Kimimaro's eyes widened slightly, he was surprised but not shocked. An unsettling smirk raised. "Do you truly think I wouldn't exercise caution when standing so close to a Sannin?"
Suddenly, Kimimaro's body softened, turning into a chalky substance. It was an Osteoblast Clone made of soft bone tissue. The clone liquefied, sticking on to Naruto's arms.
"You've improved a bit... correction quite a bit," Kimimaro's voice came from above.
Naruto looked up to see Kimimaro standing on the edge of a nearby rooftop, looking down at him. "I suppose you have permission to join my team."
"It is I who will decide who joins this team," Jiraiya interrupted. "Now, if you two are finished settling down, we have enemies to pursue."
Naruto gritted his mouth, but begrudgingly stood down.
Jiraiya turned his gaze toward Shino. "You're Shino Aburame, correct? What exactly do you have on the Akatsuki?"
Shino stepped forward, adjusting his glasses. "The information is precise, though limited. My female and male tracking insects share a telepathic link that spans across any distance, but they are few in words. Over a span of forty six hours, the male insects I planted on Kakuzu have only transmitted a total of ten words to its female mate."
"Let's hear them," Jiraiya said, his demeanor serious.
Shikamaru, Neji, Naruto, and Kimimaro closed on together, all eyes on Shino.
Shino closed his eyes, reciting the fragmented messages exactly as they had been received from the female insect. "Land of Rivers. Ten. Deidara. Pain. Statue. Concentric violet eyes." Shino opened his eyes, looking directly at Jiraiya. "I was only able to decode their current hideout."
Jiraiya seemed to stop breathing entirely at the mention of the last three words. Concentric violet eyes.
The color drained from the Jiraiya's face. A suffocating silence settled over him as stared at the ground, his mind racing back through his Second Shinobi war memories.
Concentric violet eyes... is it the Rinnegan?
"Is it Nagato?" Jiraiya whispered to himself, with a devastating realization. "Is he... part of this criminal organization too? or is this someone entirely new? or was he killed for possessing this eyes?"
~~
The tracking mission had been a disorganized mess from the start. Because Shino's female and male tracking insects were sluggish... they mostly remained asleep throughout the journey.... the team had little to go on besides a general direction.
They pushed their bodies, running for a full day before finally crossing into the borders of the Land of Rivers. Even then, navigating the treacherous terrain to pinpoint the Akatsuki hideout took an agonizingly long time.
Neji's veins bulged around his temples, his Byakugan strained from hours of continuous use in locating the hideout.
"Two kilometers out, at the eight o'clock position," Neji reported. "The hideout entrance is sealed. I can't peer directly through the barrier."
Jiraiya gave a solemn nod, raising a hand to signal the group. "Stay alert, everyone. We're walking into their stronghold."
As they closed the distance, a massive boulder came into view as it blocked the cave entrance, with a barrier tag. Jiraiya landed on top of the boulder and knelt to examine the formula, his eyes narrowing as he recognized the seal layout.
"It's a Five-Seal Barrier," he muttered grimly. "The enemy isn't trying to hide it. In fact, they've laid it bare precisely to force us to split up and undo the tags simultaneously. It's a textbook delay tactic."
"Naruto, have your shadow clones handle the other four tags," Jiraiya commanded. "We can't afford to waste time solving a maze. Wait for my signal, then pull all the seals at the exact same moment."
"Right!" Naruto yelled, instantly made four shadow clones. Guided by Neji's directions, the clones bolted in different directions toward the scattered seal locations.
Once Neji confirmed that every clone was in position, Jiraiya's hands blurred through a rapid succession of signs. He took a deep breath and exhaled a blazing torrent.
"Fire Release: Flame Bullet!"
The roaring fire bullet shot into the sky. Acting on the flare, the Naruto clones ripped the tags away in perfect unison. But the moment the barrier was unsealed, Nagato's secondary trap activated.
The ground churned. Through the Mirrored Sudden Attacker Technique, the earth gave out exact duplicates of the ones who removed the seals. Four earthen clones of Naruto came alive immediately launching a counterattack against the shadow clones, locking them in a frantic brawl.
With the barrier breached, Jiraiya, Kimimaro, and the main force stormed into the cavern. In the center of the chamber, the extraction of the Seven-Tails was already reaching its climax.
Jiraiya's eyes scanned the hollow cavern, quickly identifying the phantoms of the Akatsuki he could recognise.
Hidan's spectral form was the first to mouth off. "Oye, oye... they've already bypassed the five-seal barrier? We still need a damn minute to wrap this up!"
Pain's cold gaze shifted toward the intruders, locking onto Jiraiya. The legendary Sannin flinched, his heart dropping into his stomach not from fear but from surprise that Nagato or this one person who has taken Nagato's Rinnegan is the leader of this Akatsuki.
"Konan, Kakuzu, you both handle them," Pain commanded, as he turned his head slightly toward Konan. "Be careful."
Jiraiya stood frozen. "Is that... the Rinnegan? Is that you, Nagato? And Konan? What happened to you two?!"
Hidan chuckled darkly from the side. "Oh, Pain-san... why is this old man calling you, Nagato?"
"It matters not. We are finished," Pain cut him off coldly.
The Seven-Tails was violently yanked into the Gedo Statue. The massive statue's mouth snapped shut with a thud. Only now did Jiraiya look past his shock to look at the terrifying statue as a giant eye slowly opened.
Before Jiraiya could process the horror, Konan went on the offensive. Thousands of paper sheets erupted from her back like angelic wings, launching her into the air.
"Paper Drizzle!"
A hail of razor-sharp paper blades enhanced with wind style, rained down on the intruders. Jiraiya leaped backward, his fingers instantly weaving a complex string of signs: Snake → Boar → Rat → Dragon → Boar → Dragon → Tiger. He slammed both palms flat against the floor.
"Summoning: Toad Mouth Bind!"
The cavern underwent a transformation as the walls were instantly replaced by the pulsating and muscular esophagus of a giant fire-breathing toad from Mount Myoboku. The flesh immediately began oozing a sticky gastric fluid, turning the ground into a pliable, treacherous mire designed to trap and eventually digest anything within its space.
~~
A/N: I don't remember if there is canon reason as to why Kakashi didn't make multiple clones maybe he was low on chakra. Since Naruto is on the team there is no point in splitting the team when it was so obvious.
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