Naruto headed for his room, but not to go to sleep.
Zabuza's words about pursuers weren't a simple warning; they were a siren wailing.
Naruto moved along the outer wall of the hotel, using Qi to cling to the sheer surface. The window of his room on the third floor was slightly ajar. He slipped inside silently as a shadow.
The room was dark. Jiraiya's things were scattered haphazardly, but the Uzumaki paid no attention to that.
Faster. Scrolls. Weapons. Money. Need to leave.
He acted with cold efficiency. Scroll with Fūinjutsu basics—into the backpack. Pouch—onto the belt.
Qi Sensory worked at its limit, scanning the building.
And it was silent.
That was the scariest part. The hotel should be full of people, but the corridor outside the door felt like a vacuum. No sounds of footsteps, no breathing, no air fluctuations. A dead zone.
They're already here, he realized. They cleared the floor or put everyone to sleep.
Naruto slung the backpack over his shoulder. Leave through the window? No, they might be waiting there. Need to find Jiraiya. The Sannin was somewhere nearby; his chakra should be a beacon, even if he was hiding.
Naruto approached the door. Slowly, without touching the handle with his bare hand, he opened it slightly.
At the end of the corridor stood two figures.
Long black cloaks with red clouds.
One—tall, blue-skinned, with a face resembling a shark. Behind his back hung a bandaged sword the size of a man.
The second—shorter, with dark hair and black eyes in which a red pattern spun.
They didn't look surprised. They were waiting.
"You're quick, kid," Kisame grinned, showing a row of sharp teeth. "We thought we'd have to drag you out of bed, but you packed yourself. In a hurry?"
Naruto didn't ask, "Who are you?". He already knew.
The Uzumaki reacted instantly.
Hand darted to the pouch.
Smoke bomb flew at the floor.
BANG!
The corridor was enveloped in thick purple smoke.
Simultaneously, Naruto formed his fingers into a gun shape.
Qi Control: Shot.
He wasn't aiming at the enemies—that's useless against S-rank in a direct clash. He shot at the support beam, calculating to collapse the ceiling and create a barrier between him and the Akatsuki.
A white beam pierced the smoke.
Kisame lazily swung his huge sword.
Samehada, even bandaged, moved with frightening speed. It intercepted the Qi beam in flight.
But instead of absorbing the technique, as it usually did with chakra, the sword suddenly jerked in its owner's hands. A displeased hissing sound was heard, like red-hot iron in water. Samehada vibrated, its scales standing on end under the bandages.
"Oh?" Kisame was surprised, holding the trembling weapon. "What an unusual thing. My baby doesn't like it. You taste bad, kid. Tough somehow."
The sword simply knocked the beam aside, and it burned a hole in the wall, missing the beam.
Naruto realized the plan had failed. He was caught in a pincer.
Behind him was a wall he couldn't break through easily; in front—two monsters ready to pounce at any moment. Normal methods wouldn't work. Need some cover.
"Tajū Kage Bunshin no Jutsu!"
The corridor instantly filled with clones. Twenty copies rushed at the Akatsuki, trying to create chaos and buy at least a second for the original to escape.
Kisame didn't even move from his spot, simply swinging Samehada wide.
WHOOSH.
The sword passed right through the clones. Samehada, like a vacuum cleaner, sucked out the chakra holding them in reality.
Poof-poof-poof-poof.
The entire army vanished in an instant, turning into puffs of smoke.
"Weak snack," Kisame snorted, licking his lips. "Ordinary chakra. But the Bijū..."
Naruto pressed against the wall. One of his trump cards was beaten effortlessly.
Itachi took a step forward.
"Don't force us to use violence," the Uchiha said quietly. "Come with us, Naruto-kun."
"He doesn't need to do that."
The voice wasn't loud, but weighty. It was cold as ice and calm as a lake surface before a storm.
The corridor door opened slightly.
In the doorway stood Sasuke Uchiha.
On the left half of his face, like a black flame, the pattern of the activated Cursed Seal was frozen. In his eyes, a two-tomoe Sharingan slowly spun.
He stood relaxed, hands down, but an aura of such dense concentration emanated from him that the air in the corridor seemed electrified.
Itachi froze for a split second. In this pose, in this icy calm, in this readiness to kill without any hesitation, he saw not his "foolish little brother."
He saw his own reflection from his time in the ANBU.
"Leave, Naruto," Sasuke uttered, not taking his eyes off his brother. "Their target is you. I'll take Itachi. Use the moment to run."
"Sasuke, what are you..." Naruto started.
"You've saved me more than once," the Uchiha continued in an emotionless voice. "I can't always remain in your debt. Now it's my turn. Get ready."
