Sakura looked up. Two men and a woman stood in a large tree, their forehead protectors bearing a musical note symbol. They were ninja from Otogakure. One of them was wrapped up tightly, with only one eye showing.
The three stood high in the tree, looking down at the four Konoha brats on the ground.
"If you agree, throw over the mission scroll!" the young woman said with a soft laugh.
"Huh? Okay..." Sakura looked at Sasuke, whose eyes were closed as he lay in her arms, then at the unconscious Naruto nearby and Rock Lee, who had collapsed on the ground and was also unconscious. Though she was unwilling, she did not want anything else to happen. All she wanted now was to take her two teammates to the hospital.
Sakura reached into Sasuke's pouch, took out the scroll, and tossed it over.
A hand intercepted the scroll in midair.
"Absolutely not!"
Everyone looked over. Naruto was down on one knee, clutching the scroll in his left hand.
"We absolutely can't give up!" Naruto gritted his teeth and pushed himself upright. "I keep my word. That's my ninja way, the ninja way of Naruto Uzumaki!"
"Naruto!" Sakura said urgently. "But you're all injured!"
Naruto turned to Sakura and said, stressing every word:
"I. Will. Never. Run. Away. Again!"
"Then there's nothing we can do. I'll deal with this one. Zaku, go kill Sasuke," the man wrapped in bandages said.
"All right!" Zaku spread his hands. "Even if our target can't move, he's still a Konoha genius!"
The three jumped down from the tree.
The young woman said with a light laugh:
"Then I'll take the pink-haired one. That glossy hair of hers has been getting on my nerves for a while. She'd be better off training than spending all that time on her hair."
Zaku walked over to Rock Lee, pointed at his unconscious body on the ground, and asked:
"Dosu Kinuta, should we kill this bushy-browed guy?"
Dosu Kinuta glanced over with his lone eye.
"It's no trouble. Kill him!"
"You really are cruel! Hehe!" Zaku raised his fist and brought it down toward Rock Lee on the ground.
Whoosh!
A shuriken shot toward him!
"Watch out!" The young female ninja shoved Zaku aside!
A shuriken sank into the grass beside Rock Lee.
The three turned to look. A boy in white stood in a tree, his eyes bearing distinctive white pupils. He was Neji Hyuga, a Konoha ninja. Beside him was a girl with her hair tied into two buns, his teammate Tenten.
"Another Konoha genius?" Dosu Kinuta looked at Neji a short distance away. "Are you going to meddle?"
"If you kill those pieces of trash, that's none of my business. But you can't kill my teammate!" Neji walked down from the tree step by step.
"Then let's both compromise. We won't touch your teammate." Dosu Kinuta glanced at his teammates on either side. "We only need to kill those three brats!"
"Hmph..." Neji approached slowly. "If I let you kill Konoha ninja right in front of me, wouldn't that mean I was trash too?"
Dosu Kinuta's face twisted viciously. He raised his right arm across his body and pulled back his sleeve, revealing a metal arm guard dotted with small holes.
"Don't push your luck. We're not afraid of you. We just don't want extra trouble. If you insist on getting in our way, we don't mind killing one more Konoha genius!"
Neji stopped and stood still, frowning. "You can take the mission scroll."
"No!!" Naruto put the scroll back into his ninja tool pouch, gritting his teeth. "I won't give up on the mission!"
Neji looked at Naruto in surprise and said nothing more. Since the other party refused, he would not meddle. He walked forward and hoisted the unconscious Rock Lee onto his shoulder. The three Sound Ninja did not stop him.
Shinsei frowned slightly. Naruto really did not know how to adapt. But if he gave up that easily, he would not be Naruto Uzumaki.
Hashihime asked quietly, "What should we do? Are you going to help your friends?"
Shinsei replied just as quietly:
"No rush. Look, there are three more over there." He pointed in a direction.
Hashihime followed his finger. Sure enough, she could faintly make out three young ninja in a distant clearing, heading toward Naruto.
One boy had his hair tied in a tall pineapple-shaped ponytail, a girl had a blond ponytail, and a chubby boy kept stuffing something into his mouth.
"Wow, your eyesight is that good? You can see them from so far away! Are they your classmates too?"
Shinsei was about to answer when his head suddenly swayed. He hurriedly braced a hand against the tree trunk and shook his head several times.
A flood of memories surged into his mind.
Hashihime also let out a soft groan.
This was why Shinsei disliked leaving shadow clones active for too long. The moment a shadow clone was destroyed, it brought back not only a vast amount of memories, but also the pain of death. Only someone as thick-skinned as Naruto could use shadow clones without trouble.
Shinsei and Hashihime exchanged a look. Their shadow clones had completed their tasks splendidly.
Orochimaru's real body had indeed come after him. His priority in Orochimaru's mind really was higher than Sasuke's. He did not know whether to be happy or sad.
The Water Release: Kirin he had painstakingly developed had indeed performed well. Lasting so long in a fight against Orochimaru at full strength showed that this ninjutsu had great potential. But its shortcomings were obvious too, not to mention the extraordinarily precise control it required. In an environment without water, the amount of chakra this ninjutsu consumed was simply too great. When he created his shadow clone, he had allocated eighty percent of his chakra to it.
At present, eighty percent of Shinsei's chakra was roughly equivalent to the entire chakra reserves of eight Kakashis. Yet after using Water Release: Kirin just once with that much chakra, there was barely any left in his body.
This sort of ninjutsu was inherently not for people with small chakra reserves. Fortunately, his chakra reserves were still growing rapidly after he had successfully reached foundation establishment.
He really envied the Uchiha Clan's Sharingan, which could use Susanoo after reaching the Mangekyō stage. According to Shinsei's estimates, if he constructed that sort of ninjutsu himself without a Sharingan, it would require at least ten times as much chakra, and theirs was not even as difficult to control as his.
Neji had already gone far away with Rock Lee on his back and Tenten accompanying him.
Dosu Kinuta let his hands hang at his sides and sneered:
"Stupid brat, your Konoha genius has left. Aren't you afraid of dying?"
Naruto straightened up, tightly gripping his shuriken, and declared loudly and solemnly:
"I'll never give up on the mission, and I'll never let you hurt my comrades! That's my ninja way, the ninja way of Naruto Uzumaki!"
The young woman grinned. "Then which of your comrades will you choose?"
What?
Naruto turned to look. The female ninja had grabbed Sakura by the hair and held a shuriken to her neck.
I was still too careless. The enemy distracted me, and Sakura ended up being taken hostage.
"Choose. Do you want this pink-haired girl to live, or will you kill your teammate Sasuke with your own hands?"
Cold sweat broke out all over Naruto's body as he faced the agonizing choice.
Sakura struggled desperately, tears streaming down her face, while Sasuke lay on the ground nearby with his eyes tightly shut.
"Hehehe..." The female ninja wore a teasing expression. "Hurry up and choose. Is this girl someone you like? If you won't choose, I'll just kill her!"
Sakura or Sasuke?