The embrace broke as slowly as it had begun. Kurenai pulled away, her hands still on Naruto's shoulders, her face tight with pain. Reality, with its sharp edges and bloody consequences, came rushing back.
Naruto blinked, the blue of his eyes still clouded with confusion and exhaustion. The red, furious chakra receded; the rage dissipated and clarity returned in a rush, leaving him feeling empty and trembling. His body felt hollow, his muscles shaking from an effort he barely remembered making. He looked at the bodies of their enemies scattered across the clearing, then at the woman in front of him.
And then he truly saw her. He saw the dark fabric of her uniform soaked in an even darker red. He saw how she clutched her side, her knuckles white from the pressure.
"Your wound..." his voice came out hoarse, barely a whisper.
Kurenai attempted a smile, but it was more of a pained grimace.
"It's nothing, Naruto. I'm fine. We have to move."
"What do you mean, it's nothing? You're bleeding everywhere!" Panic began to seep into his voice, sharp and young. "Let me see!"
With a gentleness that contradicted his panic, he helped her sit on the damp trunk of a fallen tree. His hands shook as he carefully moved her hand away to examine the damage. The cut was deep, a vicious gash that started just below her ribs and curved toward her back. Blood flowed from it, not in gushes, but steadily and alarmingly.
"This... this is my fault," Naruto murmured, the guilt crushing him. "If I had been stronger, if they hadn't cornered me..."
"No."
The word was so firm, so full of a jonin's authority, that it silenced him immediately. Kurenai looked at him, and despite the pain clouding her red eyes, her gaze was incredibly clear.
"Don't say that, Naruto. Ever. What happened was my choice. My duty as the shinobi in command is to protect my team. I saw a threat to you and I acted. End of story. A leader makes decisions, and I made mine. Don't you dare take that away from me by carrying guilt that doesn't belong to you. Understood?"
He swallowed hard. The lump in his throat was so thick it hurt. He nodded slowly.
"Yes, sensei."
She held his gaze for another moment, evaluating him.
"Naruto... what happened..."
He looked away, his eyes fixed on the muddy water at his feet. His memories were a blur, a confusing smudge.
"I don't know," he said softly. "I don't know what that was. I just... I just saw you fall and I felt... rage. So much rage. I don't remember much else."
He saw the fear in his own eyes reflected in the water. The fear of having become a monster.
"Did I... did I hurt you?" he asked, not daring to look at her.
The silence stretched for a second. Kurenai reached out her hand and lifted his chin, forcing him to meet her eyes.
"You saved my life, Naruto," she said, her voice gentle. "That's what you did. That power... it's a part of you. We'll have to understand it, learn to control it. But today, it kept us alive. Don't be afraid of it."
He wanted to believe her. Desperately. But the memory of the animalistic growl that had escaped his own throat still made his skin crawl.
Kurenai gritted her teeth, a hiss of pain escaping as she tried to move.
"We have to get out of here. We can't stay in the open."
"You can't walk," Naruto said, his tone turning practical, the needs of the mission overriding his own internal turmoil. "Lean on me. I'll carry you."
"Naruto, you're exhausted. You used an amount of chakra..."
"I can do it!" he interrupted, his usual stubbornness returning. "You said it was your choice to protect me. Well, now it's my choice to get you out of here. So let me help you!"
For the first time since the battle ended, Kurenai smiled. A genuine, though tired, smile.
"Alright. But if you fall, I promise I'll remind you of it for the rest of your life."
Very carefully, Naruto put her arm over his shoulders and helped her to her feet. Kurenai's weight rested almost entirely on him. They began their slow, painful journey out of the swamp, leaving the silence and the bodies of their enemies behind.
*****
A tense silence, thick with the promise of violence, had fallen over the town's main street. On one side stood over a hundred thugs and mercenaries. On the other, barely forty villagers, armed with the tools of their trades: harpoons, hammers, oars, and a fragile, newfound determination.
Between them, two figures stood out: a boy with dried tears of fury on his cheeks, and a young ninja with a dog at his side, his posture aggressive, ready to pounce.
A burly man with a greasy beard and a scimitar on his shoulder stepped forward from Gato's army.
"Is this a joke?" he roared, his voice echoing down the street. "Look at this, boys. Fishermen with sticks and their little crybaby leader. Gato pays us to kill ninjas, not to clean fish."
Some of his men laughed, the sound coarse and full of contempt. The villagers' confidence wavered. Fear, cold and familiar, began to creep back into their hearts.
Kiba watched their shoulders slump, their grips on their makeshift weapons falter. He cursed under his breath. Morale was everything.
"Don't listen to them!" he shouted, his voice a sharp, commanding bark. "We don't have to beat all of them! We just have to hold out!"
He turned to the villagers, his brown eyes sweeping over their frightened faces.
"Don't charge head on! Use the side streets! The narrow alleys are our advantage! Their numbers mean nothing in there! Two of you can stop five of them in a corridor! Fight on your home ground! Protect your homes!"
The leader of the thugs stopped laughing.
"You talk a lot for a kid," he spat. "Finish them! I want the boy's head as a trophy!"
The army of thugs let out a war cry and charged. The villagers flinched back instinctively, panic about to break their ranks.
"Now, Inari!" Kiba yelled.
Inari, who had been trembling, took a deep breath. He remembered his father's face. He remembered Kurenai's gaze. He opened his mouth and screamed with all the might in his small lungs.
