attacks were trivial to dodge. The Tsuchikage, Konan, and Nagato were the exceptions, all taking to the air, and it looked like Deidara was preparing a bird.
Bumping up to mangekyo sharingan was followed by another hundred clones, and then he went full rinnegan and made five hundred clones, a hundred of which were specially-prepared paperwork paperwork clones. He personally pulled out the gunbai he'd grabbed from the kamui dimension, giving his opponents a decent chance of spotting the real him, and started throwing spreads of kunai. Several of his clones pulled out the pair of large and tanto Kubikiribocho blades as well, but for the moment they were all staying in the air. Only the puppets broke rank, moving to engage with Sasori's.
The Tsuchikage created a collection of rock clones, as well as formed rock onto one of his fists, as he moved to engage with Naruto. Nagato summoned a large bird-like creature, and Konan had shifted to be more 'paper' than 'person' with a healthy collection of explosive tags in the mix. Three of Naruto's clones met her and turned to paper themselves, using her shock as an opening for intermixing their paper with her paper to create massive problems for her.
Those still on the ground had dodged all of the kunai, and Jiraiya had summoned Fukasaku and Shima to enter sage mode with their help. As soon as he was stable in sage mode he reacted in shock to the collection of thrown kunai, which was when a number of Naruto's clones decided to start using them for their actual purpose of being Hiraishin targets. This was conveniently timed to interrupt Darui, who was likely preparing to use 'storm release' as a long-range option to attack them in the air.
A had scowled when Naruto had taken to the air. Hitting flying targets was a problem for most shinobi. He'd then paled when noticing the sharingan, mangekyo sharingan, and rinnegan being used. Either that was an illusion to play mind games, or this had just gone from 'interesting fight' to 'likely curbstomp'.
Having standard kunai thrown down at them in a haphazard fashion, not even bothering with the rumored 'homing and exploding' kunai trick that the Uzu Anbu could pull off, felt like an insult. As though saying that Naruto was free to use ineffective tactics because he was otherwise untouchable.
"Think you can use my water to make your lightning more effective at range?" Mei asked. "Ao doesn't have anything likely to help pick them out of the sky."
"Doubt it will help," A admitted. "The kid's good enough with wind to negate my lightning. Anyone not able to do so could very well have killed themselves trying to throw me like he did."
"...fuck."
"Can't shake the feeling that we've already missed something too."
A few seconds later he got his answer for what they'd missed as all of a sudden the kid's clones were doing a Yellow Flash impression between all the kunai. His lightning chakra barely let him keep up with the initial onslaught, at least defensively. There was no time to actually counterattack. Mei and Jiraiya both used a combination of lava and collaboration wider-area tricks to destroy kunai around them, only for the kunai to turn into shrapnel grenades as they impossibly exploded.
It looked like Darui had dropped into black lightning defensive measures, not having gotten his laser circus going in time to attempt to hit the airborne clones.
Kisame grinned as he fended off legions of clones, he and Samehada both loving the challenge. Even if the chakra in the clones was unusually hard for Samehada to eat due to some kind of barrier on them, one that also made them impossibly difficult to shred to pieces. At the same time, these clones were sticking almost entirely to kenjutsu with their Kubikiribocho blades, likely knowing that feeding chakra to Samehada was simply making their job harder.
Evening the playing field was likely going to require bringing out water, but with an opponent that could fly that wasn't going to be as useful as it might normally be. That and the original was very obviously still in the air. There was only so much a ground-bound fighter could actually do against a flying opponent, making the best-case scenario a stalemate and the worst-case scenario being that the kid had a way to overcome someone who could absorb basically any chakra-based trick thrown at them.
...unfortunately, Kisame assumed that the latter was going to be the case. Leader-sama had options, and the kid had just shown that he and his clones have their own weird sharingan and rinnegan options.
Kimimaro had needed to immediately drop into a mixture of the Dance of the Larch and Dance of the Willow to defend himself against the clones, but was heavily disturbed when the clones were impossibly solid. Their use of blades, various elemental techniques, and ability to get out of attempted traps by simply vanishing to reappear somewhere else left him almost entirely on the defensive. He almost didn't notice pulling on his seal to enter the first stage of the transformation, needing the added power just to survive.