Naruto clenched his teeth. He understood: Sasuke had no chance of surviving against these two. But in his words was a grim determination to see it through to the end. He was ready to put his life on the line in this fight. Retreat was no longer an option—the Uzumaki couldn't abandon a friend in such a situation.
Sasuke shifted his gaze to Itachi.
"Five years..." he exhaled. "I've waited only for this. I've lost count of how many times I imagined this moment."
He raised his left hand, grasping his right wrist.
The sound of Chidori was different this time. Not the chaotic scream of a thousand birds. It was an even, low, vibrating hum, like the sound of a high-voltage line. Blue light flooded the corridor, casting sharp shadows.
"How touching," Kisame snorted. "Brotherly reunion."
Sasuke vanished.
Speed, boosted by the Cursed Seal, was beyond limits for his level. He turned into blue lightning.
Itachi didn't even blink. He lazily raised a hand, preparing to intercept his brother's wrist and break it with one movement.
Too predictable, Itachi thought.
But at the last moment, when mere meters remained before contact, Sasuke suddenly changed trajectory.
His target all this time wasn't his brother.
The Uchiha spun sharply, stopping short of Itachi, and drove the Chidori into the wall.
Specifically, into the load-bearing beam—the very one Naruto had aimed for seconds earlier but failed to destroy with his Qi Shot.
BZZZT!
"BREAK!" Sasuke roared.
The lightning exploded.
The stone structure couldn't withstand it. Pierced by the penetrating strike of the Chidori, it snapped with a deafening crack.
The ceiling collapsed; the floor beneath the feet of the Akatsuki and the teenagers simply disappeared.
"What the?.." Kisame only managed to say.
The building shuddered. Three floors of ceilings crashed down in a cloud of dust, plaster, and furniture debris. Gravity did its job, separating the group.
***
Naruto landed in the lobby of the first floor, rolling over his shoulder and dampening the inertia with Body Tempering.
A dust screen stood all around.
To the left, the crackle of electricity and the ringing of shuriken could be heard—Sasuke, as he said earlier, took Itachi upon himself.
Right in front of Naruto, tossing aside debris of a sofa, a giant figure rose.
Kisame dusted off his cloak. He looked annoyed.
"Little pests," he growled. "Breaking the hotel was impolite."
The Swordsman of the Mist lunged forward. Samehada, purring predaciously, described an arc, aiming to take Naruto's head off.
The Uzumaki didn't dodge backward. That would be a mistake.
He snatched two kunai from his pouch. The very ones he had worked on during training on the march. The structure of explosive tags was fused into the metal.
CLANG!
Naruto blocked Samehada's strike with crossed kunai.
Kisame pressed down; his monstrous physical strength pushed through the youth's block.
"Is this your limit?" he smirked. "My sword will just eat your chakra..."
"Choke on it," Naruto rasped.
He sent an impulse of intent straight into the weapons.
Unlike paper tags, the chakra from which can be disrupted or sucked out, this was the detonation of the metal structure itself.
KA-BOOM!
The kunai exploded right in front of Kisame's face, sending a sudden concentrated blast wave forward.
The swordsman recoiled, instinctively covering his eyes with his arm. Samehada squealed—the vibration from a point-blank explosion was unpleasant even to it.
Naruto immediately used this won second.
Qi Taijutsu: Hammer Fall.
He jumped, concentrating his entire body weight in his heel, and brought a kick down on the disoriented enemy's shoulder.
The blow was heavy. Kisame dropped to one knee; the ground beneath him cracked.
The Uzumaki continued with a flurry of strikes—fast, hard, designed to give the opponent no time to recover. He was going all out, moving at the maximum possible speed with perfect efficiency.
But Kisame remained a monster.
At one moment, he caught the agile opponent's leg with one hand.
"Trying to snap back?" he grinned. On his cheek, a trace from the explosion remained, healing right before the eyes. "You're a funny kid."
BANG!
Naruto was flung aside like a tiresome toy. He slammed into the wall with such force that all the air was knocked out of his lungs.
Naruto slowly slid down the wall. He struggled to his feet on trembling legs, retrieving new explosive kunai.
"I have to admit, for a Chunin brat, you are quite strong. Who knows what would have happened in a few years if you hadn't met us today. But do you really think your little trick will work a second time?"
Before these words had faded, the Jinchūriki's eyes flared with crimson light, and the pupil elongated into a vertical slit. The air around him vibrated with a heavy hum from the pressure. Dense, venomous-red chakra burst out, enveloping his body in a bubbling cocoon. Behind his back, with a whip-like sound cutting through the dust, two tails of pure energy unfurled. The ground beneath Naruto's feet began to smoke from the heat.
Kisame's smile widened.