"FOR THE LAND OF WAVES!"
The cry, high pitched and childish, was surprisingly powerful. It cut through the roar of the thugs and ignited the courage of the others. An old fisherman beside him, harpoon in hand, repeated the cry, his voice a gravelly roar.
"FOR THE LAND OF WAVES!"
The shout spread rapidly through the villagers. Their faces, transformed by a mixture of fear and fury, they raised their tools.
The first wave of thugs crashed against the thin line of villagers. Chaos erupted.
Kiba didn't wait.
"Let's go, Akamaru! Fang Over Fang!"
Together, they launched into the attack, spinning and striking with claws and fangs. They smashed into the flank of the enemy charge, right at its center. The impact was devastating. Kiba tore through their ranks with brutal force, sending three men flying with broken bones before they even knew what hit them. Akamaru moved around him, biting ankles, tearing at arms, a lethal distraction.
Kiba's tactic worked. The frontal charge was disrupted. The villagers, emboldened, began to follow the plan. A group of carpenters lured a dozen thugs into a narrow alley between two warehouses. The alley, barely wide enough for two men to walk side by side, became a deathtrap. The thugs couldn't swing their long swords. The carpenters' hammers and saws, however, were brutally effective at close range.
Elsewhere, a group of fishermen used their long nets to entangle their opponents, tripping them up and allowing others to beat them with heavy oars.
It was an ugly, desperate, and bloody battle. Villagers fell, their unarmored bodies no match for sharp steel. But for every villager who fell, they took a thug with them, or wounded two more. They were fighting with the fury of men with nothing left to lose.
Kiba was everywhere at once. He would appear wherever the villagers' lines were about to break, launch a quick, brutal attack to push the thugs back, and then move to the next crisis point. It was exhausting. He knew he couldn't keep up the pace forever. His chakra was draining at an alarming rate.
"There are too many of them!" he panted, dodging an axe swing that buried itself in the wooden post beside him.
Akamaru barked a warning. Kiba turned and saw the greasy bearded leader. The man had ignored the main fight and was carving a path through the crowd, his eyes fixed on a single target.
Inari.
The boy had stayed near the entrance to the main street, serving as an inspiration and a rallying point for the villagers. He was a symbol. And the leader of the thugs knew that if he destroyed that symbol, the villagers' will would break.
"Akamaru, go!" Kiba shouted.
But he was too far, pinned down by three thugs who had surrounded him. Akamaru barked and ran, but other mercenaries blocked his path.
The bearded man grinned, raising his scimitar. He was only a few feet from Inari, who stared at him with wide eyes, paralyzed by fear. A villager tried to intervene, but the leader swatted him aside with the pommel of his sword, sending him to the ground with a fractured skull.
"Game over, little hero," the man growled.
He raised the sword for the final blow.
The journey out of the swamp was agony. Every step Naruto took made Kurenai flinch in pain, though she tried to hide it with a stoic silence. His arm was soaked in her blood.
*****
"We have to stop," Naruto said finally, his own breath coming in gasps. "You need to get that wound wrapped."
"We don't have time," she answered, her voice strained. "And we don't have medical supplies."
"I have this."
Naruto stopped and carefully helped Kurenai lean against a tree. He reached into his pouch and pulled out the small roll of bandages and antiseptic ointment that every genin carried. It wasn't much, but it was better than nothing.
"Lift your shirt," he ordered, his voice surprisingly firm.
Kurenai hesitated for an instant, then nodded. With a careful motion, she lifted the torn and bloodstained fabric. Naruto held his breath. The wound was worse than it looked. It was deep and still bleeding slowly.
With clumsy but determined hands, he began to clean the wound as best he could with a piece of clean cloth and water from his canteen. Kurenai hissed in pain, her fingers digging into the tree bark, but she didn't complain.
"I'm sorry," Naruto mumbled as he applied the ointment.
"What are you sorry for?" she asked, her eyes closed.
"Because I'm a genin. You're supposed to take care of me, not the other way around. I'm supposed to learn from you, not... not almost get you killed."
Kurenai opened her eyes. She watched him as he awkwardly wrapped the bandage around her torso, trying to apply the right amount of pressure.
"Naruto, today you learned the most important lesson any shinobi can learn," she said quietly.
"What? How to unleash the monster inside?" he replied bitterly.
"No. You learned what it means to protect someone you care about. What it feels like when someone else's safety becomes more important than your own. That fury... that power... it wasn't born from hatred. It was born from loyalty. It was born from concern. That's why it didn't consume you."
He finished tying the bandage. It wasn't a professional job, but the bleeding seemed to have slowed.
"How do you know?" he asked.
"Because I felt it," she answered. "When you held me. I didn't feel a monster. I felt my student, scared and relieved."
They stood in silence for a moment. The only sound was their breathing and the faint, distant sound of what seemed like shouting.
They both tensed.
"What is that?" Naruto whispered.
Kurenai strained to hear. It was shouting. The unmistakable sound of a battle. And it was coming from the direction of the town.
"Kiba... Hinata... Shino..." The names of her students escaped her lips in a worried murmur.
A new urgency washed over them. It was no longer just about their own survival.
"We have to hurry," Kurenai said, her voice filled with new determination.
Naruto nodded, helping her to her feet again. The pain and exhaustion were still there, but now they were fueled by worry for their friends. They resumed their march, moving faster this time, toward the distant sound of the battle for the Land of Waves.