Lord Orochimaru didn't seem to be faring much better, constantly using clones and substitutions to a degree that was itself awe-inspiring. But even that wasn't enough to provide suitable openings to bring the attack to the clones, merely weather the constant flow of strikes from hundreds of opponents that all seemed to operate perfectly in sync with one another.
Consciously moving to stage two of the seal sped Kimimaro up just enough to start attempting counterattacks, only for the clones to dodge or ignore them.
This was an opponent that wasn't going to be defeated with normal methods, and he started to try to come up with a new strategy before he was overwhelmed. This was made harder by knowing that the real opponent was still in the air, high enough to be out of reach of anything he could currently throw that way. Lord Orochimaru wasn't known for significant options for engaging flying opponents either, and they didn't have any of those from Sound with them that could use various options to fly to negate that weakness.
Jiraiya hadn't expected to be put so solidly on the defensive this quickly, with Shisui body-flickering around like a madman trying to avoid being skewered.
"Told you that this was a waste of time," Shima said as Jiraiya dodged to the side of a ball of lava, ducked under a ball of wind, and hardened his hair to block a sword strike.
"Naruto trains more than anyone else we've ever heard of," Fukasaku added as Shima blocked a few shuriken for them. "When we get him started on sage training we're thinking it'll be at most a month before he's combat-ready."
"Would've been nice to have a warning about Hiraishin kunai that look like normal ones," Jiraiya said before spitting out some oil. Fukasaku hit the oil with fire and Shima added in wind to attempt to capture three clones in the explosion, but they were gone before the explosion got anywhere.
"He's been holding back more than expected during training though," Shima added. "This speed exceeds everything he normally gets close to."
"No weights or resistance seal," Fukasaku noted. "Which is making his hits significantly stronger too."
"Ah. Right."
"Never thought I'd think that Duy and Gai would be outdone."
...okay, it was saying something that the two toads thought that Naruto was putting more effort into his weights than those two.
Onoki scowled as yet another attempt to hit Uzumaki was blocked by that blasted gunbai and turned into a blast of wind chakra to blow him back. Madara's gunbai, it looked like, which at least implied that the kid had stolen it from the man. That could be respected, at least, as could the fact that the kid was more maneuverable in the air than he had any right to be. Unfortunately, the kid also knew how to put on a show, very obviously not going for the quick win he very likely could've.
Instead, it felt like he was pulling another game like he had in the chunin exams. Let his opponents show their stuff before moving in for the win. Admirable in some ways, seemingly stupid in others, but absurdly effective in showing your strength when you pulled it off. Also infuriating to fight against, but they were on camera so putting on a flashy show made far too much sense.
Finding out that the kid had all the legendary dojutsu happily explained how he had all the elemental releases...if you ignored that his teammates and students also had all the elemental releases. No, it felt far more likely that the dojutsu were unrelated and it was more that the Uzumaki were insane with their own forbidden techniques for granting what should be bloodline skills. It would certainly help back up the rumors that Konoha had been giving out medical bloodlines.
A glance at the ground showed that Kurotsuchi had set up a defensive position with quicklime and water, but he sadly thought that it wasn't going to be anywhere near enough.
Through careful planning, use of over fifty mud clones, and countless replacements, Orochimaru had managed to drop a triple Rashomon gate summoning into place. Arranged so that the three would form a triangle around him, it gave him crucial time to catch his breath and plan further. Finding the information on the summoning-but-not technique of Hashirama's was proving to be incredibly valuable again.
At least until all three gates were sliced in two by a horizontal swing of what had to be Kusanagi. While that answered where the legendary sword had ended up, it wasn't nearly as helpful when it came to making headway in the battle. Removing the defense and the ability to build a better plan at the same time as the clones resumed their assault.
...despite the impossible odds, all he could really feel was pride in his grand-student, both in the power shown and the deviousness of letting them think they had a chance. After all, no wood release had even been used yet, nor had any of the esoteric sharingan or rinnegan abilities come into play unless countering someone else's attempts at the same.
That didn't help with planning, unfortunately. Naruto was a lot faster and more aware of his surroundings, staying out of reach, and not holding himself to a highly restricted set of options this time.
Shisui surprised himself when he managed to land a solid strike on one of the many clones running around, only to have it suddenly turn into stacks of paperwork. Forms he recognized as having been on his desk, in fact, which caused him to freeze up for a moment. That didn't stop him from noticing the explosive seals on the backsides of the forms though, and he was able to get out of range before they started exploding. A quick glance around showed similar things happening with the other Kage and Orochimaru, forming a psychological attack fitting a master of paperwork.
Actually, it looked like it had been used on Jiraiya as well, and had hit the man harder for some reason. A stray sheet that hadn't exploded yet looked like it contained the man's research notes, which was probably devastatingly effective even if it was almost guaranteed to be a copy made on the spot instead of originals.
The explosions did provide just enough of a distraction from the attacks against him to concentrate though, and a moment later Shisui was clad in his Susanoo, minus legs. Only for two of Naruto's clones to manifest a complete Susanoo each.
"I hate bullshit sharingan hax," Shisui swore, easily ignoring his own use of one.
Deidara honestly wasn't surprised that he couldn't stand up to Uzumaki's clones. They were able to fly, trivially shut down his bombs with lightning release, ignored his own explosions, blew up on a whim themselves, and at least three had turned into stacks of explosive tags.
It was awesome, beautiful, and annoying as hell to fight all at the same time. Sasori wasn't exactly faring well either against the impossible puppets though, Konan was almost in full retreat from the clones using her own 'turn into paper' trick against her, Nagato seemed to be in a 'everything he can do Uzumaki can do at least as well, if not better' dojutsu war, and all of this felt like Uzumaki was playing a game with them. On camera, showing live in all of the big five nations in addition to Ame and Sound.
Sometimes you made the art, but Deidara wasn't accustomed to being part of someone else's incredibly well-played art like this. Even if this was at least the second time it had happened. Uzumaki had turned this into a performance screaming 'do not fuck with Uzushiogakure'. The problem was, recognizing that just made it all the more obvious that the 'finale' was likely to be a spectacular show of power. When it came it was likely to be humiliating while also being essentially impossible to stop.
The only saving grace was that this wasn't as humiliating as the previous time, when he'd been recruited into Akatsuki. Played like a drum, and beaten like one too, only to be enticed with more steady work and ability to show off the Art of Explosions in new ways afterwards. The art here was at least primarily directed at others, even if as a necessity of that it was also showing those participating that they had no hope of winning as well.
In the absence of tailed beasts, it was an incredibly compelling demonstration that Uzushiogakure was not to be trifled with.
Sasori was having trouble keeping control of the twenty puppets he had left, and was astonished at some of what he'd seen Naruto's puppets manage today. One of his humanoid puppets had avoided an attack through dissolving into bird puppets, only to reassemble itself a minute later. Another had split into four smaller animals before reforming. Neither puppet was obviously a combination puppet before that happened, or after reforming. All of the puppets were flying and taking hits that should be impossible, and they were outright immune to iron sand getting in their joints. Both due to a rubber material in the joints and the iron sand just not being able to penetrate a barrier surrounding the puppets.
At least he'd avoided having his own puppets turned against him through chakra signature seals that prevented anyone else's chakra threads from attaching. It was a trivial security measure that he'd never considered before, but had already proven itself invaluable.
On the other side of things, this 'stick a clone into the puppet to control it' trick was far more powerful than it seemed it should be, because the puppet prevented the clone from dispelling on a good hit. Each clone had full awareness instead of splitting attention, and it left the original to do whatever he wanted without having to worry about the puppets themselves. Add in communication techniques for coordination and it was essentially the ultimate puppetry technique. It just happened to require more chakra than Sasori had and he'd never been able to manage to create that kind of clone to begin with.
He would be researching alternatives though.
Konan had finally recovered enough of her wits to start to overcome the stupid little upstart's paper trick. He'd obviously copied her own ability somehow, but she had a lifetime of using the ability to turn into paper and wasn't going down that easily. Unfortunately, getting the upper hand in the paper battle had caused the clones to flip around to using elemental attacks, and it turned out that they were fireproof while she wasn't.
It was a bad day to fight primarily through becoming and manipulating paper, apparently, and this entire dance was keeping her away from helping Nagato. In fact, she was fairly certain that the blasted clones that had gone for her at the start had done so specifically to isolate her, as it seemed that they'd worked to isolate everyone. The only one seemingly going after the actual Naruto appeared to be the Tsuchikage, everyone else dealing with clones.
Mei ducked under a sword, spat lava at the next clone only to have it respond with ice, hit the ice with steam, and then reinforced the earth wall on the other side of her. Keeping the kunai far enough away from her was at least helping slow down the attacks, but she had no way to get at anything other than the clones near the ground and they weren't leaving any reasonable openings. Worse, she was positive that there were clones underground now, moving into position for something that was likely going to be a bad thing for their chance of victory.
As if they had any chance of victory. Ao was already down, having been Gentle-fisted into unconsciousness seemingly as a test of his proficiency with his purloined eye.
Her hands were starting to cramp from the rapid-fire hand seals she was using for various things she normally didn't use day to day but needed in order to reinforce her defenses. A couple of water dragons did little to nothing against the next line of clones, one of which seemed to just force the water to flow around it, and she found herself needing to dodge and block again.
Nagato flinched as yet another attempt to pull something out that he could use against Naruto failed. Half of his long-range arsenal was trivially negated by using the same technique against him or wasn't usable against another rinnegan user at all and the rest of his tactics weren't really suitable for going up against a dozen rinnegan-bearing clones.
He had a new appreciation for what it was probably like fighting him normally. Except that this was probably worse. Every rinnegan-bearing clone added its sight to the rest, they worked in perfect harmony with one another, and every one of them could use the entire set of rinnegan abilities on top of several sharingan abilities. They were also much more maneuverable in the air than he was and he was reasonably certain that each clone had more chakra than he did.
It was also obvious that their use of the rinnegan was less draining than his own, entirely because they had their own eyes while he had Madara's.
And all of that paled in comparison to the insult of the group of clones off in the corner that appeared to have set up a barbeque, floating in the air, and were cooking a meal. Just ignoring the battle, completely secure that they wouldn't be interrupted. And as far as he could tell? They were right, because every time he tried to send anything that way to prove them wrong another clone would intercept, redirect, or otherwise negate it.
Naruto felt that forty-five minutes of combat had been enough to make his point and triggered the final phase of things. Chains burst from every flying clone that was fighting while wood release was used by the clones that had slipped underground. Grabbing those in the air was the harder part of that, but there were also fewer of them. Konan and Shisui were the hardest to pin down directly, the former slipping through chains as paper and the latter body-flickering too effectively. Orochimaru had been easier because the clones had merely targeted him and his mud clones. On the flipside, Nagato and Kisame took the longest to knock out once they were pinned down, the former living up to being an Uzumaki and the latter having gathered quite a bit of chakra during the fight. Not to mention breaking back out of things twice before the clones figured out how to properly bind his arms and he was finally knocked out.
With everyone knocked out, Naruto had his clones start cleaning up the area and gathering all the combatants, plus bringing the food they'd been preparing down to the ground. Fifteen minutes later the entire area looked untouched, the obvious injuries on everyone were taken care of, and a set of tables had been brought out. Then he started waking them up, his clones offering them a quick snack from the food they'd prepared.
"Well that was humiliating," the Tsuchikage said as he settled into a seat.
"At least you just had your ego punctured a little," Sasori retorted. "It's going to take weeks to rebuild my puppets."
"They were crap anyway," Naruto challenged as one of his clones slapped together a puppet from scratch. Not containing his personal seals, simply sticking to Sasori's designs but with better tolerances and materials.
"Did you just improve on one of Sasori's puppets in front of him?" Gaara asked as he approached with Temari behind him.
"Rebuilt one of the ones I destroyed without it being utter crap, but yes."
"It should take more than a minute to build a proper puppet," Sasori challenged, even as he collected said puppet to examine.
"Not sure I'd call that a proper puppet. Barely has any of the features I'd want in one of mine."
"So he gets a replacement puppet," Mei said. "What do the rest of us get?"
A minute later there was a folded t-shirt in front of each of them. Looking confused, they all lifted the shirts and he was reasonably certain that they weren't really impressed with 'I lost to the Uzukage, and all I got was this lousy T-Shirt'.
